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 <J 
 
 THE 
 
 LIVERY COMPANIES 
 
 Of the City of London 
 
 THEIR ORIGIN, CHARACTER, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOCIAL 
 AND POLITICAL IMPORTANCE 
 
 Av3^ 
 
 HY 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Of the fnner Tcmph', Barristcr-at-Lj.\u 
 
 Mitb ■JIwo ColouvcD iplatcs an^ Ittuincroui? Sllustcatioiit 
 
 Xon&oii 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 1892
 
 L6HJ9 
 
 Butler & Tanner, 
 
 The Shlwood Pkinting Works, 
 
 Frome, ani> London.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface. — The Royal Commission, i. Commission not directly Operative, 2. 
 The Common Hall. Trust and Corporate Estates separable, 3. Ostensible Object 
 of Foundation, 4. The Royal Commission Advantageous, 4. Danger averted by Dis- 
 closure, 5. Agitation for Disendowment, 6. Civic Bodies Valuable as General Social 
 Factors, 6. The City and the Peerage, 7. Gain of the Aristocracy from Municipal 
 Alliances, 8. The Companies an indefeasible Element of London Life, 8. General 
 Survey of the Question, g. Cuibono? 10. A Word with Parliament, 11. Adaptation 
 to Changed Circumstances, 11. Conditions Favouring and Influencing Establishment, 
 12. Germ of the Gild, 13. Its Constitution, 13. Protectionist Spirit, 13. Causes 
 conducive to Association, 14. Its Benefits, 15. Balancing Drawbacks, 15. Foreign 
 Source of our Gilds, 16. The Ancient Trading Companies, 17. A New Era in Com- 
 mercial History, 18. Foreign Wars Beneficial to the Gilds, 18. Enfranchisement 
 of the London Trades, iS. Obscurity of Origin, 19. Constitution of the Gild, 19. 
 The Yeomanry, 20. Source of their Discontent, 20. A Plea for the Governing 
 Bodies, 21. Patrimony Disadvantageous to the Yeomanry, 2r. The Ordinances, 21. 
 Licences in Mortmain, 22. The Power of Search, 22. Feudalism, 23. The word 
 Mistery,i\. Apparel, zfc/. Amalgamating Movement, 26. The Ulster Plantation, 28. 
 Origin of the Revenue, 28. Change of Plan. The Irish Society, 29. Undivided 
 Residue, 29. Licence in Mortmain, 30. Value and Purchase-money, 30. Revocation 
 of Charter by Star Chamber, 30. Restoration by Cromwell, 30. Later History, 30. 
 The Subshares, 31. Litigation, 31. Difference between the Gilds and the Trades' 
 Union, 32. Wages, 32. Plurality, 32. Admittance of Strai>gers, 33. The Gild the 
 Forerunner of the Poorhouse and Hospital, 33. Reasons for Confidence in it, i-^. Ac- 
 quisition of Real Property, 34. Departure from Original Design and Professions, 34. 
 Exceptional Success of Certain Bodies, 34. Suggested Consolidation of the Minor 
 Companies, 35. Further Modification Possible, 36. Such a Contingency the Out- 
 come of External Changes, 36. The City Freeholds, 36. Their various Sources, 37. 
 Prostration of Strength by the Fire of 1666, 37. Causes of Revival, 38. The Present 
 Work, 39. Its Design, 39. The Return of 18S2, 39. Existing Accounts of the 
 Companies, 40. Our Own Text, 40. St.aiistical Details, 40. Trade Usages and 
 Pretensions, 41. Permanent Value of the Returns of 18S2, 41. The Present Book 
 a Comprehensive Synopsis, 42. Normal Periodical Incidence, 42. The Writ of 
 Quo U'arran/iJ, 42. Order of Arrangement, 43. Executive Staffs, 43. Literary 
 Memorials, 43. Mr. Welsh's Bibliography, 44. The City Pageants, 44. Loss of 
 many of the Printed Copies, 45. Unpublished Narratives, 45. Absence of Archaeo- 
 logical Interest, 46. And of Characteristic Memorials, 47. Obligations to Helpers, 
 47. The Graphic Part of the Volume, 48. Our Genuine Purpose, 49. Oral Inquiry, 
 Parliamentary Session, 1882, 57. Oral Inquiry, Parliainentary Session, 1883, 58. 
 Charity Commission Papers, 59. Minor Comf)anies, 60. 
 
 Gener.\l Introduction, 6r. Provincial and Continental Gilds, 72. Number 
 of Members, 81. Great Companies, 84. Minor Companies, 85. Expenditure: (1) 
 Trust. (2) Corporate, 91. Corporate Income, 96. Mode in whicli the Corporate 
 Estate was Acquired, 98. 
 
 C.C. V ^
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 Voluntary Associations Which Have Disappeared, or have Merged 
 IN THE Livery Gilds. 
 
 The White and Brown Bakers 
 
 The Bladesmiths, or Bladers ........ 
 
 The Block-makers .......... 
 
 The Braelers, or Brace-makers ....... 
 
 The Burillers 
 
 The Cappers ........... 
 
 The Carmen ........... 
 
 The Cheesemongers 
 
 The Comb makers .......... 
 
 The Corders of the Ropery 
 
 The Free Fishermen 
 
 The Forcers, or Casket-makers 
 
 The Fullers 
 
 The Furbishers .......... 
 
 The Gardeners .......... 
 
 The Ha1:)erdashers of St. Katherine the Virgin, and of St. Nicholas 
 The Hatband Makers ......... 
 
 The Hatters 
 
 The Heaumers 
 
 The Hostelers and Haymongers 
 
 The Hurers Hiuriers or Milliners ....... 
 
 The Linen Drapers 
 
 The Marblers 
 
 The Parish Clerks 
 
 The Paviours 
 
 The Pepperers .......... 
 
 The Pinners, or Pin-makers 
 
 The Planers ........... 
 
 The Potters 
 
 The Pouch-makers .......... 
 
 The Pursers or Glovers' Pursers ....... 
 
 The Shearmen (Pannarii) or Retunders . ..... 
 
 The Sawyers ........... 
 
 The Sheathers .......... 
 
 The Shivers 
 
 The Silkmen 
 
 The Silk-Throwers or Throwsters 
 
 The Soapers or Soap-makers . 
 
 The Spicers ........... 
 
 The Spurriers 
 
 The Starch-makers 
 
 The Stock-fishmongers ......... 
 
 The Stringers 
 
 The Surgeons . ......... 
 
 The Tapissers or Tapestry-makers 
 
 The Grey Tawyers or Tanners 
 
 The White Tawyers ......... 
 
 The Tobacco-pipe Makers 
 
 The Makers of Vinegar, Aqua Vit;e, and Aqua Composita . 
 I'he Watermen 
 
 I'A(;e 
 03 
 05 
 06 
 06 
 
 07 
 08 
 08 
 10 
 I I 
 I I 
 I I 
 12 
 I 2 
 13 
 14 
 
 '5 
 16 
 
 17 
 17 
 17 
 20 
 21 
 21 
 23 
 25 
 26 
 
 31 
 32 
 33 
 33 
 34 
 34 
 37 
 i7 
 37 
 38 
 39 
 40 
 
 41 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 44 
 45 
 47 
 47 
 48 
 48 
 49 
 49
 
 CONTENTS. VII 
 
 PACE 
 
 Tlie Woodmongers 1 5 ■ 
 
 The Wool-packers 153 
 
 Proposed Corporation of Society or Retail Traders of Londo:i ,-ind tlie 
 
 Suburbs • ■ ■ ' 54 
 
 VOLUNT.\RY ASSOCIATIO.V WHICH SURVIVES IN THAT FOR.M. 
 
 The Fellowship Porters 154 
 
 FoREiGX Corporations. 
 
 The Alien Weavers 1 56 
 
 The Flemisli Weavers . 1 56 
 
 Other Riverside Trading Co.mpanies 157 
 
 The Gre.\t Companies. 
 
 The Mercers 169 
 
 The Grocers . 1S7 
 
 The Drapers 198 
 
 The Fishmongers . . -215 
 
 The Goldsmiths 232 
 
 The Skinners 250 
 
 The Merchant Taylors 263 
 
 The Haberdashers . . 285 
 
 The Salters 292 
 
 The Ironmongers .......... . . 298 
 
 The Vintners 315 
 
 The Clothworkers 33' 
 
 The Minor Companies. 
 
 The .\pothecaries 347 
 
 The .-Vrmourers and Braziers • -355 
 
 The Bakers 358 
 
 The Barbers 361 
 
 The Basket- makers 369 
 
 The Blacksmiths 37° 
 
 The Bowyers 374 
 
 The Brewers 377 
 
 The Broderers 391 
 
 The Butchers . 396 
 
 The Carpenters 4^5 
 
 The Clockmakers 417 
 
 The Coach and Coach-harness Makers ........ 426 
 
 The Cooks 43^^ 
 
 The Coopers 433 
 
 The Cordv.ainers 449 
 
 The Curriers ............. 45^ 
 
 The Cutlers 461 
 
 The Distillers 467 
 
 The Dyers 472 
 
 The Fanmakers 47S 
 
 The Farriers 480 
 
 The Feltmakers 483 
 
 The Fletchers 4S6 
 
 The Founders or Coppersmiths 488 
 
 The Framework Knitters or Stocking Weavers 505 
 
 The Fruiterers ............ 507 
 
 The Girdlers 5'° 
 
 The Glass-Sellers 5 '4
 
 Viir 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Tlie Glaziers . 
 The Glovers 
 The Gold and Silver Wyre Drawer 
 The Gunmakers 
 The Horners [and Bottlers] 
 The Innholders 
 The Joiners 
 The Leathersellers . 
 The Loriners . 
 The Masons . 
 The Musicians or Minstrels 
 The Needlemakers 
 The Painters or Painter-Stainers 
 The Patten Makers 
 The Pewterers 
 
 The Plaisterers or Pargettors 
 The Playing-Card Makers 
 The Plumbers 
 The Poulters . 
 The Saddlers . 
 The Scriveners 
 The Shipwrights 
 The Spectacle-makers 
 The Stationers 
 The Tallow Chandlers 
 The Tin-plate Workers 
 The Turners . 
 The Tylers and Bricklayers 
 The Upholders or Upholsters 
 The Wax Chandlers 
 The Weavers . 
 The Wheelwrights . 
 The Woolmcn. 
 FEW General Literary Notices 
 
 Index 
 
 517 
 520 
 
 523 
 528 
 
 530 
 537 
 543 
 548 
 561 
 564 
 568 
 571 
 573 
 582 
 584 
 590 
 
 593 
 594 
 598 
 601 
 
 613 
 619 
 
 623 
 624 
 641 
 646 
 648 
 650 
 
 653 
 656 
 660 
 667 
 670 
 673 
 675
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The Port-Soc .... 
 Initial Letter. — A King receiving a Petition 
 Arms of the White Bakers . 
 „ Brown Bakers . 
 
 „ Comb-makers . 
 
 „ Gardeners . 
 
 „ Hatljand Makers 
 
 The Ancient Hosteler . 
 Arms of the Marblers . 
 Present Arms of the Parish Clerks 
 Arms of the Parish Clerks, 1633 (from Stow 
 Carly Arms of the Parish Clerks . 
 Arms of the Pavioins . 
 Gerard's Hall .... 
 
 Arms of the Pinners or Pinmakers 
 
 Silkmcn 
 
 Silk-Throwers or Throwst 
 
 Soapers or Soap-makers 
 
 Starchmakers . 
 
 Stringers . 
 
 Surgeons . 
 
 Tobacco-Pipe Makers 
 
 Watermen . 
 
 Woodmongers . 
 
 Wool packers 
 
 Merchants of the Staple 
 
 Merchants Adventurers 
 
 Merchants of Elbing . 
 
 Merchants of Russia . 
 
 Merchants of the Levant 
 
 Virginia Company 
 
 African Company 
 
 Merchants of East India 
 
 Merchants of Spain . 
 
 New French Merchants Adventurers 
 
 French Merchants 
 
 Hudson's Bay Company 
 I ,, South Sea Company 
 
 Hall of the Teutonic Gild 
 Arms of the Mercers 
 Death of Whittington . 
 Portrait of Whittington . . . 
 
 61 
 
 '03 
 105 
 105 
 1 1 1 
 114 
 116 
 118 
 
 2 I 
 
 124 
 
 25 
 27 
 
 '31 
 
 '38 
 '39 
 140 
 142 
 '44 
 '45 
 148 
 
 '49 
 '5' 
 '55 
 '57 
 158 
 158 
 '59 
 '59 
 160 
 160 
 161 
 161 
 162 
 162 
 '63 
 '63 
 165 
 169 
 '7' 
 '73
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Crest of Whittington I73 
 
 Mercers' Original Arms 1 74 
 
 Old Hall 178 
 
 Modern Hall, 1842, Entrance in Cheapside . . 179 
 
 Liverj-men Temp. James I . . .180 
 
 Liverymen Temp. Henry VI. (a.D. 1444) 181 
 
 Liveryman Temp. James I iSi 
 
 Sir Thomas Gresham, Citizen and Mercer . . 183 
 
 Exterior view of the Royal Exchange, 1569 . . . . . .183 
 
 Mercers' Company. — Salt-cellar (17th century) 185 
 
 Arms of the Grocers 187 
 
 Plan of Grocers' Hall and Garden 193 
 
 Wardens' Garlands . 194 
 
 Arms of the Drapers ............ 198 
 
 Old Arms of the Drapers 199 
 
 Drapers' Hall. — The Cromwell House ... 207 
 
 The Ground-plan of the Cromwell Premises ....... 209 
 
 Arms of the Fishmongers 215 
 
 Plan of Old Fishmongers' Hall and its Environs 224 
 
 Fishmongers' Hall about 1650 225 
 
 Fishmongers' Hall in 1739 . 226 
 
 Wahvortli's Dagger ... 229 
 
 Arms of the Goldsmiths 232 
 
 Old Arms of the Goldsmiths 233 
 
 Goldsmiths' Hall in 1739 245 
 
 Goldsmiths' Hall. — The Present Staircase 246 
 
 Goldsmiths' Hall. — Ewer of the 1 8th Century 247 
 
 Arms of the Skinners 250 
 
 Old Arms of the Skinners 251 
 
 Arms of the Merchant Taylors 263 
 
 The Common Seal . . . . 264 
 
 Original Arms of the Merchant Taylors 270 
 
 Plan shewing portion of Merchant Taylors' Hall and Ofifices in 1669 . . . 274 
 
 Interior of Merchant Taylors' Hall, 1842 276 
 
 Rose-water Dish of the Early Part of the 17th century 277 
 
 Silver Cloth Yard 280 
 
 Arms of the Haberdashers ........... 285 
 
 Old Arms of the Haberdashers . . ... . . . 2S6 
 
 Cup of Habei-dashers' Company 289 
 
 Anns of the Salters 292 
 
 Old Arms of the Salters 295 
 
 Arms of the Ironmongers ■ . . . 298 
 
 Iromnongers' Marks ............ 299 
 
 „ Common Seal ... 300 
 
 • :: „ Election Garland 301 
 
 „ Hall about 1560 306 
 
 Dado at Ironmongers' Hall . ... . ... . . . . . 307 
 
 Whiffler and Henchman ........... 309 
 
 Cresset 310 
 
 The Lord Mayor's Show. Wild or Greenwood Men clearing the way . -311 
 
 Arms of the Vintners . . . • 3'5 
 
 The Vintners' Old Arms 317 
 
 Vintners' Hall about 1650 324
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XI 
 
 I'ACE 
 
 Stoneware Jug (l6th Century) 327 
 
 Old Arms of tlie Clothworkers 33' 
 
 Arms of the Clothworkers 332 
 
 Plan of Hall, from Agas, 1560 337 
 
 Two Plans shewing the site and area of tlic Hall demolished in 1862 . . . 338 
 
 Rose-water Dishes and Ewers, 1593- 1880 340 
 
 The Apothecaries' Arms 347 
 
 Old Arms of the Apothecaries 348 
 
 Ancient Mortar, formerly at Apothecaries' Hall 351 
 
 Arms of the Armourers and Braziers, from Stow 355 
 
 A Funeral Card 357 
 
 Arms of the Bakers 35^ 
 
 „ Barbers 3^' 
 
 A Barber and his Implements in 1688 362 
 
 Old Arms of the Barbers 363 
 
 Figures from the Holbein Picture at Barbers' Hall 365 
 
 Barbers' Hall. The Court-room ■. 366 
 
 Loving Cup in the possession of the Barbers' Company 367 
 
 Loving Cup presented to the Barbers by Charles II 368 
 
 Arms of the Basket-makers 369 
 
 Old Arms of the Basket-makers 369 
 
 Arms of the Blacksmiths 370 
 
 Old Arms of the Blacksmiths 371 
 
 Arms of the Bowyers 374 
 
 Old Arms of the Bowyers 375 
 
 Arms of the Brewers 377 
 
 Early Arms of the Brewers (from Stow, 1633) 380 
 
 The Tumbril 381 
 
 Crest or Cognizance of Hickson .......... 386 
 
 Crest of Owen . 387 
 
 Arms of Piatt 388 
 
 Old Arms of the Broderers 391 
 
 Arms of the Butchers 396 
 
 Old Arms of the Butchers 397 
 
 Arms of the Carpenters 405 
 
 Old Arms of the Carpenters 405 
 
 William Portington, Esquire, Master Carpenter in the Office of His Majesty's 
 
 Buildings, 162S 407 
 
 Carpenters' Hall, 1664. Shewing frontage to London Wall .... 412 
 
 Carpenters' Hall, 1664. The garden frontage 413 
 
 Arms of the Clockmakers 417 
 
 Early Arms of the Clockmakers (from Stort', 1633) 4'9 
 
 Initial Ornament of Charter 420 
 
 Warden's Badge 421 
 
 Master's Badge or Jewel 421 
 
 Clockmakers' Plate 422 
 
 The Adams Cup 423 
 
 Arms of the Cooks 43° 
 
 Old Arms of the Cooks 43° 
 
 Arms of the Coopers 433 
 
 An Ancient Cooperage 434 
 
 Old Arms of the Coopers 435 
 
 The Coopers' Marks, A.D. 1420 43^
 
 Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Facsimile from Book of Accounts (Coopers), 1 576 442 
 
 Arms of the Cordwainers . ... . ... . . 449 
 
 Old Arms of the Cordwainers .... . . . . . 450 
 
 Arms of the Curriers . . . . . 456 
 
 „ Cutlers 461 
 
 Old Arms of the Cutlers 462 
 
 Arms of the Distillers ............ 467 
 
 Old Arms of the Distillers .... 468 
 
 Arms of the Dyers 47? 
 
 Old Arms of the Dyers 472 
 
 Arms of the Fanmakers 478 
 
 Early Arms of the Fanmakers 479 
 
 Arms of the Farriers 4S0 
 
 Old Arms of the Farriers 483 
 
 Anns of the Feltmakers 484 
 
 Old Arms of the Feltmakers 486 
 
 Arms of the Fletchers 487 
 
 Old Arms of the Fletchers .... 488 
 
 Arms of the Founders or Coppersmiths . ...... 489 
 
 Early Arms or Cognizance of the Founders ........ 489 
 
 The Benin Spoon, 1625 499 
 
 The Treasure Chest, 1653 . . . . 501 
 
 Maser with Cover (14th century), Founders' Company ...... 504 
 
 Arms of the Frainework Knitters or Stocking Weavers ..... 505 
 
 Old Arms of the P'ramework Knitters . 505 
 
 Arms of the Fruiterers, 1739 507 
 
 Old Arms of the Fruiterers 507 
 
 Arms of the Girdlers 510 
 
 Old Arms of the Girdlers 511 
 
 Arms of the Glass-Sellers . .514 
 
 Common Seal of the Glass-Sellers . . 51S 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Glasses . . . . . . . . . . .516 
 
 Anns of the Glaziers 517 
 
 Old Arms of the Glaziers 517 
 
 Arms of the Glovers 520 
 
 An Ancient Glove 522 
 
 Arms of the Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers . 523 
 
 Old Arms of the Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers . _ 523 
 
 Arms of the Gunmakers ........... 528 
 
 „ Horners [and Bottlers] . 530 
 
 Old Arms of the Horners 530 
 
 Cup made of Tusk of Narwhal 534 
 
 Arms of the Innholders 537 
 
 Old Arms of the Innholders 538 
 
 The Tabard, South wark, in 1720 539 
 
 The Tabard (or Talbot), in 1 84 1 539 
 
 The Black Boy, Chelmsford 540 
 
 Cornelius Caton, Landlord of the White Lion, Richmond, Surrey (about 1750) . 541 
 
 Arms of the Joiners 543 
 
 Old Arms of the Joiners . 543. 
 
 Carved Chair, Carpenters' Hall .......... 546. 
 
 Octagonal Table, Carpenters' Hall . . . . _ . 546 
 
 Specimen of Elizabethan Wood-Carving Preserved at Carpenters' Hall . . 546
 
 LIST OK ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 XIU 
 
 Arms of the Leathersellers 
 
 Old Arms of the Leathersellers 
 
 Cognizance of the Leathersellers . 
 
 Leathersellers' Hall in 1842 (Interior View) 
 
 Arms of the Loriners .... 
 
 Old Arms of the Loriners 
 
 Arms of the Masons ... 
 
 Old Arms of the Masons 
 
 Arms of the Musicians or Minstrels 
 
 „ Needlemakers 
 
 „ Painter-Stainers 
 
 Old Arms of the Painter-Stainers . 
 Arms of the Patten Makers . 
 
 „ Pewterers .... 
 
 Old Arms of the Pewterers . 
 Arms of the Plaisterers or Pargettors . 
 Old Arms of the Plaisterers or Paryettors 
 Arms of the Playing-Card Makers . 
 Old Arms of the Playing-Card Makers . 
 Arms of the Plumbers (From .Stow) 
 
 „ „ (From Maitland) 
 
 „ Poulters 
 
 Old Arms of the Poulters 
 Anns of the Saddlers 
 Old Arms of the Saddlers 
 The Rich Cup 
 Arms of the Scriveners . 
 Old Arms of the Scriveners . 
 Arms of the Shipwrights 
 Old Arms of the Shipwrights 
 Arms of the Spectacle-makers 
 Old Arms of the Spectacle-makers. 
 Arms of the Stationers . 
 Old Arms of the Stationers . 
 The Stationers' Barge . 
 A Waterman .... 
 Stationers' Hall in 1670 . 
 
 „ „ in 1842 . 
 
 Devices and Monograms of Kminent Stationers 
 
 Original Common Seal, Lost in the Great Fire 
 Mark of Richard Tottcll .... 
 
 ,, John Day (1548-71J .... 
 Title- Page of Lydgate's Vertue of the Masse, Printed by Wy 
 Autographs of Eminent Stationers of the l6th Century 
 Arms of the Tallow Chandlers 
 Old .'Vrms of the Tallow Chandlers 
 Arms of the Tin-plate Workers 
 Old Arms of the Tin-plate Workers 
 Arms of the Turners .... 
 Old Crest or Cognizance of the Turners 
 Arms of the Tylers and Bricklayers 
 Old Arms of the Tylers and Bricklayers 
 
 CO. 
 
 nkyn 
 
 de Word 
 
 548 
 
 552 
 555 
 559 
 561 
 562 
 564 
 
 565 
 568 
 
 571 
 573 
 575 
 582 
 
 584 
 
 585 
 590 
 
 591 
 593 
 593 
 594 
 594 
 598 
 
 599 
 5oi 
 601 
 
 613 
 613 
 616 
 619 
 621 
 623 
 623 
 624 
 625 
 629 
 629 
 631 
 63 > 
 632 
 
 ^ii 
 635 
 637 
 637 
 638 
 
 f^J9 
 641 
 642 
 646 
 646 
 f-4.S 
 648 
 650
 
 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arms of the Upholders or Upholsters 653 
 
 Old Arms of the Upholders or Upholsters 653 
 
 Arms of the Wax Chandlers 656 
 
 Old Arms of the Wax Chandlers 658 
 
 Arms of the Weavers ............ 660 
 
 Initial Letter 661 
 
 Old Arms of the Weavers 666 
 
 Arms of the Wheelwrights 667 
 
 Arms of the Woolmen ............ 670 
 
 A King conferring a Cliarter ........... 673
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 TheRoal ^- 1\.T ^^^ ^^^"^^ every public institution begins to 
 Commission. 1 \ think it necessary or fit to be ready on 
 
 demand with its credentials, and to be prepared to exhibit its 
 raison d etre, it seems to be an opportune moment for bring- 
 ing within a convenient compass an account of all the Gilds 
 and Livery Companies of London. In the old days, customs 
 and bodies survived from generation to generation without 
 inquiry and challenge ; and even within our own recollection 
 calls for scrutiny and reform have been parried, or, if 
 answered, have been practically inoperative. But the Royal 
 Commission of 1880, and the returns thereby requested and 
 obtained, marked a new era in the question, as well as in 
 the relations between the Companies and the public. 
 
 Considering that the former enjoyed, even in the face of 
 such a Commission, great and varied facilities for evasion, and 
 that there was no legal power of enforcement, the response 
 on their part may be fairly described as remarkably cordial 
 and frank. At the same time, all the returns were accom- 
 panied by a respectful protest ; in a few cases very little 
 information was given, and in two or three no return was 
 made. 
 
 Although there was at first, especially on the part of the 
 c.c. I
 
 2 PREFACE. 
 
 minor associations, a strong feeling of distaste and distrust 
 toward the Commission, it may be questioned whether the 
 disclosures to which it led did not operate beneficially on 
 the bodies and individuals primarily concerned. For the 
 Report went, as a whole, to shew and establish in a conclusive 
 manner, and under the most authoritative auspices, that the 
 Gilds were far from justifying the strictures passed upon their 
 management and financial economy by many influential public 
 men, and that, whatever might have been the directing impulse 
 or motive, their property was, at the period when the Com- 
 mission sat, extensively utilized, not only for charitable pur- 
 poses, as to which there have been conflicting opinions, but for 
 purposes directly and indirectly connected with education, social 
 science, and human progress. 
 Commission Some Surprise and dissatisfaction prevailed at the 
 
 not directly 
 
 operative. time, it may be remembered, because the Govern- 
 ment did not found on the Report any proposal to Parlia- 
 ment ; nor has any step been since taken, beyond the slight 
 redistribution of administrative powers under the Count)' 
 Council system. The hostile critics of the Corporation and 
 the Companies made a good deal of the serious loss to the 
 Imperial revenue from the enormous amount of proj)erty held 
 in mortmain and exempt from succession-duty in perpetuity, 
 as well as of the large fees paid to members of the Courts 
 for attendances in the case of a few of the wealthier Gilds. 
 There was also a contention, that the Companies were inde- 
 pendent of the Corporation, and were, at least no longer, what 
 they nominally or ostensibly professed to be — representatives, 
 guardians, and promoters of various trades and callings. 
 Th c r rate The charge, which almost amounted to a re- 
 
 Tax, proach, that by their constitutions they interceptetl 
 
 a large sum, which in ordinary cases would be available at 
 certain intervals for succession-duty, and thus inflicted a wrong
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 on the general community, has been met since 1884 l)y the 
 Corporate Tax of five per cent., which assesses these bodies 
 on a basis so calculated that they pay their quota to the revenue 
 in the same manner as ordinary individuals. Of course they 
 were expressly entitled under their charters to hold in mort- 
 main ; but when other modes of taxing them had become 
 incompatible with our laws, and antagonistic to public opinion, 
 it seemed desirable, no doubt, to devise some fresh expedient for 
 disencumbering them, if only of a percentage of their incomes. 
 The corporate tax yields the Exchequer many thousands a year. 
 The plea, after all, can only api)ly to their corporate property, 
 since their trust estates are purely eleemosynary ; and the 
 argument appears to possess all the less validity, that a fair 
 proportion of the annual receipts pass to the members, and 
 indirectly become liable to taxation, while, if it were not so, it 
 is within the competence of the Companies at any time to 
 dissolve themselves as regards their corporate possessions and 
 divide the assets. Whether an equitable apportionment of the 
 funds is made among the several grades is a question, again, 
 for the Gilds themselves ; but the complaint that extravagant 
 amounts are voted to the Courts may be met by pointing out 
 that the greater the output in this or any other direction the 
 greater is the presumed gain to the imperial exchequer from 
 normal property-tax. 
 The Common Two Other points deserve to be noticed. The 
 
 Hall. Trust 
 
 and Corporate Companies and the Corporation, as the matter has 
 
 Estates separ- . - . , . . . . . 
 
 able. stood time out of mind, are intimately and insepa- 
 
 rably bound up together by the usage of the Common Hall 
 and otherwise ; and, secondly, it has been established on the 
 highest authority, that the alienation of their Trust Estates 
 would not affect their integrity or their tide to their acquired 
 and absolute property, while it might in some leading instances 
 form a source of advantage to them and of loss to the public.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Ostensible Jf is not requisite to enter into the question of 
 
 object of foun- 
 dation, the diversity of object or motive which professedly 
 
 led these bodies to make common cause; but, confining our- 
 selves to those of native origin, which established themselves 
 w^ithin the City of London from the twelfth century down- 
 ward, we see that the main ostensible justification for their 
 sufferance was, not trade, but charity and alms ; and they 
 owed their freedom from molestation during the earlier stages 
 to their comparative insignificance, politically and financially, 
 and to their municipal franchises, until, when their resources 
 expanded, and their pretensions grew respondent, a prescrip- 
 tive title and a full jjurse befriended and preserved them. 
 This middle period was the season of ripening investments 
 in land and of active connexion with manufacture and com- 
 merce, culminating in widespread ruin, attendant upon the 
 Civil War, the troubles in Ireland, and the Great Fire; and 
 the modern annals of the surviving Companies tell a story of 
 abandonment of old mercantile traditions in the face of changetl 
 times and of a return, but on a basis commensurate with 
 immensely augmented power for good, to that benevolent and 
 religious mission which first procured them toleration and 
 power. 
 The Royal These institutions may be fairly considered as 
 
 Commission 
 
 advantageous, having taken a fresh lease of their existence, and 
 they mainly owe the renewal of political life to their own 
 foresight, energy, and munificence. We know that it is a 
 common error to suppose that an enormous proportion of 
 their revenues is consumed in entertainments, and that civic 
 feasts are nothing but phenomenal spectades of o-oui'-mandise.^ 
 In the first place, the amount spent on them is relatively 
 
 ' A curious illustration of the harm done to these bodies by ignorant and indiscreet 
 persons occurred in the case of the late surveyor to one of the great Companies, who 
 used to tell his friends that he thought they spent all their money in eating and 
 drinking.
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 small ; and, further, they are almost the only survivals of 
 ancient English hospitality. So far from being limited to the 
 municipal bodies themselves, there is scarcely a member of 
 English society of any recognised status who is not on the 
 rota of invited guests. 
 
 The Companies have reason, we think, to consider that the 
 report of the Royal Commission was decidedly advantageous 
 to them, in shielding their independence and property from the 
 extreme reformers in the Liberal ranks in Parliament, who, it 
 must be within recollection, openly spoke of the propriety of 
 a complete reorganization, involving the virtual extinction of 
 the orio-inal bodies. 
 
 Danger This danger has been averted, in the first place 
 
 averted by 
 
 disclosure. by the evidence collected in 1880 and following 
 years ; and, secondly, by the proofs which so many of the 
 Companies continue of their own accord to evince of their 
 lively and intelligent interest in the cause of culture and in 
 the welfare of the community. A dispassionate estimate of 
 the position, as it now stands, with the Companies as trustees 
 dc jure or dc facto of very large charitable funds, may lead 
 to the impression, or even the deliberate belief, that, if the 
 estates were taken over by the Government, no appreciable 
 gain would accrue to the existing or any other beneficiaries ; 
 and assuredly it is the clear and urgent interest of the civic 
 bodies in possession to work more and more in the direction 
 of justifying sympathy and support on their behalf. It should 
 be always borne in mind, besides, that we have here a case 
 in which the burden of proof lies exclusively on the shoulders 
 of the reformer. 
 
 We are of opinion that the Companies, and the Corpora- 
 tion itself, are infinitely more secure from molestation at this 
 moment than they were ten years ago. Their best, if not their 
 sole, policy is to march abreast with the times ; and no Govern-
 
 TKEFACE. 
 
 ment In the future will venture to approach Parliament with a 
 proposal for a readjustment of their revenues. 
 
 Moreover, we apprehend the best friends of the City and its 
 venerable customs and privileges to be on our side, when we 
 assert that, had the bulk of the Companies stood on their 
 strict legal rights, and refused disclosure, the position of the 
 entire body would ere this have become very critical. A 
 judicious and graceful deference to public opinion has been 
 their best security ; as, in a converse way, it was said of 
 Queen Elizabeth, that her greatest art as a ruler lay in knowing 
 when and where to yield. By studying contemporary feelings 
 and wants, the municipality in all its length and breadth may, 
 and will, continue to prosper ; but by a misinterpretation of its 
 relationship to the State it would incur a danger not to be pos- 
 sibly over-rated. No earthly power — not even Lord Salisbury's 
 omnipotent Upper Chamber — could save the Corporation and 
 allied bodies from destruction, if they should leave the path 
 which most of them are treading, and wherein their true sal- 
 vation lies. 
 
 Agitation for Some of our pubHc men in and out of Parlia- 
 
 ment, ment have propounded and agitated the desirability 
 
 of taking back the City charters, and appropriating the funds 
 of the Corporation and Companies, on utilitarian grounds ; and 
 there has been, and indeed is, a fear that, if a dissolution 
 should impart to the legislature a more pronounced democratic 
 character and feeling, and a Government pledged to a Socialist 
 policy should be installed in office, the ancient and time-honoured 
 constitution of the City of London would be among the earliest 
 objects of attention and attack. 
 
 Civic bodies ^^ '~^^ "^'^ ^^^''^^ "^^'^ view to be well-founded, 
 
 valuable as because the very education which the City has from 
 
 general social ■' 
 
 factors. the outset Contributed to foster, and of which in its 
 
 broader and higher forms it is one of the most zealous and
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 munificent promoters, will gradually and steadily raise up a vast 
 democratic community, inimical, it may be, on the one hand, 
 to the retention of many abuses still lingering among us, but, 
 on the other, adverse to the disappearance of institutions which 
 have learned to throw down their roots deep into the popular 
 sympathy, and to identify themselves with some of the most 
 important and costly improvements of recent days. Nor are 
 we to forget that the Municipality of London at large is a 
 most potential and unique factor in knitting together the classes, 
 and in preserving from decay and oblivion the ancient hospitality 
 of our kings. The seat and centre of princely bounty have been 
 transferred from Whitehall to Guildhall. 
 
 The civic banquets were anciently and originally analogous 
 to those of the monarch, and were only held at fixed seasons, 
 the interval being marked by a more frugal domestic economy 
 and a more sparing diet than at present prevails among those 
 attached to the Gilds. The feast was at one period a purely 
 exceptional event, and was the most pleasant of the bonds of 
 fellowship which connected trades, classes, and families. 
 TheCit-and ^^ ^^^ been most decisively shown to what a 
 
 the Peerage, great extent our ennobled families derived their 
 extraction and the means of acquiring and maintaining their 
 honours from the City. A list of those whose origin was 
 municipal and mercantile embraces some of the most distin- 
 guished names in the peerage ; and to those who have not 
 been led to study this aspect of the matter it is apt to be a 
 source of surprise when they discover how the Corporation 
 and Gilds have formed an immemorial link between com- 
 mercial life and the aristocracy. 
 
 The pages of the Remembrancia testify to the solicitude of 
 almost all classes to acquire a standing in the City by mem- 
 bership of one of the Gilds or by freedom of the j\lunicipality 
 itself Letters of application from the king, nobility, and other
 
 8 PREFACE. 
 
 personages of Station and inlluence, to the Lord Mayor flowed in 
 without interruption at one period. Sometimes the request was 
 granted ; at other times regret was expressed at the inabiHty 
 to comply, from the absence of vacancies or an analogous plea. 
 
 Gain of the We hardly know how deeply and how repeatedly 
 
 from'numTdpai °'-"' ^iristocracy has been indebted for its mainte- 
 a lances. nance and renewal to the robust and energetic life, 
 and the pecuniary subsidies, of the City. The wealth of the 
 early London merchant was tolerably amerced by the Crown 
 under irresistible pressure ; but through two channels of a 
 different class immense strength was imparted to the Upper 
 Chamber during some centuries : firstly, by the elevation of 
 citizens to the peerage ; and, secondly, by the espousal of 
 their daughters to noblemen. Of the six daughters of Sir 
 William Cockaine, Lord Mayor of London in 1619, all mar- 
 ried peers or their immediate kindred. 
 
 The dismemberment of the City Gilds, and confiscation of 
 their estates, must appear on deliberate reflection almost an 
 impossibility, when we consider that such a proceeding would 
 shake the basis of the entire corporate structure, and would 
 reduce to inanition a feature of English political and social life 
 which has grown up with us, and forms no mean part of our 
 constitutional fabric and our historical traditions. 
 
 The Com- 3. The Livery Companies of London are, in 
 
 panics an 
 
 indefeasible truth, part and parcel of a grand municipal 
 
 element of 
 
 London life. machinery, which is indivisible, and ought to be 
 indissoluble. It is not only in this case that the common 
 plea, quieta non inovcre, may be urged, but, as we have men- 
 tioned, a very grave question must arise under present condi- 
 tions, whether these organizations, as they are now constituted 
 on an improved basis and to a considerable extent in harmony 
 with the views of the Imperial executive, are not preferable
 
 PREFACE. 9 , 
 
 media for carrying out the uiulcrtakings and responsibilities 
 which they silently and practically recognise as appertaining 
 and essential to their existence. 
 
 They are emphatically appurtenances of the City. Thc'ir 
 property, their associations, and tlicir centres are equally within 
 the municipal frontier. But there is between them and a 
 large class of men, whose occujxitions and interests lie in the 
 same narrow area, the broadest and clearest dividing line. 
 With the modern school of speculative enterprise, so often 
 tainted by dishonour, the Gilds have neither kinship nor sym- 
 pathy ; and this may be predicated, perhaps, with peculiar force 
 of the greater ones, which not only hold themselves aloof from 
 dubious principles and undertakings, but exclude from their 
 fellowship and their table thousands of individuals who are 
 conspicuous figures in London commercial life. These two 
 types are like two streams, which flow side by side, and do 
 not mingle. 
 
 General Speaking generally, and stating the case broadly 
 
 survey of the 
 
 question. and fairly, the City Gilds offer themselves to our 
 notice and criticism as communities which started under colour 
 of being, above all things, eleemosynary in their constitution 
 and spirit, yet which were, at the same time, essentially mer- 
 cantile in their constituent parts and corporate feeling. Their 
 religious and charitable programme recommended them, in the 
 eyes of pious or benevolent testators, as the most appropriate 
 and secure trustees or recipients of legacies, large or small ; 
 and for centuries, while they dispensed alms and relief pur- 
 suantly to their professions and to the terms of bequests, 
 they amassed wealth by commerce, and acquired an enormous 
 property in reserve at inconsiderable cost. Their rise in finan- 
 cial and [Political importance made the ratification of their acts 
 and status by our kings little more than a question of toll. 
 It was a compact between the Crown and these associations 
 
 c.c. 2
 
 lO PREFACE. 
 
 for their mutual ad\-antage. The unhmited nature of the ro\'al 
 prerogative left out of account the prospective or even the 
 current interests of the general community ; nor was it humanly 
 possible to foresee the progressive advance in the value of 
 metropolitan land and sites, which confers on the City Com- 
 panies, in spite of the most serious and repeated misfortunes, 
 their actual vantage-ground. The treaties made in former days 
 were, after all, agreeable to contemporary policy, custom, and 
 convenience. 
 
 Ciiiimio? y\ judicial consideration of the relationship of the 
 City Gilds to the general community, and of their public obliga- 
 tion in respect of a revision of their constitution, leaves us with 
 a \-ery narrow argument and a \'ery poor one, if it should hap- 
 pen to be our cue or our mission to advocate such a change. 
 Indeed, when we see that it can only be a question of the 
 corporate income, since of the trusts the Companies are mere 
 unpaid administrators at a pecuniary sacrifice, and that of this 
 private revenue a very large quota is annually devoted to the 
 augmentation or extension of trusts, it is difficult to know on 
 what ground a new scheme could be introduced and defended ; 
 for all individual opinions as to the modes in which the Com- 
 panies think fit to bestow their money are really irrelevant and 
 futile from an official and statutory point of view. It has to be 
 ever borne in mind that the Companies are in lawful possession, 
 and that the burden of proof lies with others ; and no Parlia- 
 ment which is likely to sit at Westminster would or could, in 
 the face of the most positive evidence as to the indefeasible 
 character of the Companies' non-trust property, listen to any 
 factious cry for confiscation under the cloak of reform, even 
 assuming that the system of management could be shown to be 
 in some respects defective or unsatisfactory. 
 A word with With how much greater force the argument which 
 
 Paiiiament. \^^^ h&ttw more than once brought into employment
 
 PREFACE. 1 1 
 
 against the Corporation and the Gilds applies to those members 
 of both Houses of ParHament to whose inspiration, or at any 
 rate, to the concurrence of many of whom, the Royal Commis- 
 sion was due ! These noblemen and gentlemen, in such cases 
 as are most noteworthy, acquired their property under circum- 
 stances precisely analogous to those which placed the civic 
 bodies in possession of theirs. In both instances the pecuniary 
 value was comparatively, if not absolutely, trifling at and long 
 after the date of entrance upon it ; and in both cases the 
 national industry and prosperity made it and them what it is, 
 and what they are. The difference occurs, when we compare 
 the stewardship of the City with that of the great capitalists 
 and owners in Parliament. " P/iysiciaii, heal thyself !" Let 
 a Royal Commission issue to report to the nation upon the 
 property of the Dukes of Westminster, Bedford, and Portland, 
 the Marquis Camden, Earl Cadogan, Lord Portman, and a few 
 more. For if redistribution is to be granted, it must be granted 
 all round. 
 Ad.iptaiion to The times have changed, and the Corporation of 
 
 changed 
 
 circumstances. London, with all that is attached to it and intercon- 
 nected with its life, has perceived the need of moving forward, 
 as those who stand still in an achancing: crowd are liable to be 
 trodden down and left behind. But the principle of admission 
 to the Gilds by purchase had already caused those bodies to 
 assume a modified complexion, and had strengthened their 
 hands by the admi.xture of foreign blood, so to speak, and 
 by the broadening of their constitutions. For Parliament, in 
 dealing with them, began to find that it had to reckon upon 
 the opposition ot a large number of influential persons, many 
 of them members of one or other of the Chambers ; and even 
 the practice of enrolling honorary Gildsmen in consideration 
 of their literary, artistic, or royal pretensions, operated to a 
 certain e.xtent in a similar way, in lending an atmosphere to
 
 1 2 PREFACE. 
 
 the ancient n'giine, and identifying it with the existing age 
 and with general society. The City scored prodigiously when 
 it threw aside its invisible mantle and ceased to be altosfether 
 a close borough. This, if we may be permitted to say so, is 
 likely to prove the safety-valve of the Corporation and the 
 Companies. The less mysterious and exclusive they shew 
 themselves, the greater will be their prosperity and longevity. 
 Such a policy will be the best barrier against .Socialism. 
 
 Public opinion should be cultivated and welcomed by the 
 Companies in the time before us, as the sweet air, which will 
 alone keep them green and flourishing. There is always the 
 danger, where information is withheld, of something more than 
 the truth being suspected, and of a sentiment of distrust and 
 resentment being employed by a party or a clique for their 
 own particular purposes. A liberal policy and a frank and 
 open hand are the clear safeguards of these institutions 
 hereafter. 
 
 Comiiiions 3- The period within which the majority of the 
 
 favouvingand Qjjjg j^,^^, ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^.j^^ ^^^.^^ ^^^ j^^ ^^.j^j^]^ prOteC- 
 mnuencmg * 
 
 establishment, j^jqj-j ^.^-^^ companionship Were apt to be eminently 
 conducive to the successful pursuit and development of com- 
 merce. In an imperfectly organized society, and with the 
 authority of the Crown far from thoroughly consolidated, union 
 and co-operation among men of the same calling were great 
 sources of security ; and these fraternities, existing, as we find, 
 in an unofficial state long before they obtained recognition 
 and rank as chartered bodies, enjoyed the means of affording 
 each other mutual assistance and support, more especially 
 where, as was usually the case, their hands were still further 
 strengthened by the accession of persons of standing, who
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 were not craftsmen, but sought membership on independent 
 Qfrounds. 
 Germ of the '^'^*^ rudimentary nucleus or germ of the Gilds 
 
 Gilds. ^.jjg undoubtedly that principle of the old law. which 
 
 exacted a guarantee for his good behaviour from e^'ery free- 
 man on the attainment of his fourteenth year, or from his 
 guardians, and which seemed to necessitate, not only for the; 
 payment ot this ^^v/r/, but for any contingencies arising out of 
 apprenticeship or servitude, the formation and maintenance 
 of a common purse. 
 
 j,3 The graduated constitution of the Gild was an 
 
 constitution. -jlmost necessary corollary of its mode of develoj)- 
 ment. Its mercantile and ad\'enturous attributes were a super- 
 structure on its primitive object and function as an industrial 
 union and safeguard. It happened, no doubt, in this, as in 
 numerous other instances, that the original promoters of the 
 idea in London did not entertain any notion of overstepping 
 the limits at first laid down, and would have viewed with 
 excessi\'e surprise the advance beyond them which had been 
 made even in the time of the Edwards (i 272-1377), when 
 the aristocratic element, in the torm of the municipal dignitary 
 and capitalist, had already assumed supreme control o\'er the 
 movement, and converted what was in its inception a scheme 
 of humble pretensions and narrow scope into a prominent 
 constitutional feature and an important agent in the financial 
 transactions of the realm. 
 Protectionist Throughout the ordinances and regulations 
 
 spirit. framed by or for the various Companies, it can be 
 
 no source of astonishment to meet with a consistent and 
 uncompromising protectionist spirit. This was the policy and 
 feeling on the part of all traders in former days, and has not 
 even yet lost its weight in England, while on the Continent 
 and in the United States it survives in undiminished force and
 
 14 PREFACE. 
 
 repute. As the eye runs through the proclamations, acts of 
 Parliament, and the bye-laws of the Gilds themselves, it is one 
 unvarying cry of exclusion of the foreign competitor or of 
 his admittance at a disadvantage, which we encounter ; and we 
 believe that, if the Government of the present day would go 
 with it, the City is sufficiently conservative to return, in cer- 
 tain respects and to some extent, to the old-fashioned platform. 
 
 But the law of supply and demand is among ourselves 
 supreme, and it merely resolves itself into the dual question of 
 production and consumption. The time may come, however, 
 when education will teach the community something in this 
 direction, and when the low-priced continental fabrics of all 
 kinds will not find so free a sale. They represent all that is 
 unwholesome and false in social and commercial economy. 
 
 The rigorous protectionist principle, however, which governed 
 these associations, and which in the course of centuries was 
 temporarily relaxed only under urgent or special circumstances, 
 rendered such an alliance and brotherhood among the followers 
 of the same calling, as would at present prove a hindrance and 
 an anachronism, expedient and advantageous from every point 
 of view. 
 Causes condu- The need for appro.ximation and fellowshii^, which 
 
 cive to asso- 
 ciation, appear in almost all cases to have preceded the 
 
 prayer for a charter, naturally followed the absence of ready 
 
 means of intercourse with distant persons and places and with 
 
 each other in times of imperfect and rudimentary legislation, 
 
 scanty appliances of all kinds, and general illiteracy ; and these 
 
 formed the causes of a resort to common, in preference to 
 
 personal, action. 
 
 Again, membership of a Gild produced a natural bond of 
 
 affection and confidence on the part of each man toward his 
 
 fellows ; and where there were no representatives he turned, as 
 
 a matter of course, to the corporate and perpetual institution
 
 PREFACE. 1 5 
 
 whereto he had belongetl during hfe, and perhaps his father 
 before him, and saw in it the means of transmitting his name 
 and securing the application of his property to its appointeil 
 objects. 
 Its benefits. The tie thus created gave faciHties, keenly appre- 
 ciable in those days, for commercial and private intercourse ; 
 and when enfranchisement and endowment were Q-raduallv 
 conferred on the Companies, there was a tolerably efficient 
 machinery for keeping at a distance the domestic, and still 
 more the foreign, interloper. The leagues or trades' unions 
 were offensi\'e as well as defensive, and for a lonsf season 
 acted their part, and operated beneficially. Their original role 
 is mere matter of history. Our country has left them in this 
 sense behind, and has laid down other lines for all of us. 
 The rest of the world retains its old traditions, and has to 
 consider whether it will hereafter follow our leadership. But 
 the Gilds stand on an equally solid, though on a different, 
 basis as part of our polity and life ; and the trades have 
 found other methods of promoting their interests and vindi- 
 cating their pretensions, 
 isaiancin" 'Wx^ means of self-defence which this species of 
 
 drawbacks. combination supplied were of course at the best 
 very inadequate to resist forcible encroachment and spoliation. 
 Union in some shape was indispensable from causes which 
 have been explained ; and it followed that, in unsettled times 
 under an arbitrary monarchical government, the very machinerv 
 and fellowship which on so many accounts proved a source of 
 strength and success was apt, at critical conjunctures, to prove 
 an element of danger and weakness. When the Crown learned 
 the easy lesson of treating the Gilds as milch kine, bodies were 
 found to be more vulnerable than individuals ; and our king-s 
 were wholly exempt from scruple when money was required, 
 and unblushingly ignored the charters which they or their
 
 1 6 PREFACE. 
 
 lawful predecessors had granted, and for which pecuniary con- 
 sideration had been obtained. No pirate or sharper was more 
 callous, more mean, and more cruel than sacred majesties of 
 bygone clays ; and among them the " Merry Monarch " and his 
 brother may be probably regarded as ha\'ing borne the bell. 
 
 The two chief impediments to the progress and welfare of 
 the Gilds, as the trade and wealth of the country developed in 
 the time of Elizabeth, were indeed the extortions of the Crown 
 and Court, in the shape of benevolences, loans, and disbursements 
 for unprofitable speculations, on the one hand, and on the other 
 the system of patents and monopolies, which, during the rule 
 of the heartless, profligate, and venal Stuarts, crippled legiti- 
 mate commerce. No form or channel of plunder escaped the 
 harpies who surrounded the throne, and who usually farmed 
 to others their share of the prey. 
 
 Foreign source 4- The rise of a vast number of civic and provincial 
 associations, with their subsequent partial evolution 
 into chartered Gilds, was probably due to continental influence 
 and example, more particularly to the precedents set in the 
 Low Countries and in Italy, with which the relationship of 
 our English traders was, from a very remote epoch, constant 
 and extensive. With a view to the establishment of commercial 
 industries and entrepots, involving unavoidable and large pecu- 
 niary risk, the primary need of union and protection was very 
 soon discerned. The merchants, who transacted their affairs 
 in what was then the business centre, the neighbourhood of 
 Thames Street and East Cheap, were in many cases not even 
 denizens, but T^rench, Italian, Dutch, or German settlers, Jews 
 included, among us ; and those who were English by birthright 
 claimed by the nature of their employments an exemption from 
 the various feudal services imposed on ordinary civilians in the 
 Middle Ages. They therefore necessarily clustered in those
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 places which were suitable, at once by position and privileges, 
 to their wants and callings, and they thus constituted through- 
 out the free ports of the kingdom a vast community, independent 
 of military and other kindred obligations, and internally go- 
 verned by tlicir own ordinances. 
 The ancient .\,-j interesting and iirofitable subject for investi- 
 
 trading Com- *^ ' -' 
 
 panies. gation and stud\- would be the relationship between 
 
 the Gilds, at and long after their commencement, and those 
 other commercial unions which monopolized the import and 
 export trades, and constituted an indispensable adjunct to the 
 manufacturers and salesmen at home. All these associations, 
 such as the Easterlings of the so-called Steelyard in Thames 
 Street, the Hanse colony in Bishopsgate, the Merchants of the 
 Staple, the Merchants Adventurers, and others which we have 
 elsewhere enumerated, had their headquarters in the heart of 
 the City proper. The \-icinity of the river side was a great 
 centre of activity ; Billingsgate is mentioned as far back as 
 1299 as a point whence goods were shipped abroad; Oueen- 
 hithe was another lading and landing stage ; and it was doubt- 
 less through the foreign and English mercantile communities, 
 whose vessels touched at all then known or frequented ports, 
 that the London Gilds, as a rule, engaged in speculative enter- 
 prises, rather than deal in their own bottoms with distant 
 countries. A knowledge of foreign navigation and languages 
 conferred in this respect an advantage on the Easterlings and 
 their successors, who were formerly, to a large extent, the 
 proprietors of the "petty traffickers" and "rich burghers of 
 the flood." 
 
 London life. The more special student of this one side or aspect 
 of earlier London life rises from his task with a very powerful 
 impression of the vast multiplicity and complication of inter- 
 ests, which in bygone days perpetually engaged the attention of 
 the municipal government, and rendered the conduct oi public 
 
 c.c. 3
 
 1 8 PREFACE. 
 
 affairs infinitely more onerous and delicate than at present, 
 when changes in the law, in the structural condition of the 
 metropolis, and in the habits of the people, have done so much 
 to improve and simplify the working machinery, and of course 
 to lighten the responsibilities of the Corporation. The pulse 
 of London cannot have beaten less quickly and proudly, but it 
 was differently regulated. 
 Anewerain With the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377) a 
 
 our commer- 
 cial history. Very marked impulse was given to our commerce, 
 
 and the necessity for organizing on a clearer and firmer basis 
 
 the existing trading fraternities followed as an inevitable con- 
 
 .sequence. Between the opening and close of that long reign 
 
 an immense improvement and e.xpansion were witnessed in all 
 
 branches of manufacture and industry. 
 
 Foreign wars J,- jg ^ot difficult to -See how the rise and 
 
 beneficial to 
 
 the Gilds. consolidation of the Gilds, as part of a great 
 municipal system, were largely aided by the feebleness of the 
 Crown as a central executive authority, arising, through the 
 reigns of the Plantagenet kings, from their constant habit of 
 changing their headquarters, and from their long series of 
 foreign wars. 
 
 Enfranchise- T^^'^e successive enfranchisement of the trades of 
 
 ment of the Loudon, with the concession in due course of /;/- 
 
 London 
 
 trades. spcxiiiius or new charters, is found to run parallel 
 with the chronic financial embarrassment of the Crown through 
 misgovernment or through lavish expenditure on military equip- 
 ments ; and the City became, and remained during centuries, 
 when all other channels had failed, the great resource of 
 monarchs in straits. From a very early date, the Corporation 
 and Gilds adopted the principle of receiving security in some 
 shape or other for money lent or given ; and it would be an 
 enormous total, if we could put down on paper the aggregate 
 cost to London from first to last of its privileges and property.
 
 PREFACE. 19 
 
 Obscurity of ^'^ such associations as those which we are con- 
 
 origin. sidering and describing have a natural difficulty in 
 
 tracing their primary starting-time and the exact circumstances 
 which first gave them distinct form and being. Their obscurity 
 and insignificance during the earlier stages of development, 
 and their peaceful employment within a limited area, help 
 to account for the absence of records of their transactions 
 and progress, till they arise to our notice as institutions pro- 
 fessedly of lengthened standing and prescriptive rank. Their 
 establishment "out of memory" was almost invariably 
 accepted as a ground for the eventual concession of a charter 
 or letters patent ; the expression signified the inability of tin- 
 applicants to adduce precise legal evidence of their title beyond 
 common tradition and report, the very vagueness of which had 
 its virtue. 
 
 Constitution 5' ^he normal constitution of a Livery Gild 
 
 oftiieGiki. embraces a Master, Wardens, a Court of Assist- 
 ants, a Livery, and the general body of Freemen. To them 
 used to be added the Apprentices, making altogether six grades. 
 The IVL\STER was originally nothing more than the Master 
 or Upper Warden ; and the Fishmongers and Goldsmiths still 
 retain this notion or principle, and term their chief executive 
 officer Prime Wai'dcii. The Cooks' charter gave them two 
 masters. The Vintners long remained without one, and were 
 governed by four Wardens : the Upper and Junior, the Renter 
 and the Stoan, Wardens. Some Companies have only three, 
 some only two, of these functionaries. 
 
 The Assistants derive their appellation from their original 
 and existing duty as an auxiliary committee to co-operate with 
 the Wardens. 
 
 The LiVERV is so called from the ancient practice of j)eri- 
 odical delivery of clothing to this body. In some cases th(; 
 junior members are called Bachelors.
 
 20 TREFACE. 
 
 The ^^^ general or, as they are designated in the 
 
 Yeomanry. Clothworkcrs' Gild, diffusivc body of freemen are 
 otherwise known as the Yeomanry or Coiiiiuonalty, and 
 occasionally succeeded in putting sufficient pressure on the 
 Court to obtain independent Wardens for the management of 
 all minor points of detail and discipline. But the experiment 
 was rarely of long duration. 
 
 Although the freedom or yeomanry in many cases formed 
 in course of time a numerous body, and preponderated in e.xtent 
 over the rest of the Gild, it was in its practical origin, if not in 
 the spirit of the movement, an outlying portion of the semi- 
 religious, semi-commercial congregation, not only destitute of 
 executive authority, but unentided to vesture ; and the express 
 mention in several of the charters and in all the Ordinances of 
 these brotherhoods of the livery of clothing, and the emphasis 
 laid on its pattern and colours, with the very particular reference 
 to it in an ancient chronicle of the reign of Edward II. as 
 marking an era in the history and progress of the Gilds, satisfy 
 us that it was regarded by the leading members alike as a 
 distinctive emblem and as a constitutional boundary. The 
 apparel was an article of faith and a token of caste ; it at once 
 served as an element of union and a medium of control. Those 
 outside the clothing might by election be lifted up into it, 
 but the recruiting process was slow and limited ; and we see 
 that in some of the larger Companies the yeomanry became 
 so much an independent class, that they sought to have their 
 own separate administrative officers, and sometimes proved so 
 grave a source of inconvenience and discomfort to their oli- 
 garchical superiors, that the latter mooted the expediency of a 
 thorough and permanent severance. 
 .Source of These remarks may amount to another mode of 
 
 their . 
 
 discontent. Saying that at a very early stage m the annals and 
 career of the Gilds an attentive observer might have detected
 
 PREFACE. 2 I 
 
 an inhereat tendency on their part to diverge from their original 
 gospel and role, and, whereas the incidence of apprenticeship 
 was the very essence and foundation of their being, to develop 
 a cliental and charitable principle into a sub-municipal auto- 
 cracy, and to spurn, when its support was no longer needed, 
 the ladder by which they had climbed to power. 
 A plea for the At the Same time we must keep in sight the 
 
 governing ^ '-' 
 
 bodies. growing changes in social feeling and mercantile 
 
 life, which tended, as years [)assed, to loosen the old bond 
 between the class to which the upper sections of the Gilds 
 belonged and that from which the yeomanry sprang ; and 
 the progress of legislation, following the impulse of more 
 modern thought, favoured the revolt of the inferior and less 
 privileged branches of each of these Companies from a type 
 of jurisdiction, which was apt to survive longer among such 
 as exercised than among such as were asked to obey it. 
 Patrimony Again, the admittance of females or sisters to 
 
 "eoiis\o"the ^^ freedom, and to succession by patrimony, had 
 yeomanry. ^ natural tendency to deprive of its faculty of 
 coherence and organization a body incessantly and progres- 
 sively increasing by the ordinary law of nature, and to trans- 
 form the yeomanry of both se.\es into a body of such incalcu- 
 lable dimensions, that the Company itself was unable to furnish 
 e.xact figures. It is not extraordinary that an element in the 
 constitution, so incompact and unwieldy, parted with its signi- 
 ficance and weight, and resolved itself into a passive object of 
 nominal membership and charitable relief. 
 
 y[,g 6. The letters patent, licences, and charters 
 
 Ordinances. obtained by the Gilds were as between them and 
 
 the Crown. But, independently of them, for the due control 
 
 of their internal affairs and the protection of their class or 
 
 corporate interests, Ordinances invariably followed at a shorter
 
 2 2 PREFACE. 
 
 or longer inter\al, and were periodically renewed. These 
 regulations were originally framed by the Associations on their 
 own authority ; but we shall see that this practice grew in- 
 convenient and invidious, owing to clauses being inserted 
 contrary to the public welfare, and that the sanction of the 
 Court of Aldermen was made imperative. This precaution, 
 however, notwithstanding, several statutes, commencing with 15 
 Henry VI., restrained the governing bodies under penalties 
 from making any rules in diminution of the royal preroga- 
 tive or against the common profit of the people. 
 , . . The exemption from the Statute of Mortmain, 
 
 Licences m i 
 
 Mortmain. which fomis a clause, in the majority of instances, 
 in the charters, and variously occurs with and without a limit, or 
 with a progressive power in successive grants, could only apply 
 to freehold lands not subject to military service ; but the prin- 
 cipal bequests or devises of this character occurred at a period 
 when the feudal system had been rela.\ed, the early acquisitions 
 being almost e.xclusively within the confines of the City, and 
 beingv.independent of such obligations. The Gilds were dis- 
 qualified from taking copyholds, or even customary freeholds, 
 where there was a reserved rent of any kind, although at the 
 Reformation the Crown In some cases sold or handed back 
 their property to these Corporations at precisely such a rent 
 over and above the purchase-money. On the other hand, the 
 Colet estate at Stepney, being copyhold, the heirs successfully 
 contested the title of the Mercers to it ; and It was ultimately 
 re-conveyed to the Company by a circuitous process and, no 
 doubt, at considerable e.xpense. 
 The Power The power of Search, which was an almost in- 
 
 of Search. variable incidence of the grant of Ordinances even 
 to an unchartered brotherhood, though of questionable legality, 
 led. In cases of disco\-ery of Improper practices, to the pre- 
 sentment of the offence by the overseers to the Mayor's Court,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and to the issue oi a smnnions to atteiul in answer. 'I"he 
 faculty dill not generally extend farther than the freedom, but 
 in a few exceptional cases it was general ; while, on the con- 
 trary, some of the Companies never possessed it in any 
 measure. It naturally differt^d in its scope according to thi- 
 residential and other features of the craft ; but it was, as ma\' 
 be readily concei\ed, an outgrowth from the jjrimitive and 
 long-continued practice of operatives carrying on their work 
 within a certain radius in their own homes, as we have seen 
 in our time the weavers do both in London and the provinces. 
 The visitin"' duties or surveillance of the Wardens of the Gild 
 were superseded, when home-labour gave place by degrees to 
 factories and sheds. 
 
 Feudalism. The exoneration from ordinary feudal services was 
 qualified and more than balanced by various forms of commuta- 
 tion, both municipal and imperial. The Plantagenets, to a 
 certain extent, and after them in heavier measure the Tudors 
 and Stuarts, considered that the Corporation and Companies 
 were banks, on which they might draw at will. It was possible, 
 while the system prevailed, to enforce the performance of cer- 
 tain duties as an equivalent for the tenure of property ; but the 
 City, which claimed the right of holding in free burgage, was 
 viewed, as the wealth of its denizens became conspicuous, as 
 a collateral factor of special value in another direction, and as 
 peculiarly amenable to pressure from the immense stake which 
 it held under the sufferance of an arbitrary monarchy. 
 
 The municipality and its adjuncts, however, if they did not 
 discharge the duties of subjects resident outside the boundaries 
 in a direct and personal manner, did not escape even this kind 
 of tribute ; for it was levied in the shape of periodical requisi- 
 tions from the sovereign for the equipment and support of a 
 quota of soldiers, and even of ships and seamen, on all emer- 
 gencies. At home, so to speak, in addition to normal burdens.
 
 24 PREFACE. 
 
 the Gilds were taxed from a very remote date for the purpose 
 of laying up stores of grain against a bad harvest, and of 
 husbanding coal between Lady Day and Michaelmas, in order 
 to re-sell it to the poor of the City at a loss ; while several, 
 if not all, had calls made upon them to take their turns in 
 pro\-iding the armed watches for the respective gates. The 
 Ironmongers and others, as we shall find, maintained their own 
 armoury chiefly on this account. 
 
 III. 
 
 Theword ^^'^^ Ordinary orthography of the term myslery 
 
 imstciy. jg calculated to favour an erroneous impression on 
 the part of those who do not remember that the true wortl 
 is mistery, the old French luaistrc and niaistric havinc been 
 translated indifferently into English master and mister, mastery 
 or mistery. Mistery, mester, maistrie, are all closely allied to 
 mestier or nu'tier, a trade. These trading unions were in fact 
 expert craftsmen, and were totally distinct from the mysteries 
 of the ancients and of the mediaeval period. The enrolment of 
 them under the tutelary patronage of the Saviour, the Virgin, 
 or a saint, was a common form of sanction and security from 
 the earliest period, and one which has not yet, in the eyes of 
 some, parted with its significance. Commercial and religious 
 life was bound up together in a far greater degree among oin- 
 forefathers ; and it was unusual to undertake transactions or to 
 decide on any measure without tlie presumed approbation of 
 the Unseen. We note how vestiges of this feeling linger in 
 the municipal habit of assembling in prayer prior to certain 
 electoral ceremonies. 
 
 Apparel. The distinctive apparel of tlie Gilds, to which 
 Chaucer refers in a familiar }>assage, was a symbolism pic- 
 turesquely characteristic of tlie old time, when all arrangements
 
 PREFACE 2 5 
 
 were in keeping with the conservatixe sentiment discernible 
 throughout the entire costtimt; ol tliese commercial ])i'<)ther- 
 hoods. The dress tornied part ot the prevailing spirit of free- 
 masonry, which dictated a rigid adherence to external insignia 
 as much as to other prescribed or customary usages. A \intner 
 did not presume to wear the li\-ery of a grocer, or a freeman 
 of a warden, any more than either ventured to infringe the 
 ordinances of his cratt, or to cross the lines of his i:harter. 
 The vesture was part of the constitution of the Gild, the out- 
 ward and visible sign of membership and graduated dignity ; 
 nor, when we find two of these Cor])()rations exchanging 
 vestures on sjjecial occasions and to a limited extent, was it 
 other than a token of that fraternal reciprocity and affection 
 which knit yet more closely the b(jnd between these societies 
 by one of the most sacred of trusts and most exalted of privi- 
 leges, a community of garb .'' 
 
 The language of many ancient documents corroborates the 
 view that the mere uniformity of garb or vesture which con- 
 ferred on the Gilds the designation of Livery Companies may 
 be taken to have an underlying religious significance, and to 
 have been, perhaps unconsciously and intuitively, adopted in 
 imitation of the practice of monastic bodies, with the modifica- 
 tion suitable to groups of laymen dedicating themselves only 
 in part to the service of God. At the same time, it is more 
 than doubtful whether in their inception the Companies, as 
 voluntary societies, adopted such a method of distinguishing 
 themselves from the ordinary commimity and from each other. 
 In the oritiinal o-rants there is no reference to them under the 
 style of Livery Companies ; but it is on record that the jiractice 
 of attiring themselves similarly began to gain favour even so 
 far back as the reign of Edward II. Such external symbols 
 of identity have become superfluous; yet the state of society 
 and education once and long rendered them essential. 
 
 c.c. 4
 
 2 6 PREFACE. 
 
 Amalgamating A\^hen the first or initial stage had been reached 
 
 movement. ^^.^j completed by the embodiment of the industrial 
 world of London City under certain divisions, each governed 
 and fortified by its own charter or bye-laws, or both, a second 
 process is found to have gradually matured and accrued, by 
 which the several branches of a department of business were 
 consolidated in one great executive and municipal integer, and 
 the conduct of the affairs was at once rendered less costly and 
 more effective. 
 
 Thus the Armourers knit together in a single fraternity the 
 minor contributory crafts, such as the Bladesmiths on the one 
 hand and on the other the Braziers and Potters ; the Shearmen 
 and Fullers reconstituted themselves under the name of Cloth- 
 workers ; the Marblers and Lapidaries on the one hand and the 
 Paviours on the other were lost in the Masons ; the Sheathers, 
 if not the Furbishers, became incorporated with the Cutlers, the 
 Spurriers with the Loriners, the Silkmen with the Mercers, the 
 Tawyers and White Tawyers with the Skinners or Curriers, 
 the Stringers with the Bowyers ; while the Drapers or 
 Haberdashers took over, so to speak, the Hosiers, Hatters, 
 Cappers, and Brace-makers. The Grocers gradually absorbed, 
 so far as independent concerted action went, the group of 
 subsidiary interconnected industries, originally represented and 
 protected by the Pepperers, the Spicers, the .Soap-makers, the 
 Starch-makers, the Cheese and Butter-mongers, the Sugar- 
 bakers, and the Druofgfists. The last severed themselves in 
 1617 under the title of Apothecaries, and during a long period 
 monopolized the trade in tea, coffee, and other dear speciali- 
 ties, as they continued in certain places abroad to do down 
 to a recent date. But of course no single craft, even in its 
 amplified shape, undertook either the manufacture or sale of 
 articles outside its legitimate province, except the Haberdasher 
 and Grocer, whose shops became general emporia, even in
 
 PREFACE. 27 
 
 Plantagenet days, for all sorts of minor miscellaneous wares, 
 and the Upholder, who was ex officio a second-hantl dealer in 
 the earlier stage, according to the testimony of Stow. 
 Its advantages. The simplification antl econcjmy of management and 
 control, where the interests concerned were sufficiently cognate 
 to be capable ot becoming or being made common, naturally 
 recommended themselves to communities forced to stand for 
 ever on their defence, and exposed to all kinds of vexatious 
 requisitions and embarrassing ordinances. Exj^erience must 
 have shown them their chronic liability, under an arbitrary 
 government and a somewhat vacillating and timid municipal 
 system, to oppression, impoverishment, and even ruin, and the 
 urgent need for consolidation and unity. 
 
 Incorporation. The final consummation was the evolutionary deve- 
 lopment of limited survivals into corporate bodies, more or less 
 removed from their primitive functions and traditions by the 
 force of unfore-seen circumstances, which launched them on a 
 new career, as beneficiaries in fee or trust under numberless 
 wills, as well as by a happy concurrence of events, and which 
 left it optional on their part whether they would sever them- 
 .selves from their ancient callings and employments or otherwise. 
 The majority, as we know, sooner or later elected to dissolve 
 old ties, and to enter upon a new life, in which the wealth, 
 fortuitously accumulated bv vast internal chang-es in a verv 
 narrow area, and by judicious husbandry, experienced redistri- 
 bution in a variety of ways, mainly equitable and benevolent. 
 A few of the Gilds, on the contrary, and most notably the Cloth- 
 workers, have not deserted their former associations, and 
 appropriate princely sums to the advancement of the industry 
 over which they once exclusively presided. This Company 
 stands in the peculiarly honourable and special position of 
 having, irrespectively of its own direct pecuniary interests, 
 stepped forward as the patron and friend of the Yorkshire
 
 2 8 PREFACE. 
 
 wool and cloth trade, rather than as having merely fostered 
 it from local inducements. 
 
 „., ,., . 7. Circumstances of a ijolitical character in i.ict 
 
 The Lister ' 1 
 
 rianiation. combined, after a while, to impart to these civic 
 organizations far more imjjortant functions than those with 
 which they at the outset charged themselves. For not only 
 the spirit of commercial and maritime adventure afforded scope 
 for the employment of capital, but the transfers of landed 
 estates, especially in the north of Ireland, in Londonderry and 
 Coleralne, during the reign of James I., formed an outlet for 
 money and a field for speculation which proved in the end 
 fairly satisfactory, but lay long dormant and unprofitable. 
 
 Origin ufihe As far back as 1608, James I. and his advisers, 
 
 having to deal with the question of settling or 
 colonizing the counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Coleraine, Done- 
 gal, Fermanagh, and Cavan, which formed the theatre in the 
 latter part of the reign of Elizabeth of a rebellion against the 
 English Crown on the part of certain prominent and powerful 
 Irish noblemen or chieftains, had published a schedule of orders 
 and conditions to be observed by the undertakers, as well as 
 a statement of the nature of the property to be allotted. The 
 pamphlet was for general circulation, and originally all his 
 majesty's subjects were at liberty to enter into the scheme. 
 .Several offers were made in consequence by private persons ; 
 but the king changed his purjiose so far as to decide upon seek- 
 ing to persuade the City of London to embrace the project, 
 and caused a second statement to be prepared for this special 
 purpose, under the title of " Motives and Reasons to induce the 
 City to Undertake the Plantation in the North of Ireland." 
 
 This counter-proposal was at first rejected ; but as James 
 proved importunate, the twelve great Companies were invited 
 to select a competent number of their most substantial members,
 
 TREFACE. 
 
 each choosing four persons, to deliberate on tlie question, ami 
 report their views to the king in writing. There was still 
 considerable backwardness in entertaining the question ; com- 
 mittees were formed, and visited Ireland to jutlge the value 
 of the speculation on the spot ; certain interrogatories were 
 addressed to the Lord Deputy in relation to the estimated 
 outlay and profit ; and the end was, that on January 28, 
 1609-10, a preliminary contract was signed in London, and 
 was read at Guildhall on the 30th. 
 
 At the outset, it was arranged that the Plantation should be 
 administered by a Governor, Deputy-governor, and twenty-four 
 Assistants, following the lines of the Gilds ; that the Recorder 
 and five of the Aldermen of London for the time being should 
 be ex officio members of the court ; and that the Deputy-gox^er- 
 nor and the remainder of the court should be free of the City. 
 Change of This was the body subsequently known as the 
 
 Plan. The . , „ . 
 
 Irish Society. Irish Society. For some time it carried on the 
 management of the estate with funds supplied by the several 
 Companies interested ; but there seems to have been some 
 difficulty, which led to the transfer of the property in 161 3 to 
 the Companies and the concession of a charter. Under this 
 fresh departure all the moneys were to be divided into twelve 
 portions ; each Company was to represent a portion, and if so 
 desired might associate with it one or more of the minor 
 Companies, the interest being reckoned proportionably ; and a 
 new survey of the lands was to be undertaken, with a view to 
 equalizing the twelve shares as nearly as possible. For these 
 shares the Companies drew lots. 
 Undivided But a residue of the estate, having been pro- 
 
 nounced not easily apportionable, was never vested 
 in the Companies, and remained under the control of the Irish 
 Society for their common and several benefit. Under the 
 charter of 161 3 this body received a licence to hold and grant
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 lands and hereditaments, and was described as the " Society of 
 the Governor and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation 
 in Ulster within the Realm of Ireland." The territory over 
 which its jurisdiction extended was erected into a new and 
 independent county of Londonderry. 
 
 Two vears later (September ^o, 1615) the king, 
 
 Licence m ' \ r ~j -i / o 
 
 Mortmain. j^y letters patent, granted the Society and the 
 Companies a licence in mortmain, that the latter might be 
 encouraged to proceed and finish the Plantation, and in future 
 time reap some gain and benefit from their trouble and expense. 
 
 Value and The lands thus transferred to the twelve 
 
 ^monev! Livery Gilds, were estimated to produce at the 
 time (160S-15) 1,800/. a year. The price was 60,000/. = 5,000/. 
 for each subscriber, or about twenty-nine years' purchase. 
 Revocation of The unprincipled and cowardly despotism of the 
 Star Chamber. Stuarts was exemplified in the decree of the Star 
 Chamber which repudiated and annulled the charter of 161 5. 
 and necessarily crippled the power of the proprietors, until 
 the act was rescinded as unlawful and unjust by the Long 
 Parliament in 1641. 
 
 ,, , ,. On March 24, i6s6, the grant was restored by 
 
 Restoration f j ' & J 
 
 by Cromwell. letters patent of the Protector Cromwell, and the 
 Companies' estates were re-conveyed to them by the Society. 
 The latter, shortly after the Restoration, was re- incorporated, 
 with another re-grant of the property to the several feoffees 
 (April 10, 1662). 
 
 Later history. Since that time, such Companies as have not 
 parted with them have remained in peaceful enjoyment of 
 their possessions, which, however, have in no case been, on 
 the whole, very advantageous or profitable, owing to the 
 immense expenses incurred in litigation and improvements. 
 The Merchant Tavlors, who let their Irish venture go, it 
 appears, in 1727, stood alone, we believe, in subscribing for
 
 I'REFACE. 3 1 
 
 one full manor and a portion of anolhcr. 'I'htj Clothworkers 
 sold their Irish property for 150,000/., and the Grocers for 
 about the same amount, redemption of tithes inclusive. The 
 Ironmongers have quite recently jiarted with theirs under less 
 advantageous conditions. 
 
 „, In several cases, the detachment of sub-shares 
 
 The 
 
 Sub-shares. made the original outlay less onerous to the great 
 Companies ; but when they disposed of their possessions at a 
 fortunate juncture, they suffered through the natural claim of 
 the smaller contributories to participate proportionably in the 
 advantages of the sale. 
 
 Of all the Companies, even after reckoning the drawback of 
 40,000/. paid over to the Stationers to e.xtinguish their claim 
 and the Girdlers' share, the Skinners seem to have succeeded 
 best in turning the Ulster speculation to good account, judging 
 from the increase in the rents returned in 1882. This may 
 have arisen from the Company enjoying the benefit of having 
 had in its members many practical surveyors, who visited the 
 domain personally. But the Salters also found it possible and 
 expedient to buy out the Dyers and the Saddlers for 83,000/. 
 and to expend a very large sum in improvements. These, with 
 the Mercers, are almost the only survivals of the Ulster Planta- 
 tion as it was originally constituted and apportioned. 
 
 Litigation. Owing to litigation, very little has been received by 
 the Companies from the surplus undivided property retained in 
 trust by the Irish Society, comprising portions of the towns of 
 Londonderry and Coleraine, woods, fisheries, ferries, and waste. 
 The venture, from which in some respects the Companies 
 would have done well to have kept aloof, agreeably to their 
 first determination, continued to afford them ground for anxiety 
 and a constant outlet for money, until, as we have said, some of 
 them parted with their shares under fairly auspicious conditions, 
 and others succeeded in rendering the speculation at length
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 reproductive, while at least in one instance the opportunity 
 was missed, and the sale was effected on less fa\-ourable terms. 
 
 Difference 
 between the 
 
 8. We have described these Gilds as Mutual 
 
 ,..,, , , Benefit associations, at first voluntarv, then 
 
 (lUd and the ' 
 
 T rades'Union. governed by Wardens and a code of bye-laws alike 
 approved by the Corporation, and eventually established under 
 the protection and control of a charter. But while they 
 answered in some respects to the modern trades' union, in 
 two important particulars they differed from it, inasmuch as they 
 did not presume to regulate the hours or price of labour, and 
 had a restricted jurisdiction over the selling scale of com- 
 modities, in which they were interested as manufacturers or 
 retailers. There they were bound by the law, as interpreted 
 by acts of Parliament, by royal proclamation, or by civic usage. 
 
 w^ages. As regarded wages in very early times (1350), the 
 
 masons, carpenters, and plaisterers appear to have stood on 
 the same footing, and to have had from ^d. to bd. a day, with- 
 out food, according to the season ; the tilers earned from 4^^/. 
 to '^\d. ; and the ordinary labourer 3^/. This scale was laid 
 down by the Mayor, and any one not observing it was liable 
 to a penalty of \os. 
 
 PiiiraUty. Originally persons followed more than one trade, 
 or changed their line of business. In 1402, Thomas Dufhous, 
 brewer, was admitted of the fellowship of Fishmongers, on the 
 p-round that he had lonof followed the latter trade, and was 
 known for a reputable citizen. Some few years later, in 14 16, 
 Alderman Richard Merlawe, who represented that he had for 
 some time past belonged to the two trades of ironmongery 
 and fishmongery, and had taken livery or vesture of both 
 crafts, now, in accordance with a new ordinance of the Mayor 
 and Aldermen, that no one should be of more than a single 
 fraternity, elected and prayed to be of the Fishmongers' bro-
 
 I'REFACE. 
 
 therhood alone, and was therefore admitteil to the freedom 
 and vesture or Livery of the same. 
 
 Ailmittance of I"'>-"^ the practice of admitting other than mem- 
 
 . trangers. l^^^i-cj of the trade which the Company represented 
 was of very early date, even among some of the greater dilds ; 
 and the persons so Introduced were strangers as well as fol- 
 lowers of different vocations. This class of freemen was 
 practically honorary, or at all events outside the scheme ; and 
 as this departure from the original design is shown by records 
 to go back to the first half of the fifteenth century, we seem 
 to be entitled to presume that a more ambitious programme 
 and basis struck the municipal authorities as practicable and 
 expedient, even within the Plantagenet epoch, and that from 
 what had been first a purely commercial idea of a rather 
 humble type evolved in process of time one of the most opu- 
 lent, infiuentlal, and enduring political federations In the world. 
 The Gild the The source and explanation of the moneys and 
 
 forerunner of . i ^ , /-^-i i i • i i 
 
 the Poorhouse properties leit to the Gilds to charitable uses are 
 and Hospital. obvIously to be found in the deficiency of our early 
 municipal institutions and the absence of any system of poor 
 relief. At the time when many of the benefactions had been 
 devi.sed to these fraternities, even the hospitals, such as Beth- 
 lehem and Bartholomew's, which afterward sheltered the lower 
 grades of vagrant and beggar, and gave them temporary aid or 
 sustenance, were neither numerous nor efficient for the purpose ; 
 and of accommodation and help for persons of both sexes in a 
 somewhat more reputable sphere there was an absolute want. 
 Reasons for The financial and .social aggrandisement of many 
 
 confidence _, . . 
 
 in it. of the Companies, and their consequent divergence 
 
 from their original raisoii ifclrc. may be readily traced to the 
 development ot a feeling on the part of citizens, and even 
 strangers, in the old state of the laws affecting benefactions 
 and charities, that these institutions formed the safest deposl- 
 c.c. ::
 
 34 PREFACE. 
 
 tories for money left in trust or otherwise for superstitious, 
 eleemosynary, and educational purposes. There were no bodies 
 formerly existing, when nearly all the Gilds were successively 
 established, so well calculated to administer and protect funds 
 lodged in their hands for periodical distribution and specific 
 benevolence ; and this was as much the case in the provinces 
 as in the metropolis, and without the City as within its confines. 
 Acquisition It was not from the amount in specie, however, 
 
 of real 
 
 properly. that the Gilds derived their chief advantage, but 
 from lands and tenements of small worth at the period, and 
 which it required the lapse of centuries and patient endurance 
 of successive vicissitudes and reverses to ripen into what they 
 appear to us all in modern balance-sheets. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Departure ^^^^ ^^^ that it is only those Companies which 
 
 lom ongma succeeded in removing^ themselves to a long dis- 
 
 design and o o 
 
 professions. tance from their original ro/c as trade guarantee and 
 protection societies, and in holding their ground in the presence 
 and spite of all imaginable difficulties and discouragements, 
 that remain to-day in the foremost rank. The rest have to 
 be .satisfied with a secondary position and influence ; and a few 
 have, even within a measurable period, suffered extinction. 
 The conditions of apprenticeship and commercial supervision, 
 under which they first rose, have gradually undergone so 
 organic a change, that these institutions could not possibly pre- 
 serve much vitality or general usefulness in adhering to the 
 primitive lines ; and it would not be difficult, of course, to point 
 out some which depend for their survivorship on one or two 
 modest rentals, on a scanty revenue arising from fees and fines, 
 or even on private subscriptions. 
 
 Exceptional While they yet preserved their ancient attributes, 
 
 success of ....... 
 
 certain bodies, it was thosc bodies which ministered to the em-
 
 I'KEI'ACE. 
 
 35 
 
 bellishment of the person and to female vanity which tlie most 
 signally prospered. The Mercers, the Drapers, the Merchant 
 Taylors, the Cioldsmiths, the Cloth-workers, the Skinners, the 
 Haberdashers survived and overcame the most stui)endous re- 
 verses, and remained possessed of great wealth. Then, again, 
 the Grocers represent a federation of trades, most of which 
 have always been highly remunerative, appealing to manifold 
 daily requirements ; and finally, by way of example, the l*"ish- 
 mongers, trafficking during centuries, even before they were 
 incorporated, in an industry of a national character, when our 
 diet was more modified than at [)resent by religious observ- 
 ances, found themselves, in the middle of the fourteenth 
 century, second only to the Mercers in opulence and con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Sugoested Tlic position ot sucli of the minor Companies 
 
 Consoiidauon ^^ ^j^ ^^^ possess a place of meetino; and business 
 
 of the minor ^ ^ ^ 
 
 Compnnies. jg sufficiently unfortuuate and unsatisfactory to 
 warrant a respectful suggestion that some concerted move- 
 ment might be made by them for forming a federal union f(jr 
 official and representative purposes, and of employing a Com- 
 mon Clerk, who should be a gentleman capable, by his train- 
 ing, knowledge, and experience, of managing their affairs and 
 protecting their interests. 
 
 The present executive officers of a few of these smaller cor- 
 porations form a painful and striking contrast to the urbane and 
 straightforward attitude of the greater, and of many indeed of 
 the less leading, Companies. These gentlemen may have 
 nothing to communicate ; but their address is apt to foster a 
 suspicion that they have something to conceal. 
 
 Assuming that no such combination is possible, however, the 
 next best plan will be for them to profit by the example 
 set by the preponderating majority (at least in weight and 
 consequence) of the Companies.
 
 36 PREFACE. 
 
 Ymiher g. The clecav of apprenticeship, and other fimda- 
 
 modification 
 
 possible. mental changes in commercial life and sentiment, 
 may ultimately lead to still further modifications of the Livery 
 Companies, and to a thorough divestment in many instances 
 of the attributes and claims with which they began and justified 
 their existence. Those which possess both trust and corporate 
 estates of considerable and permanent value will resolve them- 
 selves into virtual oligarchies of a philanthropic character, in 
 which even the Liveries will find their infiuence by little and 
 little abridged ; while such as have no estates, or property of 
 insignificant extent, will become little more than social clubs 
 under an old-fashioned name. Nor is it by any means 
 impossible that the Gilds may hereafter elect to dissolve, and 
 to divide their private possessions among the members, 
 leaving the Imperial Government to manage the remainder 
 at the public expense. We do not say that they would do 
 unwisely. 
 
 Suchacontin- ^^'^ do not allege or imply that the Gilds would 
 
 gency the out- Ji^ye acted more discreetly and advantap-eously by 
 
 come of exter- ' o / y 
 
 iiai changes. popularizing their constitutions in compliance with 
 modern ideas and demands. For the whole current of feelinof 
 and opinion has been diverted into new channels ; and their 
 sole resource and best defence are undoubtedly to be found 
 in the policy on which so many of them have entered, of 
 rendering their surplus revenues applicable to existing social 
 objects and needs on the latest lines. 
 
 TheCit ■'°- ^ majority of the Companies have been 
 
 Fieehokis. fortunate In the ownership of freeholds in the 
 City, which of late years have risen in value to a wholly 
 unforeseen extent, and have not always reached their climax. 
 This has undoubtedly been the leading element and cause of 
 prosperity, and of the power to enjoy and maintain it by
 
 I'KKFACE. 2>7 
 
 iKjbly and wisely sharing it with the community hy a fnmla- 
 mcntal revision of their traditional scheme ; so that, instead 
 of remaining in the background, and standing on their ancient 
 rights and prescriptive claims, they, or an overwhelming 
 majority of them, have come forward with unreserved frank- 
 ness, and have at once disarmed public hostility and jealousy, 
 and enlisted public confidence. 
 „, . For the acquisition of the greater part of thcnr 
 
 Their various i o i 
 
 sources. corporate possessions the Companies have been 
 indebted either to private generosity and good fellowship or 
 to the incessant political commotions and the vicissitudes of 
 private fortune in earlier times. Their estates, not merely in 
 London, but in the pro\'inces and out of England, were fre- 
 quendy obtained in mortgage or as security, at all events, for 
 pecuniary advances to the Crown ; and in many instances it 
 has only been within the last half or three-quarters of a 
 century that the expansion of value in civic property has com- 
 pensated the Gilds, which were strong enough to wait, for 
 long years of slender returns, unjust treatment, anci calamitous 
 reverses, and has at the same time enabled them to withstand 
 the depression in their agricultural rents, and to keep pace 
 with the age by constituting themselves promoters of almost 
 every department of humanizing and elevating science. 
 ,, , ,. r When we rerard the wholesale devastation 
 
 rrostration ol e> 
 
 strength by wrougrht h\ the Fire, the probable loss of private 
 
 the Fire of '^ ' ' '■ 
 
 1666. property by the members of Gilds, and the para- 
 
 lysis of business, side by side with the ruin of the corporate 
 estates and the absence of any system of insurance, we may 
 entertain a grave doubt whether such crushing reverses 
 could have been stemmed by any but bodies of loyal and 
 miited men, acting; tog-ether for the common honour and 
 welfare. Many of the less opulent fraternities probably never 
 rallied from the blow in any appreciable measure ; e\'en their
 
 o 
 
 8 PREFACE. 
 
 more fortunate brethren staggered under it, and felt its effects 
 for more than a century. It fell on the City, at a point of 
 time when that narrow area embraced well-nigh the whole 
 wealth of the kino'dom, with tenfold the force that it would 
 at present, when our industries, our commerce, our resources, 
 and our specie are more witlely distributed ; and what dismay 
 and disorganization a far less grave e\-ent of the same cha- 
 racter would create to-day ! 
 Causes uf During actual centuries the destinies of many of 
 
 leviva. j.j^^ Gilds trembled in the balance; and it was in 
 
 those instances where they were strong enough to hold their 
 ground, or rich enough to propitiate the party in power, that 
 they outlived the bad old times, and saw themselves and their 
 property at last, after the Revolution of 1688, comparatively out 
 of danger. Then, when they had been so fortunate or farseeing 
 as to secure estates in the City, came the slow but steady 
 reaction, the flow of the tide toward prosperity and opulence 
 which has never ebbed. Yet we must remember that they owed 
 their salvation and well-being to commercial principles totally 
 opposed to their own traditions and prejudices, to the o\-erthrow 
 of the archaic views of trade and industry in which they had 
 had their first rise and a long career of success, and to the 
 broadening of English policy and sentiment in every direction. 
 Whatever danger the City Companies may apprehend from 
 more advanced Radicalism, the diffusion and triumph of 
 Liberal ideas have made them what they are to-day, has 
 alone enabled the Mercers, the Grocers, the Merchant Taylors, 
 the Clothworkers, and the other societies which stand pre- 
 eminent, to publish magnificent statistics of revenue and still 
 prouder statistics of expenditure. The ratio of financial im- 
 portance is that of the ownership of freeholds within a radius 
 of two miles from the Mansion House. 
 
 It perhaps happened fortunately for the Gilds, that the
 
 PREFACE. 39 
 
 diversion of English commerce Irom its original channels and 
 centres did not occur until they had accjuired their estates, and 
 consolidated themselves, so as to be enabled to retain their 
 position and power when the agencies which had favouretl 
 and justifieci their institution were gradually superseded by 
 the organic change in the condition and relationships of the 
 English-speaking folk. 
 
 V. 
 
 The pre'ient The object of the present publication is to offer, 
 
 ""■'"■ in a tolerably succinct and compact shape, a com- 
 
 prehensive description ot all the Gilds, for the use and infor- 
 mation of those who cannot afford the leisure to study the 
 subject more at large ; and it is our wish to introduce as far 
 as possible illustrations of some of the most remarkable objects 
 in the hands of the Companies. 
 
 Its design. The undertaking has been planned on the basis and 
 principle of exhibiting to the fullest extent the public utility 
 and spirit of these ancient and interesting institutions, o( 
 which some trace back their origin almost to the r^Iiddle 
 Ages, and most of which existed for a considerable period 
 prior to their incorporation. 
 
 The Returns ^he absolute necessity for publishing, or pri- 
 
 or is 2. vately issuing, narratives of this description was 
 very sensibly affected by the parliamentary returns of 1880, 
 which, with very few exceptions, furnished to the Legislature 
 and the public a view of the origin, character and objects, 
 and income and expenditure, of the London Companies. But 
 a separate and independent record of each Gild remains the 
 sole means of laying before the public an adequately full and 
 clear view of its origin, benefactions, and conformity to 
 modern demands.
 
 40 PREFACE. 
 
 It is by no means the fact that, of the seventy- 
 accminisof ^^^ Companies, even a majority has hitherto 
 
 Existing 
 
 the 
 
 Companies. thought fit to follow the example set by the 
 Grocers, Haberdashers, Ironmongers, Leathersellers, Merchant 
 Taylors, Skinners, and Vintners, by putting into circuhition 
 a more or less comprehensive history of their formation, 
 constitution, and property. Only about four-and-twenty out 
 of the seventy-five have taken such a course, and of these 
 wc have what may be termed exhaustive memorials from not 
 more than half a dozen or so. The remainder have been 
 content to appear in pamphlet shape, as it were, and to limit 
 their narrative to a summary or outline, usually accompanied 
 by a selection of graphic embellishments from objects of his- 
 torical value in their possession. An account of the Mercers 
 on a satisfactory scale is, we understand, in preparation by 
 their clerk ; one of the Weavers is shortly to be expected ; and 
 monographs of the Barber-Surgeons and Gold and .Silver 
 Wire-Drawers have quite recently appeared, the former being 
 among the most sumptuous of the whole series. 
 Our own text. Our accounts of the respective Companies have 
 been drawn up on the basis of the official returns, with such 
 additions as it was practicable to supply, and were thought 
 likely to prove interesting, in each instance. The response 
 of many, if not of most, of the Gilds to the parliamentary 
 recjuisition may be said almost to err on the side of copious 
 minuteness, especially in statistics and supplementary papers of 
 various kinds ; and for such a purpose as the present there is 
 an enormous body of detail, which is undeniably of immense 
 permanent \'alue, but which appeals to the student of blue- 
 books rather than to the general reader. 
 Statistical '^'^^ details of Income and expenditure, which 
 
 details. hrm j)art of the returns made by the Companies 
 
 to Parliament in 1S82, are in the main of no great public
 
 PREFACE. 41 
 
 interest and concern, beyond the figures which occur in our 
 general introckiction ; ami it woukl be unadvisable, in the pre- 
 sent case, to enter into such statistics, where they possess no 
 historical bearing, and are purely financial. They are acces- 
 sible at large in the Blue- Books, if reference is desired for 
 special purposes. They may be taken with a moderate allow- 
 ance to represent the actual positions of the several bodies 
 in this respect ; from causes which are elsewhere explained, 
 the receipts of the Gilds would now, as a rule, exhibit an 
 increase on the returns of ten years ago. 
 
 The returns were in their very essence official, and what 
 might have been expected ; it was a strict matter of business ; 
 extraneous topics were only incidentally and, as it were, un- 
 consciously introduced ; and any information of a miscellaneous 
 character has consequently to be sought elsewhere. At the 
 same time, there is no dearth of archaeological and literary 
 particulars, and the true aim in the present case seemed to be 
 to provide such as does not occur in the separate histories, in 
 Herbert's work, and other more or less accessible sources. 
 Trade usages' We have entered into certain details in connexion 
 
 and 
 
 pretensions. witli the Gilds, as Well as with the unincorporated 
 bodies, where trade usages and claims are treated, because they 
 seemed to possess a more or less important measure of rele- 
 vance to modern commercial economy and doctrine. But a 
 glance even at one or two of the less elaborate monographs 
 in print will suffice to demonstrate the impossibility, if it were 
 desirable, of affording space for more than the .salient facts and 
 features relative to each Gild. 
 Permanent ^len of letters and research, however, owe a 
 
 value of the lasting- debt of o-ratitude to the Returns, which 
 
 Returns of & ^ 
 
 1SS2. brought a \'eritable ^ejya incoguifa within general 
 
 reach, and cast a flood of light on an unique body of material 
 for study and use. 
 
 c.c. 6
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 .,., , It is obvious enou8:h that an entrance into more 
 
 I he present *^ 
 
 Look a com- particular detail mig-ht sometimes have been advan- 
 
 prehensive '■ ° 
 
 synopsis. tageously undertaken ; but exigencies of space 
 debarred the writer from assigning to any of the se^-enty- 
 five bodies described more than a limited and fair proportion 
 of the book, of which the fundamental plan and aim, after 
 all, were a concise and comprehensive view of the entire sub- 
 ject, accompanied by such introductory matter as would, it 
 was hoped and thought, assist altogether the formation of a 
 fairly clear and correct general idea of a question of standard 
 importance and interest. 
 
 Normal One group or succession of features in the 
 
 periodical i i r r i • • 
 
 incidence. annals and fortunes of these associations com- 
 mences with the reign of Henry V^III., and embraces the 
 unscrupulous and e.xorbitant calls on the Companies for 
 financial aid and pecuniary assessments on a wide variety of 
 occasions and pretexts by the royal houses of Tudor and 
 Stuart, the practice of compelling them to maintain stores of 
 grain at a heavy cost in the City against the periodical 
 dearths, the disastrous incidence of the Civil War and the 
 Great Fire, the vexatious and harassing Qiw Warranto 
 business in 1625 and 1684, and the changes in commercial 
 polity and practice, whereby the practical advantages of the 
 charters have been rendered a dead letter. 
 The writs of The aim of the writs of Quo IVarranto by 
 
 Quo _ ~' 
 
 IVarranto. Charles I. and Charles II. against the City charters, 
 was, under colour of declaring the privileges and powers exer- 
 cised by the Corporation and Gilds illegal and void, to raise 
 money by fines, to establish a royal jurisdiction, and to convert 
 the Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, and the governing bodies 
 of the Livery Gilds, into nominees and tools of the Crown. 
 But the Act of William and Mary equally repudiated the writ 
 of 1684 and the subsequent conditional re-grant of powers.
 
 PREFACE. 43 
 
 Order of Tlic arrangement of tlie Comjianies has been 
 
 arrangement. made on the conimon basis of plachig the twelve 
 great bodies in their precedence, and the remainder In alpha- 
 betical order. The principle of priority or sequence was settled 
 before 7 Henry VIII., when a precept of the Lord Mayor was 
 published by reason of the long-continued dispute for supe- 
 riority in this respect between the Clothworkers and the 
 Dyers. 
 
 Executive ^^ '"'''-' '^°'- ^eem to be of any service to particu- 
 
 staffs. larize in each case the e.xact nature and extent of 
 
 the executive staff maintained by the Gilds ; since the system 
 does not materally vary, and has no bearing on the historical, 
 social, or literary aspect of the matter. The official machinery 
 naturally differs according to requirements, and several of the 
 minor bodies are limited to a clerk, who keeps the archives at 
 his own address. 
 
 Literary ^o the account of each Company is annexed a 
 
 memonais. jj^|_ ^^ ^.j^^ civic pageants performed by it, and of 
 the books, tracts, and broadsides relating to it with which we 
 happen to have met ; but the latter by no means claims to be 
 exhaustive. Nor is it an easy matter to determine where the 
 line should be drawn, as there are many works relevant to 
 the Corporation and the City which do not specifically concern 
 the Gilds, and a large body of literature upon industry and 
 trade which is of too general a tenor to be ranged under any 
 particular head. 
 
 But in the Guildhall Library, British Museum, and other 
 accessible public collections, the reader whose requirements lead 
 him to researches beyond the ordinary limit, will find an ex- 
 tensive assemblage of publications and privately issued pieces 
 bearing upon this topic. As a rule, in this bibliographical 
 accompaniment we have limited ourselves to those items which 
 are of historical or technical complexion, and have passed over
 
 44 PREFACE. 
 
 all the merely indirect literary products, which have grown 
 round the respective branches or divisions of the question, an 
 infinite profusion of facetious trifles included. These have no 
 bearing on the municipal or the industrial aspect of the matter 
 in hand, and therefore appeared to be foreign to our jjurpose. 
 
 But while we have restricted ourselves to the earlier lit- 
 erature, leaving more recent productions to others, we have 
 thought it useful to include much outside the strict historical 
 boundary, which illustrated the incidence of each particular 
 calling and association. 
 
 It may not be disrespectful to intimate that there will be 
 probably found here many items which are new even to those 
 specially interested in the municipal antiquities of London. 
 Mr. Welsh's ^^^- Charles Welsh, librarian to the Corpora- 
 
 ibiogiaphy. ^j^^^^ recently read before the Library Association 
 a paper on the " Bibliography of the City Livery Companies" ; 
 but this restricts itself to an indication of the works which have 
 been printed on the history of the several Gilds ; and Mr. 
 Welsh proposes to follow it up by a similar account of those 
 preserved in MS. 
 
 The radical and complete change which has taken place in 
 the relationship of the several departments of commercial in- 
 dustry to each other, as well as in the distribution of the sale 
 of commodities among certain of them, will readily account for 
 the arrangement of articles under what would otherwise appear 
 unsuitable heads. 
 The City ^s regards the City pageants, or Lord Mayors' 
 
 pageants. shows, the honout and expense of setting them 
 forth were of course limited to the very narrow proportion 
 out of the whole number of Companies among which the 
 choice of Mayor lay ; and the distinction, during the period 
 from Elizabeth to Anne (i 566-1 714), was principally enjoyed 
 by the Drapers, Goldsmiths, Haberdashers, Mercers, Merchant
 
 PREFACE. 45 
 
 Taylors, Ironmongers, and Skinners. Many wealthy and im- 
 portant Gilds have never returned a Mayor, and others have 
 been successful only on a single occasion. The great Com- 
 panies have, in fact, almost monopolized the chief magistracy ; 
 and Stow' goes so far as to say that the Lord Mayor is to 
 be chosen yearly out of them, "because those of inferiour 
 rancke are not capable of such dignitie." 
 Loss of many The printed accounts of these solemnities seem 
 
 of tlie printed 
 
 copies. to commence (if we leave out of account the lost 
 Ironmongers' one of 1566) with the Skinners' in 1585, and 
 there are several gaps in the series down to 1639. None 
 from 1640 to 1654 inclusive is known. The missing years 
 prior to 1639 seem to be 15S6-7-8-9, 1592-1604, 1607-8, 
 1 6 10, 1625, 1630, and 1636. The account for 1588 was 
 licensed for the press, and probably published. The earliest 
 detailed description of one is perhaps that prepared to cele- 
 brate the investiture of Sir Christopher Draper, Ironmonger, 
 in 1566. 
 
 We have not carried our bibliography of the pageants beyond 
 1 700 ; but they continued to appear some years subsequent to 
 that date. 
 
 Un ubiished The existing printed pageants are far from 
 
 narratives. representing the entire series, or even all which 
 passed the press. From time to time a discovery is made of 
 some piece, of which the existence had remained quite un- 
 known, as was the case with the Fishmongers' Show for 1590, 
 being the second relic of the kind hitherto recovered, and slx- 
 and-twenty years prior to that of Munday in 1616; and there 
 is absolute evidence that the device of the Ironmongers' 
 pageant for 1566 was privately issued by the Company. But 
 in Herbert's Livery Companies and elsewhere many notices 
 
 Surrey of London, 1633, p. 599.
 
 46 PREFACE. 
 
 occur of similar displays by the principal Gilds, alike before 
 the invention of printing and before the practice of committing 
 the descriptive accounts to type. The most ancient solemni- 
 ties were not by any means confined to Lord Mayor's day, 
 but perhaps even more frequently took place on occasions 
 when the Companies were required, by precept or otherwise, 
 to meet the Sovereign or his guests on their entry into the 
 City from Westminster or from abroad. From the circum- 
 stance that they originally assumed the form of cavalcades, 
 they were termed ridings ; the members of the procession 
 were on horseback, and so late as 1710 the Lord INLiyor rode 
 in this way to wait upon the judges. During some time, 
 however, the passage was by water, and must have presented 
 an imposing and attractive spectacle, while the river-side was 
 still largely occupied by Gild-halls and private residences. 
 
 The Halls. A tour of visits to the Halls of the Gilds is an 
 
 experience which becomes very impressive from the powerful 
 contrast which these scenes of dignified repose offer to the 
 bustle and din prevalent without and on every side. Although 
 the buildings themselves are rarely, if ever, contemporary wit;li 
 the origin of the institution, the site and soil are frequently un- 
 changed ; but even where it is not so, and the Hall occupies 
 what may be termed cold ground, the interior is apt to trans- 
 port you in fancy to immeasurably difterent conditions of life, 
 thought, and locomotion. 
 
 Absence of T\\ti Halls themselves are too frequently void of 
 
 Archaeological 
 
 interest. attraction to the historical student. Where they 
 are not absolutely modern, the ancient features are generally 
 cither superficial or fragmentary. Their restoration, after the 
 Fire of 1666, was peremptory, where the means existed ; but 
 the more recent replacements of the work of Wren, Jarman. 
 and other seventeenth century artists seem rather questionable 
 in point of taste and judgment.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 47 
 
 It is to be said, however, on the other side, that the future 
 of the Companies is indissolubly identified with modern ideas 
 and institutions, and we find substantially Httle, as a riilt\ in 
 their places of assembly to remind us of llu- nature nf their 
 origin or of the causes of their prosperous longevity. 
 
 And of Their successive departure, with very few excep- 
 
 chaiacteristic 
 
 memorials. tions, from their original structure and pleas for 
 existence and encouragement, is answerable for the at first 
 rather surprising dearth of typical and characteristic objects 
 in their hands. The early Gildsmen seem to have attached 
 no value to historical relics other than portraits or decorative 
 articles in the shape of tapestry and arras. You are met, as 
 a rule, by a smile, when you ask the clerk or other officers 
 whether his Gild can shew you anything of the kind ; and 
 you learn that there are at the best only a few early registers 
 and account-books, the charters, the bye-laws, the grant of arms, 
 one or two pieces of elderly furniture, and some antique plate. 
 The Fire of 1666, which the historian of the Apothecaries' 
 Society terms betiejicent, swept awa\- much, no doubt ; and 
 neglect and indifference have, we fear, accomplished the rest, 
 obiieations to While we havc occupied ourselves with this subject, 
 
 helpers. ^g have necessarily been placed in communication 
 with a numerous body of gentlemen connected with the Livery 
 Companies and the City of London ; and it is our simple duty, 
 as it is a pleasure, to acknowledge the assistance which has 
 been rendered to us in a great variety of ways, both for our 
 text and illustrations, as well as the courteous reception which 
 has awaited us from the official representatives of the Com- 
 panies. In a work of this kind the amount of minute detail, 
 which has to be collected or verified, makes the labour, no 
 less than the encroachment on the time of others, peculiarly 
 heavy. 
 
 But we ha\'e very particularly to thank the clerks to the
 
 48 PREFACE. 
 
 Grocers', Fishmongers', Merchant Taylors', Salters', Drapers', 
 Clothworkers', Coopers', Haberdashers', Saddlers', Stationers', 
 Fan-makers', Shipwrights', and Loriners' Companies ; and Mr. 
 John Welsh, Librarian to the Corporation ; Mr. J. A. Kingdon. 
 of the Grocers' Company ; Mr. John Addison, Past-Master of 
 the Clockmakers ; Mr. Frederick Clarke, Master of the Cord- 
 wainers ; Mr. George Elkington, junr. ; Mr. F. J. Co.x ; Mr. 
 John Jarvis, junr. ; and our old schoolfellow. Dr. Sharpe, 
 Keeper of the Archives at Guildhall, for personal attention 
 and assistance. 
 The graphic The illustrations of various kinds which accom- 
 
 part of the 
 
 - volume. pany the volume have been of course selected with 
 
 a view to their characteristic interest and significance. Seeing 
 the enormous amount of treasure in the shape of plate and 
 other objects in the possession of the Companies, or the major 
 part of them, it was out of the question to reproduce more 
 than a limited number of representative specimens ; and the 
 difficulty, by the e.xercise of this line of choice, at once sensibly 
 decreased, since in typical antiquities and curiosities these 
 bodies are, as we have said, by no means rich. 
 
 The Armorial Bearings which we give possess a certain 
 symbolical and typical value, as the distinguishing badges and 
 ensigns of these industrial corporations, when such an emblem 
 on a coat, on a banner, or over a portal, spoke a language 
 perfectly intelligible to thousands, who were neither heralds 
 nor scholars. External and figurative tokens constituted the 
 best method of appeal to persons of illiterate character con- 
 versant with the alphabet and mechanical appliances of the 
 chief industrial arts. In ancient commercial life these blazon- 
 ries played the same part as in that of the religious and 
 chivalric orders ; their actual speech and significance are of the 
 past, and their retention by the Companies, especially where 
 they are unfaithful to the old design, is a matter of mere
 
 TRKIACK. 49 
 
 form. I5oth the early and current representations in print are 
 apt to be inexact from an imperfect study of the ori<^inal 
 a:rant, or from an advised chany^e in some ot the detail ; bui 
 if the shield is to be of any worth and authority, it should 
 be set forth in accordance with the Herald's own delineation. 
 The kind and liberal use of many of the graphic embellish- 
 ments of the book has, we are sure, largely tended to render it 
 more acceptable and attractive. 
 
 Whatever we may have done in the direction of 
 
 Our yeiuiiiie ^ 
 
 purpose. criticizing some of the proceedings and tendencies 
 of the City Gilds, our primary motive has been, and is, not to 
 bear a i)art in pulling down these few remaining old stones of 
 London, but to preserve them. The Gilds have, to a large 
 e.xtent, their future in their own hands ; and they seem, on the 
 whole, fairly sensible of the responsible position which they 
 occupy, and of their changed relationship to the community. 
 
 In 12 Richard II. (13S8) letters mandatory were directed by 
 the king from Cambridge to the Mayor of London, to make 
 proclamation that all the masters and wardens of Gilds and 
 fraternities within the City of London, or the suburbs thereof, 
 should deliver to the king and council in the Chancery a full, 
 distinct, and proper account in writing of the manner and nature 
 of such foundations, together with their rules and ordinances, 
 and an account of all their lands, goods, and chattels, and to 
 produce their charters, under pain of having all their grants 
 revoked or annulled. The te.xt of the commission is extant, 
 but no record has yet been discovered of the results as 
 regards the Livery Companies of London. Only the returns 
 of some of those belonging to the provinces have come to light, 
 and have been edited by the late Toulmin Smith. 
 
 c.c. 7
 
 50 PREFACE. 
 
 In I Edward \'I., after the passing of the act which vested 
 all lands held to support chauntries, or obits, or for other 
 superstitious purposes, in the Crown, the Companies of London 
 were called upon to make returns (which are still extant) " of 
 any such establishments existing within their bodies, with par- 
 ticulars of the estates left to support them, and of all other 
 property to which the Crown became entitled." 
 
 The "Municipal Commission" was appointed in 1833, "to 
 inquire as to the existing state of municipal corporations in 
 England and Wales." The Commission prosecuted the inquiry 
 in divisions, and five commissioners, of whom the late Sir 
 Francis Palgrave was one, inquired into London and South- 
 wark. Their report, drawn by Sir Francis Palgrave, is a long 
 and careful one. 
 
 It is obvious that a City Company is not a city or a borough, 
 and it was not therefore clear that the Companies of London 
 were within the scope of the Municipal Commission. The 
 commissioners, however, probably felt that as they were 
 historically connected with the municipality, it was desirable 
 lo inquire into their constitution ; and with this view they 
 administered a number of queries, and also sat at the Guild- 
 hall to receive information. Many of these bodies sent in 
 answers to the queries of the commissioners. These related, 
 not only to the constitution, but also to the corporate property 
 and their mode of expending their corporate income. No 
 questions were asked as to the trust property, for the reason 
 that that was then undergoing an inquiry by a Charity 
 Commission. 
 
 The Charity Commission between 1818 and 18S0 made a 
 series of elaborate inquiries into the charities administered by 
 the Companies. The results are to be found partly in the 
 Reports of the Commission, and partly in the Appendix to 
 that of the Royal Commission of 1S80.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 In 1868 Lord Robert Montagu moved in the House of 
 Commons for a return of the charities administered by the City 
 Companies. This was promptly supplied by the Charity 
 Commission ; but the return is not always accurate, and is too 
 condensed to be very useful. Between 1876 and 1S79 the 
 educational endowments committee of the School Board for 
 London was engaged in an inquiry into the charities adminis- 
 tered by the Companies; and the Royal Commission of 18S0 
 was furnished by the Board with copies of the Report. 
 
 In the Record Office, duplicates of many of the charters 
 and licences in mortmain granted to the Conipanies are pre- 
 served. Many judgments of the courts of law and decrees 
 of the courts of Chancery concerning them are also recorded 
 there, and there can be no doubt that the office contains 
 many other documents relating thereto. \n the Hustings 
 Court of the City, many of the acts of the courts of 
 Aldermen and Common Council under this head are enrolled, 
 and thousands of the wills ' under which the Companies hold 
 property, and many of their other title-deeds, are to be found 
 in this ancient office. In the Guildhall library there is a 
 considerable collection of books and pamphlets relating to this 
 topic. 
 
 Shortly after the appointment of the Municipal Commission 
 of 1S34, the great Companies employed Mr. Herbert, librarian 
 to the Corporation of London, to write an account of their 
 history. Several of the great Companies had given little 
 information to the commissioners, whose proceedings they 
 conceived to be ti/fra vires. They were willing, however, 
 to give it to the public voluntarily, and for this purpose they 
 placed their archives at Mr. Herbert's disposal. The result 
 
 * A calendar of wills is in course of publication under the care of Dr. Sharpe, 
 Curator of the City Archives.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 was the History of the Tzochc Great Companies of Loudon, 
 1S36, which contains some information as to their trust, but 
 none as to their corporate, estate. 
 
 Herbert's History of the Ttoelve Great Companies neces- 
 sarily contains only very incidental notices of the others ; and 
 it must be confessed that, from an historical point of view, the 
 latter offer to us a volume of information and material quite 
 equal in importance, and sometimes even superior in curiosity 
 and interest. Of the so called minor Gilds, many are divided 
 from the foremost twelve by little more than an imaginary and 
 customary line ; and a limitation to the twelve great fraternities 
 shuts out many of the most valuable industries of the country, 
 and much of that illustrative and picturesque light which this 
 side of London life sheds on the ancient condition and sfenius 
 of the metropolis. 
 
 By no means the least valuable feature in Herbert's book, 
 is the "Historical Essay" which forms an introduction to the 
 accounts of the Gilds. This preliminary matter is full of inter- 
 esting and important information, which it would be perfectly 
 futile to condense. But occasional use has been made of it 
 in the notices which we have given of the ancient Hanseatic 
 and other fraternities, which from the Anglo-Saxon times began 
 to form settlements in the vicinity of the Thames bank by 
 Dowgate and Oueenhithe. 
 
 The JVhite Book of the City of London is one of the 
 storehouses of information which the late Mr. Riley threw 
 open to us all in a series of volumes, which comprehended 
 that, the Liber Citstnmarnm and the Liber Horn, with \'ery 
 curious Appendices of the Assisa Panis, etc. 
 
 The White Book, traditionally compiled by John Carpenter, 
 founder of the City of London School, and Sir Richard Whit- 
 tington, citizen and mercer, deals with a variety of topics con- 
 nected with civic government and police, and includes rates of
 
 PREFACE. 53 
 
 customs, with the modes of payment, regulations as to forc- 
 stallers, bakers, vintners, brewers, taverners, skinners and 
 furriers, butchers, and others, and lays down the scale of wages 
 for different classes of operatives, ami the lines on which they 
 should work. The volume seems to be a compilation into a 
 more or less methodical form from the then existing records, 
 which had gradually accumulated at Guildhall as separate 
 documents or papers. It certainly, with its companions and the 
 Addenda, constitutes material for forming a fairly correct judg- 
 ment of the internal condition of London proper, commercial, 
 social, and sanitary, in the old time. It was a book of reference 
 and authority alike for the official dignitary, the merchant, the 
 lawyer, and the tradesman. 
 
 Mr. Riley's Memorials of the City of London and of 
 London Life, printed by order of the Corporation in 1868 ; the 
 Chroniele of Old London, 1089-1483, 4to, 1827 ; Mnninienta 
 Gildhallce Londinensis, Liber Albiis, Liber Custuniaruni, ct 
 Liber Horn, published in 1859, under the direction of the 
 Master of the Rolls, contain many allusions to the early history 
 of the Companies. The Corporation of London has published 
 an index to Renienibrancia, which contains much relevant detail. 
 
 It is deserving of remark that, while copious notices of 
 many or most trades present themselves in the City archives, 
 of others which must have existed from the most ancient 
 period in some shape we meet with no trace ; and this is .so 
 much so, that it would be far easier to enumerate the bodies 
 to which references exist. 
 
 Serjeant Pulling's Laxvs of London and Mr. Norton's 
 Covwientarics on t/te City of London may be consulted. 
 
 The only monographs of authority in English are Mr. 
 Gross's elaborate and valuable one on the Gild merchant, and 
 the late Mr. Toulmin Smith's Original Ordinances of more 
 than One Hundred English Gilds, published by the Early
 
 54 PREFACE. 
 
 English Text Society. The latter contains an introduction 
 by Miss Toulmin Smith, author of the article on "Gilds" 
 in the Encyclopaedia Britaiinica, and a preliminary essay on 
 the subject of these corporations by Dr. Brentano, of the 
 University of Aschaffenburg. The essay of Dr. Brentano 
 is much relied upon by Dr. Stubbs in his Constitutional 
 History of England, a work which, with the same author's 
 Annates Londinenses and Annates Panlini, the late Mr. J. 
 R. Green's History of the English People, and the brilliant 
 description of the Companies with which Mr. Fronde's history 
 commences, constitutes a summary of the history of the Gilds 
 from their foundation to the period of their decadence as 
 industrial corporations. Mr. Freeman's studies have been 
 limited to the early " Knighten Gild." 
 
 The principal authorities in German on the subject of the 
 Gilds of mediceval Europe are the works of Wilda and of 
 Gierke (Geschiehte des Deutschen Gcnossenschaftwesens. Berlin, 
 1868). 
 
 For the Gilds of France the authorities are Raynouard's 
 Histoire dn Droit IMunicipal en France, published in 1829; 
 M. A. Thierry's Rdcits des Temps Mi'rovingiens, published 
 in 1840; M. Delpit's Collection dc Documents Inc'dits; M. 
 Gustave Fagnier's Etudes sur l' Industrie a Paris an lyme 
 et lii^lme Steele; and a valuable paper by a Belgian antiquary, 
 M. Wauter, entitled Les Glides Communales a r Onzieme Siecle, 
 jjublished in the Bulletin de P Acadc'mie de Belgique (2me serie, 
 t. .xxxvii., p. 874). 
 
 The Grocers' Company, the second in order of civic pre- 
 cedence, appointed a committee in that year "to search their 
 records and prepare a report upon the constitution and income 
 and expenditure of the Company, and the general management 
 of the Company's business." This was presented to the court 
 on February 2, 1881, and was drawn up with great ability,
 
 PRF-FACE. 55 
 
 and in a form which made it ser\'iceal)le to the Royal Com- 
 mission. These were the earliest returns received from the 
 great Companies. 
 
 The above were the sources of the jirt-liminary report of 
 1880. 
 
 A few of the minor Companies either declined to make 
 returns or made returns which were not satisfactory. These 
 Companies were the Broderers, Dyers, Distillers, Glovers, 
 Tinplate Workers, and Weavers. 
 
 The royal commissioners received statements from some 
 gentlemen, who suggested that it was desirable to disestablish 
 and disendow the Companies, or to materially alter their con- 
 stitution. Three academical bodies, University College, London, 
 King's College, London, and Magee College, Londonderry, and 
 the University Extension Society sent deputations to urge their 
 respective claims to recognition Ijy the Government as candi- 
 dates for endowment, should the commissioners determine to 
 recommend to the Government a redistribution of the revenues 
 of the Companies. The School Board of London came before 
 them to enforce the views expressed in the report of the 
 educational endowment committee mentioned above ; and a 
 deputation, consisting of the Lord Chancellor, the president 
 of the Royal Society, and Sir F. Bramwell, F.R.S., attended 
 to explain the constitution of the City and Gilds of London 
 Technical Institute. 
 
 During 1883 they received a number of deputations from the 
 Companies, and addressed to the Companies an invitation to 
 appoint a representative or representatives to give evidence 
 before and confer with them. In reply the Companies sent 
 before the Commission several gentlemen of great experience in 
 the conduct of their affairs, from whom it received valuable 
 information ; and several of the statements laid before it dis- 
 played much learning and ability.
 
 56 PREFACE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The General Introduction which succeeds is a careful digest 
 and synopsis of the elaborate parliamentary return of 18S2, 
 prefixed to the returns furnished by the Companies. The 
 official authority of the statements contained therein was judged 
 to be a strong ground for preferring it to any compilation of 
 a normal literary character. But while it is unquestionably of 
 extreme value as a record, the length to which it extends, from 
 the absence of any necessity for studying space or expense, 
 renders it tedious and unattractive ; and there has been no 
 great difficulty in reducing the matter within reasonable limits, 
 and at the same time omitting nothing essential to a proper 
 view of the whole subject. In the Report, however, the object 
 being different, the method pursued was naturally at variance 
 with ours, and the consequence has been that the material has 
 unavoidably undergone a certain amount of rearrangement and 
 modification. 
 
 This body o( information will serve to prepare the reader 
 for the historical sketches and other particulars of the several 
 Companies which follow. 
 
 A revised prc'cis of these valuable preliminaries seemed to 
 be as much as could be reasonably expected or required ; and 
 the task of condensation was the more feasible that, without 
 omitting any material fact or circumstance, a large amount of 
 space was capable of being saved by eschewing redundancies, 
 contradictions, and irrelevancies so often found in records un- 
 trammelled by literary exigencies, and a fairly lucid and full view 
 of the whole question presented in a far more moderate com- 
 pass. Besides, it was found that the arrangement ot the matter 
 was faulty and confused, and that an entire reconstruction of 
 the report was calculated to render it far more intelligible and 
 satisfactory. It will probably not surprise any one conversant
 
 PREFACE. 5 7 
 
 with official composition to learii that it has been necessary 
 throughout to reduce the text to grammatical English. A 
 competent knowledge of their native language ought to be 
 a compulsory part of the training of all lawyers and public 
 ser\'ants. In many cases we have felt to be justified in cor- 
 recting: errors of statement of various kinds. 
 
 The parliamentary return of 1SS4, as it is hereinafter set 
 forth, assumes the shape which it would have presented in the 
 first place, had it emanated from a literary, instead of an official, 
 source. The draughtsmen of these papers are usually chosen 
 from the same class of personage as those of bills and statutes, 
 and with the same unhappy results. 
 
 Except in one or two instances, no changes of consequence 
 have occurred in the constitution and general position of the 
 Gilds since 1884, when the report of the Royal Commission was 
 published. 
 
 As in a work of the present character it is obviously 
 impossible to include all the minute particulars and lengthy 
 documents in print or MS., a table of the miscellaneous and 
 supplementary papers annexed to the Report of 1882 may be 
 useful for reference. The four volumes of the City of London 
 Livery Companies Commission Report contain, in addition to 
 the accounts of the Companies, historical and statistical, the 
 following items : 
 
 o 
 
 Text of Commission. 
 
 Report signed by the Earl of Derby, the Duke of Bedford, Viscount Sher- 
 brooke, Lord Coleridge, Sir Sydney H. Waterlow, Mr. Pell, Mr. Walter James, 
 Mr. Firth, and Mr. Burt ; with Appendix and Notes by Messrs. Horace Davey 
 and F. Vaughan Hawkins. 
 
 " Dissent " Report, signed by Sir Richard Cross, Sir N. de Rothschild, and 
 Mr. Alderman Cotton. 
 
 Protest of Mr. Alderman Cotton. 
 
 Observations and Memorandum by Mr. Firth and Memorandum by Mr. Burt. 
 
 Oral Inquiry, Parliament.\rv Session, 1SS2. 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Thomas Hare, Senior Inspector of Charities, and his 
 Memoranda. 
 
 C.C. S
 
 58 PREFACE. 
 
 Evidence of IMr. Henry T.ongley, Commissioner of Charities. 
 
 Evidence of Mr. James Beal and Mr. J. R. Phillips (who appeared to support 
 the views of Mr. Firthi, Mr. E. J. Watherston, Mr. W. H. A\'illiamson, and Mr. 
 \V. Gilbert (all of whom requested to be examined). 
 
 Evidence of Sir George Young, Dr. Wood, Dr. Williamson, F.R.S., and Mr. 
 Henry Morley (a deputation from University College, London). 
 
 Memorial of University College, London. 
 
 Evidence of the Lord Chancellor, Mr. W. Spottiswoode, F.R.S., and Sir F. 
 Bramwell, F.R.S. (on behalf of the City and Gilds of London Technical 
 Institute). 
 
 Prospectus of Technical Institute. 
 
 Memorial of King's College, London, and Evidence of the Rev. Canon Barry, 
 Professors Adams, Shelley, and ^\■iltshire, Mr. Serocold, treasurer, and Mr. 
 Cunningham, secretary (on the behalf of the College). 
 
 Evidence of Dr. Todd, the Rev. Mr. McCay, Mr. Andrew Brown, Mr. Robert 
 Stewart, Mr. Robert Dunn, the Rev. Mr. Brown, and Professor Dougherty (a 
 deputation claiming to represent the tenants on the Ulster estates), and 
 Appendi.x. 
 
 Evidence of the Rev. Mr. Rogers, Mr. Cooke, and Professor Dougherty (a 
 deputation from Magee College, Londonderry). 
 
 Evidence of the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, M.P. (a deputation from the 
 London Society for the Extension of University Teaching). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Lucraft (a deputation from the School Board of London). 
 
 Oral Inquiry, P.^rliamentary Session, 1883. 
 
 Letter from the Mercers' Company. 
 
 Memorandum of the Merchant Taylors' Company (as to certain statement.s 
 made by Mr. Beal, Mr. Phillips, and other witnesses examined during 1882 with 
 reference to the Company). 
 
 Statement by Grocers' Company (as to certain statements made by Mr. Beal 
 Mr. Phillips, and other witnesses examined during 1882 relating to the Com 
 pany, and as to certain views expressed by Mr. Firth in Municipal London). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. J. H. Warner (on behalf of the Grocers' Company). 
 
 Evidence of Sir F. Bramwell, F.R.S. (on behalf of the Goldsmiths' Company) 
 
 Letter of Mr. Prideaux, on behalf of the Goldsmiths' Company, to the Com- 
 missioners (criticizing certain statements made by Mr. Beal, Mr. Phillips, and 
 other witnesses during 1882, and also the views expressed by Mr. Firth in 
 Miinicif'nl Loudon). Statement of the Company (with reference to the same 
 matters), and evidence of Mr. Prideaux (on behalf of the Company). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. T. H. Fordham, Mr. W. C. Venning, and Mr. J. T. Smith 
 (representing the Fishmongers' Company), and statement of the Company (with 
 reference to statements made by witnesses from Ulster in 1882). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Graves and Mr. Beaumont (representing the Cutlers Com- 
 pany), with reference to a passage in Mr. Firth's Municipal London. 
 
 Evidence of Mr. E. Gregory, Mr. W. H. Townsend, Mr. White, Mr. Wyld, 
 Mr. Neate, and Mr. Owen Roberts (representing the Clothworkers' Company). 
 
 Observations and Further Observations by the Clothworkers' Company (with
 
 PREFACE. 59 
 
 reference to statements made by Mr. Beal, Mr. Phillips, and other witnesses 
 examined during 1882, and also as to the views e.xpressed by Mr. Firth in 
 Alunicipal Loudon). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Dalton, Mr. Jennings, and .Mr. Sawyer (representing the 
 Drapers' Company) 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Hill, Mr. le Gros Clark, Mr. Hicks, Mr. Eaton, M.P., Mr. 
 Alderman Fowler, M.P., and Mr. Y.. L. Scott (representing the Salters' Com- 
 pany); and statement by the Company (as to the evidence given by the Ulster 
 witnesses in 1882). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Barron, Mr. Bevan, Mr. Horner, Mr. Price, Mr. Gribble, and 
 Mr. Beck (representing the Ironmongers' Company and certain Companies 
 associated with it in the management of Ulster estates). 
 
 Evidence of Mr. Miles, Mr. John Miles, Mr. Layton, and Mr. Rivington 
 (representing the Stationers' Company). 
 
 Statement by the Society of Apothecaries, and Evidence of Mr. Sauer and 
 Mr. Upton (representing the Society). 
 
 Evidence of Dr. Ramsay and Major Harding (representing the Needlemakers' 
 Company). 
 
 Statement by the Homers' Company, and Evidence of Mr. Compton (repre- 
 senting the Company). 
 
 Statement by the Ironmongers' Company, and Statement by the same (as 
 to the Company's Irish estate and the evidence given by the Ulster witnessses 
 in 1882). 
 
 Statement of the Skinners' Company and Memorial (as to the Ulster estate 
 of the Company and the evidence given by the Ulster witnesses in 1882). 
 
 Letters from the Coachmakers' and Barbers' Companies. 
 
 CH.A.RITY Commission P.\pers. 
 
 Observations by the Armourers' and Braziers' Company as to evidence of 
 Mr. Lucraft. 
 
 Detailed accounts of Mercers' Company, and Charitable Accounts of same ; 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Company, with an 
 Appendi.x. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Grocers' Company, 
 with an Appendix, and Charitable Accounts of the Company. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Drapers' Company, 
 with an Appendix, and the Charitable Accounts of the Company. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Reports on the Charities administered by the Fishmongers' Com- 
 pany, with an Appendix, and the Company's Charitable Accounts. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Goldsmiths' Com- 
 pany, with the Charitable Accounts of the Company. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Skinners' Company, 
 with an Appendix, and the Accounts. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Merchant Taylors 
 Company, draft Report on Boone's Charity, administered by the Company, Mr. 
 Skirrow's Report on Donkin's Charity, administered by the Company, and the 
 Accounts.
 
 6o PREFACE. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Haberdashers' 
 Company, with an Appendix, and the Accounts. 
 
 Mr. Hare's and Mr. Simmons' Reports on the Charities administered by the 
 Salters' Company, and the Accounts. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Ironmongers' Com- 
 pany, and the Accounts. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Vintners' Company, 
 and the Accounts. 
 
 Charitable Accounts of the Vintners' Company. 
 
 Mr. Hare's Report on the Charities administered by the Clothworkers' Com- 
 pany, with two Appendices, and the Accounts. 
 
 Minor Comp.\nies. 
 
 Mr. Simmons' or Simons' Reports on the Apothecaries', Armourers', Bakers', 
 Barbers', and Blacksmiths' Charities, with the Accounts of each. 
 
 Mr. Simmons' Report on the Charities of the Bowyers' Company. 
 
 Reports on the Charities of the Broderers' and other Minor Companies by 
 Mr. Hare, except the Upholders', for which there is no Report. 
 
 Reports on the Continental Gilds in communications to the Foreign Office, 
 and Memoranda by persons resident abroad. 
 
 Tables of Income (Trust and Corporate) and Expenditure of the Gilds. 
 Amounts contributed by members and amounts spent on internal objects.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE Companies of London appear to have sprung from a number 
 of Gilds, which were associations of neighbours for purposes of 
 mutual assistance. Such associations were very numerous in the Middle 
 Ages, both in town and country, and the)' appear to have abounded 
 in London at a very early period. A Frith Gild and a Knighten or 
 Knights' Gild seem to have existed in London in Anglo-Saxon times,' 
 
 ' The Cniighten, Kniyhten, or English Knighten, Gild was no more than .1 
 similar association in its origin, consisting of thirteen military persons, to whom, 
 according to the received tradition. King Edgar (958-68) granted certain waste 
 land in the east of London, toward Aldgate, for prescribed services performed. The 
 concession, which does not seem to have been committed to writing, was confirmed 
 by Edward the Confessor in a charter at the suit of certain burgesses of London, 
 the successors of these knights ; but there was no trading privilege, and the Prior 
 of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, became the sovereign of the Gild and the Alderman c.r 
 officio of Portsoken Ward. He rendered an account to the Crown of the taillage 
 paid by the men of the Ward, presided over the Wardmotes, and in Stowe's time 
 still rode in procession with the mayor and other aldermen, but clad in a purple, 
 instead of a scarlet, gown. The term portsolccn, as Herbert suggests, doubtless 
 signified the soc-en or franchises at the port or gate.
 
 62 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and at the Norman Conquest there were probably many other bodies 
 of a hke nature there. Their main objects were the relief of poverty 
 and the performance of masses for the dead. 
 
 These Gilds present a close analogy to the Collegia Opificum which 
 existed under the Roman empire — institutions arising out of the urban 
 life of the period, the primary objects of which were common worship 
 and social intercourse : the secondary objects, the protection of the 
 trades against unjust taxes and their interna! regulation. They also 
 served as benefit clubs, defraying the expenses of burial and funeral 
 sacrifices for deceased members, in some cases out of legacies left for 
 that purpose. It has been suggested that media;val Europe borrowed 
 this part of the industrial organization of the Roman empire, as it did 
 portions of the Roman juridical system. 
 
 Hallam describes the Gilds as " fraternities by voluntary compact, to 
 relieve each other in poverty, and to protect each other from injury. 
 Two essential characteristics belonged to them : the common banquet 
 and the common purse. They had also in many instances a religious, 
 sometimes a secret, ceremonial, to knit more firmly the bond of fidelity. 
 They readily became connected with the exercise of trades, 
 with the training of apprentices, with the traditional rules of art." 
 
 A vast number of such fraternities existed throughout Europe during 
 the Middle Ages. Every hamlet had a Gild of some kind. In the 
 towns they were very numerous. 
 
 The passage cited suggests a classification of the fraternities which 
 has been adopted by subsequent writers. The Gilds have been divided 
 into social or religious Gilds and Craft Gilds. But the Gilds of the 
 former class, those which were not industrial corporations, by no means 
 limited their purposes to mutual relief and protection. They shewed 
 much public spirit, and undertook public burdens of every kind. The 
 repairing of roads and bridges, the relief of pilgrims, the maintenance 
 of schools and almshouses, the periodical exhibition of pageants and 
 miracle-plays, are a few of the objects which they promoted. 
 
 Another community, differing from these, but which also was of 
 importance during the Middle Ages, was the Gild Merchant. It existed 
 in the towns, and was, as compared with the Craft Gilds, an aristocratic 
 body, of which the members were originally prosperous traders, and 
 became in course of time, by purchase or otherwise, landowners. Many 
 of these patrician families, especially abroad, acquired oligarchical and 
 even sovereign power in the towns, through the Gilds Merchant. But 
 eventually, in nearly every case, the aristocratic municipality had to give 
 way, though sometimes not till after a long and fierce struggle, to the 
 general body of the citizens as represented by the Craft Gilds. In
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 6 
 
 O 
 
 London the victory of the popular party liad become assured as early 
 as the reign of Edward 1 1. 
 
 The Gilds Merchant and the Craft Gilds were thus the germ of the 
 municipalities of Europe. Speaking of the English communities from 
 this point of view, Hallam says : "They are frequently mentioned in our 
 Anglo-Saxon documents, and are the basis of those corporations which 
 the Norman kings recognised or founded. The Gild was, of course, in 
 its primary character, a personal association ; it was in the State, but not 
 the State ; it belonged to the city without embracing all the citizens ; its 
 purposes were the good of the fellows alone. But when the good was 
 inseparable from that of their little country, their walls and churches, 
 the principle of voluntary association was readily extended ; and from 
 the private Gild, possessing already the vital spirit of faithfulness and 
 brotherly love, sprang the sworn community, the body of citizens bound 
 by a voluntary but perpetual obligation to guard each other's rights 
 against the thefts of the weak or the t\'ranny of the powerful." 
 
 The trades of London had in early times their recognised quarters 
 in the City, and the Gilds undertook the regulation of them. They 
 appointed overseers to inspect the wares produced or sold, and also 
 umpires to adjudicate in cases of dispute between masters and workmen. 
 They generally had halls, at which meetings of the principal members 
 took place for purposes of inspection, arbitration, and consideration of 
 claims to charitable relief ; and at these halls banquets were frequently 
 given. Being purely voluntary associations, the}' required no licence 
 from the State. 
 
 " Ordinances " were framed for internal government by the most 
 influential members. Such ordinances were (i) religious ; (2) social and 
 charitable ; (3) industrial. The)' comprised rules for the attendance of 
 the members at the services of the Church, for the promotion of pilgrim- 
 ages, and for the celebration of masses for the dead ; and regulations as 
 to common meals and the relief of poor brethren and sisters, the hours 
 of labour, the processes of manufacture, the wages of workmen, and 
 technical education. 
 
 The Inns of Court and Chancery and Serjeants' Inn were probablj' 
 at first bodies in some respects similar to the Gilds, though not 
 corporations. 
 
 Charters were granted by Edward III. or Richard II. to many of the 
 Companies for valuable consideration. Succeeding sovereigns renewed 
 them down to the time of the accession of the House of Hanover. 
 The sums paid by the Companies to the national exchequer in respect 
 of the original and inspexiinus charters were very considerable. 
 
 The terms of the charters are in most cases obviously founded on the
 
 64 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ordinances. They recognise the Gilds as existing, " administered," to 
 c]Uote the words of Dr. Stubbs, "by their own officers, and administer- 
 ing their own property in the usual way, the Aldermen of the Gilds 
 holding the estates, when the Gilds possessed estates, direct from the 
 king." The hospitals and Inns of Court of London and man}' provincial 
 Gilds received their first charters about the time of the incorporation of 
 the London Companies, and iuspeximus charters afterwards in the same 
 way at the commencement of each reign. At a certain interval from 
 their incorporation the then existing members formed " bye-laws " to 
 control details. 
 
 On their incorporation the Companies, like all similar bodies, became 
 amenable to the processes of Scire Facias and Quo Warranto ; but there 
 is nothing in their history to warrant the supposition that they could ever 
 have been legally dissolved. From the time when the State recognised 
 their existence, the only obligation of the governing bodies, which 
 succeeded the " Aldermen," has been to carry out, so far as has been 
 practicable, having regard to change of times, the terms of the charters 
 and bye-laws, and to apply the trust-funds to the purposes for which 
 they were bequeathed. The corporate property of the Companies has 
 always been, in the eye of the law, their own, just as much as the 
 proiserty of individuals. 
 
 A licence in mortmain was contained in most of the charters, and 
 some of the charters of inspexiinus contain lists of the lands held by the 
 Companies at the time they were granted, and expressly recognise the 
 title thereto ; but by the immemorial custom of the City "free burgage" 
 lands, i.e. lands held " direct from the Crown," could be devised to 
 corporations without any limitation as to value. During many centuries 
 land was throughout England the principal kind of property ; and it was 
 only natural that, having the advantage of this custom, the Companies 
 should soon become large holders of real property within the walls of 
 London. 
 
 Their constitution was usually aristocratic. The administrators, who 
 are generally named in the first charters, were the principal capitalists 
 and employers of labour, or else distinguished citizens not connected 
 with commerce or manufactures, and by the terms of the charters these 
 boards had complete control over the associations. Some, such as the 
 Mercers and Grocers, appear to have consisted, to a great extent, of 
 merchants and wholesale dealers ; others, such as the Fishmongers, 
 and the other Companies deriving their names from trades, of shop- 
 keepers and their apprentices ; others, such as the Goldsmiths and 
 the Clothworkcrs, deriving their names from " arts and misteries," of 
 master-manufacturers and artisans. But the names of the Companies
 
 GENERAL INTROUUCTION. 65 
 
 are mislead irifj, for the reasons that from time immemorial (i) the 
 privileges of membership have been hereditary, one mode of admission 
 having always been by patrimony, which causes the right to the freedom 
 to descend to all the lineal representatives, male and female, of every 
 freeman ; (2) a system of apprenticeship has entered into the constitu- 
 tion of the Companies, under which members, irrespective of their 
 membership of the respective trades, were privileged to receive appren- 
 tices. These reasons have caused the Companies to consist largely 
 of non-craftsmen from the earliest times ; and the proportion of non- 
 craftsmen seems always to have been particularly large among the 
 governing bodies. 
 
 It has been suggested that these corporations, by their power of 
 admitting to their freedom, were one of the causes of the disappearance 
 of villeinage. There is no doubt that the custom of the towns by which 
 freedom was obtained by means of residence for a year and a day 
 within the walls was, along with manumission and the growth of copy- 
 hold tenure, an instrument of enfranchisement, and that this custom 
 obtained in London ; but Dr. Stubbs is of opinion that the influence 
 exercised by the civic Companies was not in this respect considerable. 
 
 The charters, particularly the later, generally extend the area of 
 control assumed by the Companies in their original state as Gilds. 
 Under some, the Companies acquire power to prevent persons other 
 than freemen from carrying on callings, and the right of searching for 
 and destroying defective wares within a radius of several miles from 
 Cornhill. It is needless to say that monopolies and powers of this 
 description are contrary to law ; yet both by their charters and by 
 letters patent the Companies received such from the Crown. From the 
 time of their incorporation down to the present period, they have 
 exercised them in certain cases, as hereinafter mentioned, Vi-ithin the 
 City and its liberties ; never, probably, in the more extended area over 
 which, by virtue of some of the more recent charters, they acquired a 
 nominal control. 
 
 During the whole period from the Plantagenet dynasty to the 
 Restoration, the Companies, probably because they constituted a con- 
 venient division of the citizens for purposes of taxation, were forced to 
 contribute large sums to the national exchequer, chiefly for the purpose 
 of defraying the expenses of wars ; and under a custom of the City 
 which has long been obsolete, they were at one time bound to lend 
 money to the municipality with which to purchase corn and coals for 
 the poor in times of scarcity. 
 
 Their decay as trade organizations had certainly commenced at the 
 outset of the sixteenth century ; and probably by the end of it they had 
 
 C.C. 9
 
 66 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 practically ceased to be of any use for industrial purposes, prior to the 
 revival which has taken place within living recollection. 
 
 The period of the cesser of their original connexion with the trade 
 and manufactures of London is approximately that of the Reformation ; 
 and as Catholicism was of the essence of their religious rules at the time 
 when they ceased to have any such control, they also ceased to be 
 in any real sense religious fraternities. Thus, of their three original 
 functions, two, those of common worship and association for commercial 
 purposes, became obsolete about four centuries ago. Their remaining 
 function, the dual one of hospitality and charity, became the only one 
 which it was possible for them during a great length of time to dis- 
 charge. It appears that during the last four hundred years, and until 
 recently, the Companies were mainly associations identified with hospi- 
 tality and benevolence. 
 
 The returns discovered by Toulmin Smith present a vivid picture of 
 the state of the Social Gilds and Craft Gilds of the provincial towns 
 of England during the fourteenth century. They are the answers of the 
 Gilds to an inquisition directed by Richard II. and his Parliament 
 sitting at Cambridge in 13S8. Two writs were ordered to be issued 
 to the sheriff of each county, the first calling upon "the masters and 
 wardens of all Gilds and brotherhoods " to send up to the king's 
 council all details as to the foundation, statutes, and property of their 
 Gilds ; the second calling upon the " masters, wardens, and overlookers 
 of all the mysteries and crafts" to send up in the same way copies of 
 their charters or letters patent. These writs are in Latin. The returns 
 are in Latin, Norman- French, or English, chiefly the last. 
 
 It has been computed that at this time there were about 40,000 
 such associations in the provinces. From the mention of sisters in 
 almost all the returns, it may be inferred that women were equally 
 eligible with men for membership, and that they attended the masses, 
 specially solemnized for the benefit of the associations, and their 
 banquets. The number of members varied indefinitely from a very few 
 to 1 5,000. An oath of obedience to the ordinances was administered 
 to each member as he or she joined. The officers and servants con- 
 sisted of an alderman, several stewards, a clerk, and a dean or beadle. 
 The members met from once to four times a year, either in the Gild-hall 
 or Gild-house, if the Gild possessed a hall or house, or at the houses of 
 different members in rotation. They arrived clad in a costume or 
 vesture, the colour and pattern of which had been selected by the 
 founders. At the meetings officers were appointed, new brethren were 
 admitted, and relief was voted. It does not appear whether all the 
 members were summoned for the transaction of ordinarj- business,
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 67 
 
 or whether the aldermen or wardens and stewards practically thein- 
 selves managed the affairs of the Gilds. 
 
 On the " Gild day," generally the day of the saint to whom the Gild 
 was dedicated, the brethren and sisters, arrayed in their vesture, and 
 carrying candles, went in procession to church to hear mass performed 
 at an altar, the light before which was maintained by the Gild. One of 
 the ordinances of many consisted in a bidding prayer, which was said 
 on this occasion, and in some cases at the commencement of all the 
 meetings of the fraternit\'. After the conclusion of the mass alms 
 were distributed to the poor by the stewards, and the Gild returned 
 in procession to their hall to enjoy the anniversary banquet or common 
 meal. 
 
 The brethren and sisters also attended in their garb at the funerals of 
 members and at the performance of masses for the repose of the souls 
 of their dead. The Gild provided the customary wax lights and the 
 pall. 
 
 An entrance fee, a fixed annual payment to the common purse, and 
 dues to the aldermen and officers, were the contribution made by 
 members to the funds of the Gild. In some, each member on joining 
 had to undertake to leave the Gild a legacy at his decease. Many such 
 were left, chiefly of lands, where the Gilds had, as was commonly the 
 case, licences in mortmain. Usually these legacies were coupled with a 
 condition that an obit should be annually performed for the soul of the 
 testator. The Gilds themselves also invested their savings in lands. 
 Many of them by these means became large holders of real property. 
 
 The incomes of all the Gilds were up to a certain point expended in 
 much the same way. The maintenance of the hall, the expense of the 
 entertainments, the payment of salaries, the relief of poor members and 
 of their widows and orphans, the portioning of poor maids, and the 
 payments for funerals and obits were the purposes to which the common 
 funds were primarily applicable. The funds of the Craft Gilds were 
 secondarily applicable to the binding of apprentices, loans to young men 
 starting in business, the purchase of new receipts and inventions, and 
 the prevention of adulteration. Both the Social and Craft Gilds also 
 relieved the poor, supplied the place of highway boards and bridge 
 authorities, maintained churches, endowed schools, colleges, and hospitals, 
 and exhibited pageants. The rules of all the bodies were such as to 
 inculcate respect for the law, commercial honesty, and a high standard 
 of conduct, together with kindness and consideration for the brethren 
 and sisters, and for the poor. They also breathe a spirit of very simple 
 piety. 
 
 The urban Craft Gilds were subject to the jurisdiction of the municipal
 
 68 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 authorities. Their regulations were liable to annulment if inconsistent 
 with the franchises and liberties of the towns ; and the mayors and town 
 councils frequently issued precepts to them with respect to the hours of 
 labour, the methods of manufacture, the education of apprentices, and 
 the relations of the different trades to each other. 
 
 The Gilds of Norman London were voluntary associations, precisely 
 similar to the provincial institutions. They have had a double historj- ; 
 (i) a history in connexion with the municipality of London ; (2) a 
 domestic history, as industrial, mercantile, and charitable corporations. 
 
 1. By the time of Edward II., the government of London had 
 assumed, partly in consequence of the terms of the City's charters, 
 partly as the result of civic revolutions, a popular form, composed of 
 Anglo-Saxon and Norman elements, and substantially identical with 
 the present constitution. The old manorial jurisdictions had been 
 swept away, a civic court of law had been established, and the servile 
 tenures had been replaced by " free burgage," the urban analogue of the 
 rural free socage. 
 
 The Craft Gilds of London, which appear by this time to have 
 absorbed the Knighten Gild and other similar bodies, represented the 
 popular party in the contest, and in the result substituted themselves, 
 though for a short time only, for the wards as the constituent parts of 
 the Municipality. The trades, having in many cases their recognised 
 quarters in the City, the temporary substitution of the bodies which 
 represented them for the wards still left the representation local. This 
 arrangement, however, lasted only till the next reign, when the wards 
 were permanently restored, with the differences consequent upon the 
 abolition of all feudal or semi-feudal privileges. 
 
 2. As regards the domestic history of the Companies as industrial, 
 mercantile, and charitable corporations, their present constitution, in- 
 volving three grades of membership — the Court electing itself by 
 co-optation, the Livery, and the Freemen — was evidently a development 
 of the more pristine system of government, under which these distinc- 
 tions of rank and authority were less broadly and strongly marked. 
 The probability seems to be, that their present framework, one obviously 
 of great advantage to the Courts, dates back before the reign of Ed\\'ard 
 III., in which, as it is well known, they received their parent charters. 
 The origin of the distinction between the Great and the Minor Com- 
 panies is not so clear. 
 
 A craftsman, a member of the Mercers' Gild, became Mayor in 12 14, 
 and before the end of the thirteenth century the Mayors were always 
 members of the Craft Gilds, particularly (i) of the Mercers, Grocers, 
 and Goldsmith,s, which were from the earliest times largely composed
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 69 
 
 of wealthy mercliants and shipowners ; and (2) of Companies such as 
 the early Woolstaplers and Shccnncn, wliich represented the trade 
 in wool and cloth. 
 
 Having regard to the fact, that about a century after this period 
 the leading men of the Gilds were generally Aldermen, and that the 
 Corporation exercised a minute supervision over the trade and manu- 
 factures of London, we regard the Companies as having become in 
 effect a municipal coiniiiittee of trade and manufactures. Soon after 
 they had arrived at this position they were incorporated, and thereupon 
 became practically a State department for the superintendence of the 
 trade and manufactures of London. 
 
 Long before their incorporation, the Gilds had held the sites of their 
 halls and almshouses and other real property, houses, shops, and ware- 
 houses. The tenure in time became " free burgage." An incidence of 
 this tenure, and an important one as regards the Companies, was that 
 it supplied the means of going beyond licences in mortmain. B3' the 
 custom of the City, public bodies could accept lands held by citizens 
 in free burgage and devised to them while so held without any limitation 
 as to amount. The Companies appear to have become large purchasers 
 of lands under the fiction of holding them by devise in free burgage. 
 A Company found the money, and had the land purchased and conveyed 
 to trustees in trust to convey it to some one person in trust to devise 
 it to the Company by his will. The association then obtained the pur- 
 chased land under the will of the nominee of their nominees. 
 
 Legacies for religious and benevolent purposes, some internal, some 
 external, were early bequeathed to the Gilds. Their large trust-estate 
 dates from the fourteenth century. It for some time constituted, in 
 conjunction with the monastic and parochial endowments of the City, 
 an organization of eleemosynary and educational charity, which was 
 of great importance in the absence of a poor law. 
 
 By their charters, and also by grants from the Municipality of London, 
 between the Crown and which there was much jealousy, the Companies 
 obtained (i) monopolies, and (2) powers of search. They assumed to 
 prevent non-members from trading and manufacturing, and they visited 
 shops, manufactories, and houses for the purpose of testing wares, which 
 were required by Act of Parliament, municipal precepts, or their own 
 private regulations, to be of a certain standard or quality. They also 
 enforced a strict system of seven years' apprenticeship. 
 
 As regards powers conferred by statute upon the Companies or at 
 present exercised by them by virtue of custom or in reliance on the 
 terms of their charters : 
 
 I. The Fishmongers, relying on their charters, but without authority
 
 JO GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of any statute, appoint and pay " fish meters," who attend at BilHngsgate 
 Market, examine the fisli offered for sale there, and condemn any which 
 may be proved to be unsound. The Company defrays the expense 
 of deodorizing and removing the fish thus condemned. It also dis- 
 charges the duty of prosecuting offenders against the provisions of the 
 "Fisheries (Oyster, Crab, and Lobster) Act," 40 & 41 Vict., c. 42, with 
 respect to the sale of undersized fish or of fish during close time. 
 
 2. The Goldsmiths, under the acts 12 Geo. II., c. 26 (an act obtained 
 at the instance of the Company themselves) and 7 & 8 Vict., c. 22, were 
 till recent!}' empowered to assay and mark plate, and to prosecute 
 persons who in any part of England sold plate requiring to be marked 
 which is below standard, or who forge the Company's marks or utter 
 wares bearing counterfeit marks. Also under the Coinage Act of 1870 
 provision is made for an annual trial of the pyx ; and this trial, in 
 accordance with a practice which has prevailed since the reign of 
 Edward I., takes place at Goldsmiths' Hall. 
 
 3. The freemen of the Vintners who have become such by patrimony 
 or by apprenticeship, and the widows of such freemen, enjoy by custom 
 the right of selling foreign wines without a licence throughout England 
 on certain ancient highways. They also, by virtue of an ancient custom, 
 employ a staff of tackle porters, who unload wines at the London Docks. 
 The Vintners' and Dyers' Companies are by ancient custom associated 
 with the Crown as joint protectors of the swans of the Thames. 
 
 4. The Apothecaries have powers under the Apothecaries Act, 181 5, 
 and the Apothecaries Act Amendment Act, 1874, to examine candi- 
 dates for licences to practise as apothecaries, to confer such licences, 
 and to recover penalties from persons so practising without licence. 
 They also maintain extensive chemical and pharmaceutical laboratories 
 in connexion with their hall, and keep up a botanical garden in Chelsea, 
 in respect of which they employ a botanical demonstrator to give 
 instruction in botany. 
 
 5. The Founders' Company stamps weights under the acts 5 & 6 
 Will. IV., c. 63, and 41 & 42 Vict., c. 49, s. 6y. 
 
 6. The Gunmakers have a proof house in London, and have powers 
 under the Gun Barrel Act, 1868 (31 & 32 Vict., c. 113), for enforcing 
 the proving and marking of guns, pistols, and small arms, and the 
 prosecution of offenders against the act. 
 
 7. The Scriveners, under the act 41 Geo. III., c. 69, s. 13, conduct an 
 examination for admission to the office of a notary, and can prevent 
 any person practising as such who has not passed such examination. 
 
 8. The Stationers, who are exclusively craftsmen, have kept a register 
 of all publications since 1557; and this is legal evidence under the
 
 GENERAL IXTRODUCTION. 7 I 
 
 Copyright Act of 184.', althoutjh the entry is not compiilsor)-. The 
 register from 1557 to 1640 has been printed. This Company also 
 carries on in its corporate capacity the trade of a publisher, its princifial 
 publications, however, at present being Almanacks. 
 
 The attendance at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs of representa- 
 tives or members of some of the Companies was in some instances 
 not discontinued till a comparatively recent time ; and, besides those 
 chartered or customary functions which we have just mentioned, there 
 were privileges, such as the charge of the City Beam by the Grocers' 
 Compan}-, and the superintendence of BlackwcU Hall by the Drapers' 
 Company, which were continued after the Gilds had ceased to represent 
 the trade and commerce of London. The date at which they definiteh' 
 ceased to do so may be fixed at the Restoration. 
 
 London was during all this time a great manufacturing town, in or 
 near which clothworking, the smelting of iron, the making of armour 
 and bows, the working of silk and leather, the manufacture of the 
 precious metals, and other minor industries were practised with much 
 success. It was also the chief port of northern Europe, and as all the 
 merchants of the Staple were members of the Gilds, and corresponded 
 with the merchants of the Staple in the provincial towns and on the 
 Continent, there can be little doubt that the halls of the Gilds were 
 practicall}' exchanges. The leading members seem also to have given 
 advice to the Privy Council as to the mercantile policy of the Crown. 
 
 Throughout the same period, the State and the Municipality sought 
 to regulate, not only the manufactures and commerce of London, but 
 also the wages, habits, and even the dress of the citizens to a degree 
 not always consistent with personal liberty ; and this system of statutes 
 and precepts was to a great extent administered through the agenc)- 
 of the Companies. Artisans and tradesmen who made or sold bad 
 articles were tried b}' the wardens, and if found guilty were punished 
 b\- the civic power, or occasionally by distresses levied by the Companies 
 themselves. ■' 
 
 As early, however, as the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., the 
 mediaeval theory of status as the basis of the relations of master and 
 servant and of employer and employed was being gradually undermined 
 as villeinage disappeared, and the Reformation began to make progress. 
 The Gilds, which had their origin in an earlier conception of societ}-, 
 appear to have gradually excited the hostility of the artisans of London, 
 who naturally viewed the monopolies and other privileges obtained from 
 the Crown with jealousy, as they were apt to be beneficial to a limited 
 number or a favoured grade. The constitution of the Gilds was only 
 suited to a limited area, to the inspection of factories and shops in one
 
 72 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 street or one quarter, so that the spread of London beyond its walls 
 and the growth of the great suburbs, particularly those of Westminster 
 and Southwark, must have seriously interfered with their efficiency as 
 superintendents of production. The later charters generally extend the 
 local limits of the trade control, in order to meet this difficulty. 
 
 These causes tended to cripple the Gilds in the capacity of a State 
 department and municipal committee Yet they continued to receive 
 charters at the beginning of every reign for a long time after this date. 
 Indeed, some were founded, both in London and in the provinces, 
 as late as the time of Anne ; and the term of apprenticeship sanc- 
 tioned by the London and provincial Gilds, vis. seven years, was adopted 
 in an act of 1662, which was not repealed till 1814. 
 
 For a long time, however, after the seventeenth century, these bodies 
 were an important element in the City. The wealthy bankers, mer- 
 chants, and shipowners who traded in the City had houses there, and 
 belonged to the Companies. The first quarter of the present century 
 is the approximate date of the cessation of the residential connexion 
 of the Companies with the City. 
 
 Provincial and Continental Gilds. 
 
 Turning now to (i) the provincial Gilds of England, (2) the Gilds of 
 continental countries. 
 
 I. It is certain that of the 40,000 communities which are alleged 
 to have existed in the provincial towns and rural districts of England 
 during the Middle Ages, only a very few survive. Many were of 
 course monasteries, nunneries, or chauntries ; these were suppressed, and 
 their lands confiscated, at the Reformation. Many, again, though not 
 altogether clerical institutions — for instance, schools or hospitals — were 
 so connected with the dissolved orders, or had so much property settled 
 to superstitious uses, that they perished along with the monasteries. 
 
 It does not appear that all the property of the Gilds in these towns 
 was confiscated ; and there is evidence that one Company at least was 
 allowed to redeem confiscated lands in the same way as the City 
 Companies redeemed theirs. Their halls also are not likely to have 
 been held to superstitious uses. 
 
 In the histories of some of the old towns of England, an account, 
 though not a full one, is to be found of their early Gilds. We may 
 take the cases of (i) Bristol, (2) Coventry, (3) Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
 (4) Norwich, (5) York. 
 
 In these five places there existed upwards of 150 Gilds, corporations 
 in every way resembling the London Companies, and some of them.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 such as the Merchants' Company of York, the Merchant Adventurers' 
 Company of Newcastle, the Merchant Adventurers' Company of Bristol, 
 and the Gild of St. George of Norwich, bodies of great dignity and 
 opulence. These and the rest have disappeared, except the Merchant 
 Adventurers' Company of Newcastle, the Merchant Adventurers' Com- 
 pany of Bristol, which has, at this day, a large amount of house-property 
 at Clifton, and a few insignificant Companies containing only a few 
 members. 
 
 There are historical traces of the existence of many of these bodies 
 down to a period long after the Reformation, and indeed till the present 
 century ; of sales by them of their halls ; of transferences of their alms- 
 houses ; and of sales of their estates, particularly houses, as the number 
 of members decreased. 
 
 We assume that the surviving members divided the proceeds of these 
 sales, as there can be no doubt that they were entitled to do, unless 
 they held the property subject to some trust. A similar course has been 
 taken in London in the cases of Serjeants' Inn, Doctors' Commons, 
 Clement's Inn, Barnard's Inn, and Staple Inn. So too the few surviving 
 members of the Fullers' Gild at Newcastle obtained an order from the 
 Master of the Rolls to divide the remaining propert}- and dissolve the 
 association. But many corporations, which were trustees of charities, 
 appear to have dissolved themselves without making provision for the 
 future maintenance of their charities. 
 
 It seems not improbable that some of the London Gilds may have 
 taken a similar course. At the time of the revival of the Needlemakers' 
 Companj', the number of members had become very small, and, but for 
 the influx of new members, the survivors might have divided the assets. 
 But we have not met with an\- actual proof of a London Company 
 so doing. 
 
 2. The Ro}-al Commission obtained information, through the Foreign 
 Office and otherwise, as to the history of the Gilds of France, Belgium, 
 the Netherlands, Switzerland, German)-, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Ital\-, 
 Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Turkey. 
 
 Two learned archteologists, M. Pigeonneau, Professor at the Sorbonne, 
 and M. Levasseur, of the French Institute, sent interesting communi- 
 cations on the subject of the French Gilds. These gentlemen, like the 
 English and German antiquaries, adopt the classification of the medieval 
 Companies into Merchant Gilds, of which they choose the Parisian 
 Company of Mercers as an example, and Craft Gilds. We learn from 
 them that all such bodies in France were suppressed during the third 
 year of the Revolution, 1791. They had existed from a period prior 
 to the twelfth centur}'. They were reorganized by Colbert in 1673, and 
 
 C.C. 10
 
 74 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 their suppression was attempted by Turgot, during his short ministr}- 
 in 1776. They were very numerous. At the Revolution, fifty still 
 existed in Paris. They possessed halls, almshouses, and chapels, but 
 not much other real property. Their funds consisted chiefly of accumu- 
 lations of dues and fines, and during the eighteenth century they had 
 become impoverished. At their suppression, their property was devoted 
 to State purposes ; but compensation was in some instances paid to 
 existing members. Patrimony appears to have entered, though to a 
 limited extent, into their constitution. 
 
 In Belgium the Gilds were suppressed, and their property con- 
 fiscated in 1794. 
 
 In the Netherlands the trade Gilds were suppressed in 1798 ; their 
 property was vested in commissioners. In 1820 the municipalities 
 were directed to sell the property and hold it in trust for the relief of 
 indigent members and of the poor of the communes. 
 
 In Switzerland many of the trade Gilds still exist under the names 
 of " abbayes " or " zunfte," and have — especially, it is believed, at 
 Berne — considerable real property. Some have been dissolved, either 
 dividing the estate among the survivors, or applying it to public 
 purposes, particularly education. 
 
 In German)', under the " Gewerbe-Ordnung " of 1869, an act depriv- 
 ing the ancient Gilds of their privileges, placing them under communal 
 or State control, and rendering them incapable of acquiring land with- 
 out the consent of the communal authority, these bodies began 
 rapidly to disappear. An act of 1878 reversed the policy of the 
 " Gewerbe-Ordnung," and in 1881 one was passed for the encouragement 
 of the Gilds. They have now power " to create industrial schools, 
 to make rules for advancing the technical education of masters and 
 journeymen, to establish a system of examinations, to create tontine 
 and sick and invalid funds, and to appoint tribunals of arbitration." 
 
 In Austria-Hungary the " Innungen " (Trade Gilds) were abolished, 
 and their monopolies repealed, by a law of 1859. The act establishes 
 in their stead " Genossenschaften," local bodies representing the master- 
 manufacturers and the journeymen — apparently trade-councils and 
 tribunals of arbitration, and having in some cases technical schools 
 attached to them. The act provides for the sale of the halls of the 
 " Innungen " and for the payment of the proceeds, after settlement 
 of the debts of the suppressed bodies, to the Genossenschaften. 
 
 In Norway and Sweden the old trade corporations, which are 
 described as having been a serious drawback to the development of the 
 native industries, were dissolved in 1846. 
 
 In Italy, the ancient Gilds, with a few exceptions, were abolished
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 75 
 
 during the present century, prior to the union of the Kingdom. In 
 1878 and 1879 acts were passed abolishing all monopolies ; but pro- 
 vision is made for the regulation of certain trades by the municipalities 
 and for " institutions of mutual assistance," i.e. benefit societies, in 
 connexion with such trades. 
 
 In Spain many of the mediajval Craft Gilds {Gremios) still exist. 
 Their rules as to apprenticeship were cancelled in 1836; but they were 
 not dissolved, and still survive as benefit societies and trade councils. 
 They possess halls or houses of meeting, but no other real property. 
 In Portugal the Craft Gilds were suppressed in 1834. They appear 
 to have possessed little real property. In Russia and Turkey, there 
 are at the present day many institutions resembling the Craft Gilds 
 of the Middle Ages. In all these countries the Gilds seem to have 
 been much more exclusively associations of members of trades than 
 was ever the case with the London Companies. 
 
 There appear to have been always three grades of membership of 
 the London Livery Companies: (i) mere membership, the possession 
 of the Freedom, which makes a freeman or freewoman ; {2) member- 
 ship of what is called the Livery ; (3) a place on the Court or governing 
 body. 
 
 The Freedom has been from time immemorial obtainable in four 
 ways: (i) by apprenticeship or servitude; (2) by patrimony; (3) by 
 redemption ; (4) by gift. The last is purely honorary. 
 
 A system of apprenticeship was an essential element in the Gilds 
 from which the Companies sprang. After their incorporation, the term 
 of service, the premium, and the status and duties of apprentices, were 
 regulated by bye-laws framed by the Courts, and submitted by them 
 (i) to the Judges, (2) to the Municipality. The youths were articled on 
 these terms as apprentices to freemen for a period of seven years, at the 
 expiration of which, upon proof that they had duly served their masters 
 during the seven years, they became entitled to the Freedom of the 
 Company. 
 
 Two ceremonies were involved in this method of admission : (i) that 
 of binding ; (2) that of conferring the Freedom at the expiration of 
 the articles. Each took place at the hall of the Company, or, if the 
 Company had not a hall, at the Guildhall, a name which is itself a 
 memorial of the importance of the Gilds of London in earl}' times. 
 The father or guardian of the apprentice paid the Company a nominal 
 fee and some small sums to the officers and servants in respect of the 
 binding ; and when the apprentice was admitted to the Freedom, he 
 also paid a nominal fee to the Compan\-, and some small sums to 
 the officers and ser\'ants in respect of his admission.
 
 76 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Of patrimoii}- \vc have already spoken. Every son or daughter of a 
 person who has been duly admitted to the Freedom has always been 
 entitled to claim, when of age, his or her admission to the Freedom upon 
 proof of (i) his or her legitimacy, (2) the membership of his or her father 
 at the time of his or her birth. The ceremony of admission took place 
 at the hall of the Company, or at the Guildhall, and the novice paid an 
 entrance fee and small charges of about the same amount as in the 
 case of admission by apprenticeship. It was far more usual for sons 
 to follow their fathers' occupations during the Middle Ages than it is 
 at present ; but Gilds into which members were admitted by patrimony 
 must always have contained persons of no occupation, or of occupations 
 different from those from which the Gilds derived their names. 
 
 Apprenticeship also seems to have been by no means confined to the 
 trades of the Gilds. From an early period a practice prevailed of 
 bestowing the freedom on persons who had been bound to any of the 
 members, irrespective of their callings. Such bindings were foreign to 
 the ordinances of most of the Gilds, and involved an infringement of 
 the rights of the Gilds which represented the trades, if any, of the 
 apprentices. Also from an early period purely colourable bindings 
 were allowed ; that is, youths were bound as a matter of form to persons 
 whose trades they did not mean to follow, and who undertook no obli- 
 gations in respect of their protection or education, in order that they 
 might on coming of age be able to claim the Freedom of the Com- 
 panies of their nominal masters. 
 
 This colourable apprenticeship was no wrong, it being one of the 
 modes of admission, and enabled a man of moderate means to obtain 
 for his son a position in the Company, which otherwise he would 
 not have been able to do, and which might be to his advantage in after 
 life. It must be remembered that this has been the custom of centuries. 
 
 The Freedom has been (i) sold, (2) conferred, like that of the City, 
 as an honour upon personages of distinction, from a very early period. 
 The former method of admission is called admission by redemption ; 
 the latter, admission honoris causa. Redemption does not at present 
 exist in the Grocers' Company, but does so (with a limitation to mem- 
 bers of the trade in those few Companies which still have a trade, such 
 as the Apothecaries and the Stationers) in all the others. The Court is 
 and has for centuries been the admitting authority both to the Freedom 
 and the Livery. 
 
 The entrance-fee paid in respect of admission to the Freedom b)- 
 redemption seems to have always varied with the civic and general 
 standing of the several Companies. At present the maximum seems 
 to be about loS/.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 77 
 
 Above the mere fi-eemen . and freewomcn have always been the 
 members of tlie Livery, those who, as it was teclinically expressed, 
 had the clothinir of tlie brotherhood. They were cither (i) craftsmen, 
 employers of labour ; or (2) non craftsmen, persons of some wealth 
 and position, who had joined the Company b}- jiatrimony or b}' 
 purchase. 
 
 From very earl)- times down to the present day the Court of Alder- 
 men, in the exercise of a sort of visiting jurisdiction, has claimed the 
 right of authorizing the Companies to organize a Clothing or Livery ; 
 two terms which custom made synonymous, but of which the latter was 
 originally tantamount only to the delivery of the Gild suit. By an act 
 of the Court of Aldermen, dated July 27, 1697, it is enacted "that no 
 person shall be allowed to take upon himself the clothing of any of the 
 twelve Companies unless he have an estate of 1,000/., of the inferior 
 Companies unless he have an estate of 500/." ; and the spirit of this 
 property qualification is still generally observed. 
 
 On admission to the Livery, larger fees are payable than in the case 
 of admission to the Freedom. A distinction is always made between 
 the case of persons who have entered by patrimony or by servitude and 
 that of persons who have entered b)' purchase, the latter class being 
 compelled to pay far higher for the new privilege. In addition to 
 the fees and fines, each freeman and liveryman has always paid 
 quarterly to the common purse a quarterage or quarterwage. It is 
 estimated that there are about 7,300 liverymen altogether, and about 
 1,500 of these constitute the respective Courts. 
 
 The Courts consisted originally of the founders. As vacancies took 
 place by death, these persons elected members of the Liveries to fill 
 them. The Courts at an early stage consisted of a master or prime 
 warden, and two or more other wardens, and a number of" assistants." ' 
 
 At the present day the governing bodies are called the Courts of 
 Assistants. A new member, on election by co-optation, generally took 
 office as renter-warden, an onerous position. He was promoted from 
 wardenship to wardenship till he became prime warden or master. 
 After having "passed the chair" he became an ordinary Assistant 
 for life. At nearly all the steps a fee or fine was charged. At the 
 present time the system is similar, and most of the Assistants have 
 served as wardens, and have passed the chair. 
 
 ' " Assistants are to be traced in the councils of twelve of the Saxon Gilds, and in 
 the eschevins and elders of the Norman era. The first hint of them in the Livery 
 Companies occurs in the records of the Grocers, under the year 1379, when six persons 
 were chosen to aid the wardens in the discharge of their duties." — Herbert on the 
 Co?i!j)ames, \oI. i., p. 53.
 
 yS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The fees payable in respect of the several promotions are consider- 
 able. A person joining a prominent London Company as a livery- 
 man by purchase might, in his progress from the position of a mere 
 freeman to the mastership, have to pay 200/., or even upwards of 300/. 
 in fees and fines. The numbers of the Courts vary from about twelve 
 to between thirty and forty. 
 
 The privileges which the members of the City Companies at present 
 possess, apart from their position as voters on the municipal register of 
 London, are as follow : 
 
 I. Freemen and freewomen (of the latter of whom, however, there 
 are now scarcely any), and the widows and orphans of freemen, are 
 entitled in case of poverty and in old age (i) to be received into the 
 almshouses of the Companies which have almshouses ; (2) to pensions 
 and casual relief out of the trust funds which have been left to the 
 Companies for that purpose. They are also commonly relieved out 
 of the Companies' corporate income. 
 
 The charters granted frequently refer to the relief of the poor 
 members of the Gilds in such way as to shew that a main object of the 
 grant of power to hold land in mortmain was the maintenance of alms- 
 houses. For instance, the preamble of the Mercers' charter is as follows : 
 " In consideration that several men of the mystery of mercery of the 
 City of London often by misfortunes of the sea and other unfortunate 
 casualties /lair bccouic so iutpoverislied and destitute that they have little 
 or nothing in consequence to subsist on unless from the alms and 
 assistance of the faithful." The Grocers' charter grants to the wardens 
 and commonalty of the mystery that they may "acquire lands " in the 
 City and its suburbs "to the value of twenty marks per year, to have 
 and hold to them and their successors towards ///<' support of tlie poor 
 men of the said eoiniitoiialty." The Fishmongers' charter similarly con- 
 tains a grant of power to hold land "/(;;■ the sustentation of the poor men 
 and women of the said coinmona/tyP 
 
 The Goldsmiths' charter recites that " many persons of that trade by 
 fire and the smoke of quiel;silver had lost their sight ; and that others 
 of them by working in that trade became so crazed and infirm that they 
 were disabled to subsist but of relief fi'om others ; and that divers of 
 the said City, compassionating the condition of such, were disposed to 
 give and grant divers tenements and rents in the said City to the value 
 of twenty pounds per annum to the Company of the said craft towards 
 the maintenance of tlie said blind, iveak, and infirm." 
 
 Some of the charters do not contain clauses of this benevolent kind ; 
 but during this period a religious or benevolent object may generalK' be 
 presumed as regards mortmain lands.
 
 GENKKAL INTRODUCTION. 79 
 
 All the great and several of the small Companies have endowed alms- 
 houses. Originally, in many cases, the almshouses adjoined the halls ; 
 nearly all were within the City or its liberties. Ikit as the value of 
 building land in the Cit}' has rapidly increased during the present 
 century, the Companies have sometimes found it profitable to let the 
 sites of these foundations for the construction of warehouses and offices, 
 and to rebuild the almshouses on less expensive sites in other parts of 
 London or in the countr)-. The trust-funds for their support and the 
 relief of poor members, their widows and orphans, are very ample, and 
 often partly consist of contributions from the corporate income. 
 
 As a rule, a claim to relief in case of poverty is the only privilege 
 which the possession of the mere freedom of a Company confers. In 
 a single case, that of the Clothworkers, the almspeople are invited to an 
 entertainment. In that Company, also, and in two or three others, the 
 freemen are enabled to educate their children on advantageous terms, 
 owing to admissions to Christ's Hospital, which some of the Companies 
 have bought for the purpose, and to the Companies' own schools. 
 
 The privileges of liverymen as regards charitable relief are similar 
 to those of freemen ; but the pensions voted to them and their widows 
 and orphans are larger. They have also generally a legal right to a 
 place at those banquets which are chartered franchises, and they are 
 invited by the Courts as a matter of favour to other entertainments, 
 sometimes, in the more opulent Companies, to two or three banquets in 
 the course of a year. In most of the Companies, when a liveryman 
 petitions successfully for relief from the trust or corporate funds, he has 
 to resign his position on the Livery, and has the amount of his livery- 
 fine returned to him. The pensions voted to decayed liverymen, their 
 widows and orphans, vary, according to the wealth of the Companies, 
 from 50/. to 150/. a year. There are a few Companies, the Iron- 
 mongers and Joiners, and for some purposes the Mercers and Coopers, 
 in which the Livery (and not inerely the master wardens and assistants) 
 constitute the governing body. 
 
 The Courts have in their hands, as a rule, the entire control of the 
 Companies' affairs, the appointment of the staffs of salaried officials 
 which the Companies employ, the management of the Companies' 
 corporate property, the admissions to the Freedom, Livery, and Court, 
 the administration of the Companies' charitable trusts, the appoint- 
 ments of the incumbents of livings and of the masters of schools. 
 They are also the entertainers, and have, as of course, a place at all 
 the Companies' banquets. In the great Companies a member of the 
 Livery is seldom elected to the Court till he has been on the Livery 
 for fifteen or twenty years ; but seniority is not the sole criterion
 
 8o GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of fitness. Regard appears to be paid to social position, business 
 capacity, and interest in the charities of the Companies. Also in some 
 of the Companies a liveryman is at once promoted to the Court on 
 his election as an Alderman. 
 
 Members of the Courts, their widows and orphans, are, like freemen 
 and liverymen, eligible for pensions and charitable relief out of the trust 
 and corporate funds of the Companies in case of pov^erty. The highest 
 pensions commonly voted to such persons amount to 200/. The 
 average amount is from 50/. to 100/. Formerly it was not necessary 
 for a member of the Court to retire on making an application for a 
 pension. But at present the same course is followed as in the case of 
 liverymen ; the applicants are removed from the Court, and their fees 
 are returned to them. With rare exceptions, all the proceedings of the 
 Courts are secret. Their accounts are not published, and the liverymen 
 and freemen have not access to the records of their proceedings. 
 
 The substitution of the Companies for the wards as divisions of the 
 Municipality of London lasted only a k\v years in a very early epoch. 
 The householders in the wards, being freemen of the City, are now and 
 have always been, except during this short interval, the electors to the 
 courts of Aldermen and of Common Council respectively. But till 
 1835 the Freedom of the City could only be obtained through a Livery 
 Company. In that year the Municipality of London decided to confer 
 it irrespective of the Companies on certain terms through the City 
 Chamberlain. But the freemen of the Companies have still the right to 
 claim as such the Freedom of the City; and it is not uncommon for them 
 to pay the City fee to the officers of the Company, on joining, for pay- 
 ment over to the Chamberlain. On promotion to the Livery, this is still 
 more usual. However, since 1835, the Freedom of a Company and the 
 Freedom of the City have not been convertible terms ; and so far back 
 as 1837 the Corporation possessed a very slight, hardly more than a 
 nominal, control over the Companies. 
 
 This control was due to the " Common Hall," which consists of 
 those liverymen of the Companies who are also freemen of the City. 
 It still proposes to the Court of Aldermen two Aldermen, one of 
 whom the Court elects Lord Mayor, and itself elects the Sheriffs, the 
 Chamberlain, the Bridgemaster, and the auditors of the City and 
 Bridge-House accounts. The election of the Lord Mayor takes place 
 on September 29, that of the other officers on Midsummer Day. 
 
 Prior to the Reform Bill (2 Will. IV., c. 45), the liverymen of the 
 Common Hall constituted the parliamentary constituency of London. 
 Every voter had to be a freeman of the City and a liveryman of a 
 Compan}-. The Reform Bill preserves the franchises of the liverymen
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 8 I 
 
 in conjunction with those of the ordinary electors, with the limitation 
 that, in order to vote as a liveryman, it is necessary to have taken up 
 the freedom of the City prior to March i, 1 831, or to have obtained it 
 subsequently by servitude or by patrimony through a qualified person, 
 and also to have been resident within seven miles of the Mansion 
 House for the six months preceding registration. 
 
 In addition to the vote in Common Hall and the parliamentary 
 suffrage, those members of the Companies who have become free of the 
 City possess the other rights of citizens. These were formerly much 
 more important than they now are ; but even at the present day none 
 except freemen can claim the benefit of the custom of the City of 
 London. 
 
 The part played by the leading Companies in early times in civic 
 pageants is well known. The ceremony of inauguration formerly took 
 place on October 29, or if that fell on a Sunday, on the 30th. Lord 
 Mayor's Day is now celebrated on November 9. The Companies to 
 which the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs belong usually join in the 
 procession ; and the former for the time being takes precedence over 
 all the others. 
 
 Number of Meiiihcrs. 
 
 There is great difficulty in forming an estimate of the number of 
 freemen. They are often never heard of after they have taken out 
 their freedom. They change their residences and cease to pay 
 quarterage, when their names are erased from the lists. Sometimes, 
 years after this has been done, the Companies are reminded of their 
 existence by a claim to charitable relief It seems not improbable 
 that there may be 10,000 freemen altogether. There are perhaps 
 upwards of 1,000 connected with the Goldsmiths and Drapers re- 
 spectively. The number of those belonging to the other great 
 Companies is much smaller. 
 
 Some of the minor Companies are in point of numbers and wealth 
 equal to the less opulent of the great Companies. Such are the 
 Armourers, Carpenters, Leathersellers, Brewers, Saddlers, and Cutlers. 
 
 The Companies named in the Second Report of the Commission 
 appointed to inquire into Municipal Corporations in England and 
 Wales are eighty-nine in number, twelve great Companies, seventy- 
 seven minor Companies. Out of these latter * thirteen proved to 
 
 ' These were the Companies of Combmakers, Fishermen, Gardeners, Hat-band 
 iNIakers, Longbow String Makers, Paviours, Pinmakers, Silk Weavers, Silk Throwsters, 
 Soapmakers, Starchmakers, Tobacco-pipe Makers, and Woodniongers. The names 
 of some supposed members of these Companies were discovered by reference to 
 
 C.C. II
 
 82 " GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 liave become extinct since the date of the Report, while four ' turned 
 out not to be Livery Companies. The Needlemakers, Basketmakers, 
 Turners, Shipwrights, and Fan makers, the charter of the last of which 
 was recently recovered by accident, have been resuscitated of late years. 
 
 Two of the largest liveries are those of the Loriners and Spectacle- 
 makers, bodies membership of which appears to entail little advantage 
 beyond the municipal and parliamentary franchises. So far as the 
 number of votes is concerned, the Loriners stand at the head of all 
 the Gilds in the regulation lists of iSgr, and appear to have always 
 occupied a prominent rank in this respect. The liverymen, from 
 whom the members of the Courts are .selected, are a body consisting 
 chiefly of persons following professions, persons engaged in commerce, 
 or persons who have retired from business. A considerable number 
 are men of some eminence. Many members of the House of Commons 
 are liverymen. The City is represented by the Aldermen, most of 
 whom belong to several Companies, and the Common Councilmen. 
 The Courts consist, speaking generally, of liverj'men of some fifteen 
 years' standing, mostly promoted according to seniority. We have 
 observed too, that admission by patrimony produces a natural effect 
 on the constitution of the Liveries and on that of the Courts. Where 
 a family continues prosperous from generation to generation, it acquires 
 a position of considerable importance on the Court and Livery of a 
 Company. A remarkable instance is that of the Mercers' Company, 
 the Court of which is recruited from a Livery of ninety-seven, on which 
 certain families are represented by as many as nine or ten members. 
 
 It cannot be of any real importance whether the Courts be 
 composed of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty members, when their sur- 
 roundings and social positions are considered. It must be remembered 
 that every liveryman aspires to attain the Court, and that to enable a 
 fair proportion of the Liver}'' to do this, it is absolutely necessary that 
 the Courts be large. It may also be pointed out that each member 
 has paid a sum according to the stains of his Company for his seat, 
 and that he does not reach this till he is far advanced in life, that some 
 die before and some soon after their election on the Court, before they 
 
 the City registers, and communications were sent to these persons with a view to 
 discovering the circumstances luider whicli the Companies had been wound up, and 
 what had taken place with respect to the property, if any, remaining at the date of 
 the dissolution. We did not in any case receive an answer to these communica- 
 tions. The Paviours' Company has left some papers deposited in the Guildhall 
 Library, and these we caused to be examined. No reference was, however, found 
 in them to the circumstances under which the Company had been dissolved. 
 
 ' These were the Carmen, the Fellowship-Porters, the Parish Clerks, and the 
 AVatermen and Litrhtermen.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. ' 83 
 
 have received even a return of the fines and fees paid by them to their 
 Company. 
 
 Althoui^h only 1,500 of the Livery out of a total of about 20,000 
 liverymen and freemen are members of the Courts of the Companies 
 at any one time, each qualified liveryman and freeman in rotation, 
 if life allowed, would become a member. The whole of the remaining 
 18,500 members have a vested interest in the properties of the Com- 
 panies, and enjoy advantages and privileges as such. There is no 
 evidence, and not even a suggestion, of a contemplated payment of 
 any dividend or of any misappropriation or division of the funds ; and 
 nothing of the sort could legally take place without the consent of 
 each and every member, be he liveryman or be he freeman. 
 
 Three great events have exercised an important influence on the 
 history of the Companies ; vie. (i) the Reformation, (2) the Fire of 
 London, (3) the Plantation of Ulster.' 
 
 (i) In the course of the suppression of the religious houses, many 
 lands held by the Companies to superstitious uses, such as the per- 
 formance of masses for the dead and the maintenance of chauntries, 
 were confiscated. The Companies were, however, allowed to redeem 
 the lands, on a representation that they were required for the purposes 
 of the eleemosj^nary and educational charities of which they were 
 trustees. 
 
 (2) The halls, almshouses, and house property of the Companies 
 suffered severely in the Fire of 1666. Its effects for a time greatly 
 impoverished them, and large sums were raised by the governing 
 bodies for rebuilding. In many cases they were never restored. 
 
 (3) At the time of the colonization of Ulster certain of the Com- 
 panies united to purchase and undertake the settlement of a large 
 tract of country in the county of Londonderry. 
 
 The growth of the great municipal estate, which is hereinafter 
 described, may be traced down from the twelfth centurs-. The Com- 
 panies have been purchasers of land in the City of London and 
 elsew'here, and many hundreds of legacies of land, or of money to 
 be converted into land, have been left to them for charitable purposes. 
 Their wealth has probably increased with each century ; but the chief 
 increase has taken place during the present one, as a consequence of 
 the recent rise in the value of house-property in the City of London 
 
 ' Long before this movement on the part of the Crown in 1608, Robert Payne, a 
 surveyor and land-agent, and twenty-five partners, undertook a settlement of lands 
 in Ireland, subsequently to the so-called pacification in Elizabeth's reign under Sir 
 George Carew; and another of the company published an account of the good success 
 of the project, in order to encourage colonists, in 1589.
 
 84 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Within the next twenty years the lapse of old leases will still further 
 tend to augment the aggregate. 
 
 On the whole, we estimate the trust and corporate income of the 
 Companies for 1879-80 as between 750,000/. and 800,000/., a sum ex- 
 ceeding the income of the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge 
 and of the colleges therein at the time when a Royal Commission in- 
 quired into these learned bodies. 
 
 Taking the real property at a number of years' purchase, which we 
 are informed cannot be excessive, and the income of their personal 
 property as representing an ordinary percentage on the capital, we are 
 of opinion that the capital value of the Companies' property cannot 
 be less than fifteen millions sterling. 
 
 The income arising from this property is partly (i.) corporate income ; 
 (ii.) trust income ; i.e. income which the Companies or their Courts are 
 bound to apply in accordance with ia) the wills of founders, iU) Acts of 
 Parliament, {c) the decrees of the High Court of Justice, and {d) schemes 
 framed by the Charity and Endowed Schools Commissions. 
 
 The following list shews the income of the great Companies in order 
 of civic precedence and of the minor Companies in alphabetical order, 
 as it was returned in 1882 ; and it is (with very few exceptions) sub- 
 stantially the same at present. We should state that the balance in 
 hand at the beginning of each financial year is excluded, as not being 
 income. Such sum is considerable ; and we have made an addition 
 to the corporate income, which may be supposed approximately to 
 represent the annual interest thereupon. 
 
 Great Companies. 
 
 {for 1S79-80) Corporate. 
 
 Trust. 
 
 
 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 Mercers 82,758 
 
 47,341 
 
 35,417 
 
 Grocers 
 
 
 
 38,236 
 
 17,71^ 
 
 500 
 
 Drapers 
 
 
 
 78,654 
 
 50,141 
 
 28,513 
 
 Fishmongers 
 
 
 
 50,713 
 
 46,913 
 
 3,800 
 
 Goldsmiths 
 
 
 
 54,297 
 
 43,50s 
 
 10,792 
 
 Skinners . 
 
 
 
 28,927' 
 
 18,977 
 
 9,950 
 
 Merchant Taylors 
 
 
 
 43,311^ 
 
 31,243 
 
 12,068 
 
 Haberdashers . 
 
 
 
 29,032 
 
 9,032 
 
 20,000 
 
 Salters 
 
 
 
 24,040 
 
 18,892 
 
 2,148 
 
 Ironmongers 
 
 
 
 21,647 
 
 9,625 
 
 12,822 
 
 Vintners . 
 
 
 
 10,887 
 
 9,365 
 
 1,522 
 
 Clothworkers . 
 
 
 
 50,458^ 
 
 40,458 
 
 10,000 
 
 1 T _ n .1. • 
 
 
 1 
 
 1TT1 ■. . 1 
 
 
 7 
 
 In 1891 the income, according to Wliitaker, was 39,000/. 
 - In 1S91, 50,000/. ^ In 1 89 1, 55,000/.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 85 
 
 The rateable value of the haUs of these Companies is about 35,000/., 
 tliat of their schools and almshouses is probably about 15,000/. The 
 \-aluc of their plate and furniture is approximately about 270,000/ 
 The annual income of the Iivin_Ljs in their gift is about 12,000/ a year. 
 
 Minor Companies. 
 
 
 
 
 Income. 
 
 Corporate 
 Income. 
 
 Trust 
 Income. 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 Apothecaries .... 3,898 
 
 3.398 
 
 500 
 
 Armourers 
 
 
 
 8.086 
 
 8,026 
 
 60 
 
 Bakers 
 
 
 
 1,911 
 
 1,591 
 
 320 
 
 Barbers 
 
 
 
 1,7201 
 
 1,120 
 
 600 
 
 Basket-makers . 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 6i 
 
 None. 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 
 
 684 
 
 684 
 
 None. 
 
 Bowyers . 
 
 
 
 590 
 
 550 
 
 40 
 
 Brewers . 
 
 
 
 18,640 
 
 3.157 
 
 15,482 
 
 Broderers . 
 
 
 
 . No return. 
 
 — 
 
 7o(?) 
 
 Butchers . 
 
 
 
 2,021 
 
 1.389 
 
 632 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 
 
 ■ 11,318 
 
 10,378 
 
 940 
 
 Clockmakers 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Coachmakers . 
 
 
 
 1. 179 
 
 1. 179 
 
 None. 
 
 Cooks 
 
 
 
 2,560 
 
 2,380 
 
 180 
 
 Coopers . 
 
 
 
 7,120 
 
 2,420 
 
 4.700 
 
 Cordwainers 
 
 
 
 7.754' 
 
 6,154 
 
 1,600 
 
 Curriers . 
 
 
 
 1.29s 
 
 1,245 
 
 50 
 
 Cutlers 
 
 
 
 5,387 
 
 5.337 
 
 50 
 
 Distillers . 
 
 
 
 No return. 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 Dyers 
 
 
 
 7,000 
 
 6,000 
 
 1,000 
 
 Fan makers 
 
 
 
 250^ 
 
 250 
 
 None. 
 
 Farriers . 
 
 
 
 240 
 
 240 
 
 None. 
 
 Feltmakers 
 
 
 
 362 
 
 172 
 
 190 
 
 Fletchers . 
 
 
 
 150-' 
 
 150 
 
 None. 
 
 Founders . 
 
 
 
 1.943 
 
 1.853 
 
 90 
 
 Framework Knitters 
 
 
 
 310^ 
 
 I So 
 
 130 
 
 Fruiterers . 
 
 
 
 470 
 
 467 
 
 3 
 
 Girdlers 
 
 
 
 4.306 
 
 2,932 
 
 1.374 
 
 Glass-sellers 
 
 
 
 190 
 
 100 
 
 90 
 
 Glaziers . 
 
 
 
 300 
 
 260 
 
 40 
 
 Glovers 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 150 
 
 None. 
 
 Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers 65 
 
 62 
 
 3 
 
 Gunmakers .... 2,565 
 
 2,565 
 
 None. 
 
 In 1S91, 2,600/. ^ In 1891, 9,300/. ^ In iSgr, 50/. 
 
 ■* In 1891, 100/. ^ In 1891, 440/.
 
 86 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Income. 
 
 Corporate 
 Income. 
 
 Trust 
 Income. 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 £ 
 
 Homers ..... loo 
 
 100 
 
 None. 
 
 Innholders 
 
 
 
 1,547 
 
 1,327 
 
 220 
 
 Joiners 
 
 
 
 1,312 
 
 1,312 
 
 None. 
 
 Leathersellers . 
 
 
 
 18,728 
 
 16,395 
 
 2,333 
 
 Loriners . 
 
 
 
 1,267 
 
 1,267 
 
 None. 
 
 Masons 
 
 
 
 400^ 
 
 400 
 
 None. 
 
 Musicians 
 
 
 
 400 
 
 400 
 
 None. 
 
 Needlemakers . 
 
 
 
 250 
 
 250 
 
 None. 
 
 Painters . 
 
 
 
 3,100 
 
 800 
 
 2,300 
 
 Patten-makers . 
 
 
 
 300 
 
 286 
 
 14 
 
 Pewterers . 
 
 
 
 3,850 
 
 3,610 
 
 240 
 
 Plaisterers 
 
 
 
 900 
 
 867 
 
 33 
 
 Playingcard-makers 
 
 
 
 SO 
 
 50 
 
 None. 
 
 Plumbers . 
 
 
 
 900 
 
 882 
 
 18 
 
 Poulters . 
 
 
 
 1,050 
 
 620 
 
 430 
 
 Saddlers . 
 
 
 
 11,243 
 
 10,243 
 
 1,000 
 
 Scriveners 
 
 
 
 856 
 
 846 
 
 10 
 
 Shipwrights 
 
 
 
 833 
 
 833 
 
 None. 
 
 Spectacle-makers 
 
 
 
 1,134 
 
 1,089 
 
 45 
 
 Stationers 
 
 
 
 4,746 
 
 3,170 
 
 1,576 
 
 Tallow Chandlers 
 
 
 
 No 
 
 return. 
 
 220 
 
 Tinplate Workers 
 
 
 
 No 
 
 return. 
 
 17 
 
 Turners . 
 
 
 
 718 
 
 718 
 
 None. 
 
 Tylers and Bricklaye 
 
 rs 
 
 
 834 
 
 664 
 
 170 
 
 Upholders 
 
 
 
 353 
 
 333 
 
 20 
 
 Wax Chandlers 
 
 
 
 1,005^ 
 
 1,375 
 
 230 
 
 Weavers . 
 
 
 
 No return. 
 
 360 
 
 Wheelwrights . 
 
 
 
 319 
 
 319 
 
 None. 
 
 Woolmen 
 
 
 
 300 
 
 300 
 
 None. 
 
 The rateable value of the halls of the minor Companies is about 
 20,000/. a year ; that of their almshouses, schools, etc., is about 3,000/. a 
 year. The value of their plate and furniture is approximately about 
 50,000/ Their ecclesiastical patronage is limited to one or two Com- 
 panies which appoint to preacherships. 
 
 It will be noticed that there is great disparity In the amount of the 
 trust incomes of the Companies. In some cases it is nominal or 
 even nothing. The strongest instances are those of (i) the Grocers' 
 Company, the trust income of which is 500/ out of a total income of 
 38,000/ ; (2) the Armourers' Company, the trust income of which is 
 
 In 1891, 550/. 
 
 In 1891, 1,600/.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 87 
 
 60/. out of a total income of 8,000/. Other, though less striking, 
 examples are those of (i) the I'"ishmongcrs' Company, the trust income 
 of which is 3,800/. out of a total income of upwards of 50,000/ ; 
 (2) the Leathersellers' Company, the trust income of which is 2,300/, 
 out of a total income of nearly 19,000/ ; (3) the Saddlers' Company, 
 the trust income of which is about 1,000/ out of a total income of 
 upwards of 1 1,000/ 
 
 On the other hand, the trust incomes of the two wealthiest Companies, 
 the Mercers' Company and the Drapers' Company, are respectively 
 above one-third and two-fifths of the total income : in the case of the 
 Mercers' Company 35,000/ out of 83,000/; in that of the Drapers' 
 Company 28,000/ out of 79,000/ Also in several cases the trust income 
 greatly exceeds the corporate income. Thus (i) the trust income of 
 the Haberdashers' Company is probably 20,000/ out of a total income 
 of 30,000/ ; (2) the trust income of the Brewers' Company is 16,000/. 
 out of a total income of 20,000/ ; {3) the trust income of the I'ainter- 
 stainers' Company is 3,000/ out of a total income of 4,000/ ; (4) the 
 trust income of the Ironmongers' Company is 12,000/ out of a total 
 income of 21,000/ 
 
 The above table also shews that some of the minor Companies are 
 not trustees of charities. These are the Basketmakers, Blacksmiths, 
 Coachmakers, Fanmakers, Fletchers, Glovers, Gunmakers, Horners, 
 Joiners, Loriners, Masons, Musicians, Needlemakers, Playingcard-makers, 
 Shipwrights, Turners, Wheelwrights, and Woolmen. The total income 
 of these eighteen Companies is, however, only about 8,000/ a year ; and 
 several of them, particularly the Loriners and Spectacle-makers, the 
 recently resuscitated Companies of Turners, Needlemakers, Fanmakers, 
 and Shipwrights, as well as a few others, chiefly depend on the fees 
 and fines paid by existing members. On the whole, of the sum of 
 from 750,000/ to 800,000/ which constitutes the annual income of the 
 Companies, (i) about 200,000/ a year may be trust income, (2) from 
 550,000/ to 600,000/ corporate income. 
 
 As to the trust-estate of the Companies, it supports upwards of a 
 thousand charities ; and the authorities in 1882-3 were of opinion that 
 no charities in England were better administered. 
 
 As regards both classes of property, not only did financial difficulties 
 continue down to a comparatively recent date, but the income pro- 
 bably did not become considerable till about 1830, when a large number 
 of building leases in the City fell in, and it became possible for the 
 Gilds to raise the ground-rents so as to participate in its increased value. 
 
 The Irish estate of the Companies, in the purchase of which they 
 sank in the reign of James I. about 60,000/, exclusively of subsequent
 
 88 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 working expenses, did not become really remunerative till quite lately. 
 Nothing can be more admirable than the conduct of the Companies 
 with respect to these Ulster lands. They found them a desert, and by 
 their care and munificence they have made them one of the most 
 prosperous parts of the United Kingdom. Indeed, they may be said 
 to have founded at their own expense the loyal province of Ulster, a 
 service to the Crown perhaps without a parallel, except that rendered 
 by the East India Company. 
 
 In times past, the chief Companies alwaj-s devoted a substantial 
 portion of their funds to public objects ; and their expenditure upon 
 such objects appears to have grown in proportion to the growth of 
 their revenues. Thus, in 1822, the Goldsmiths, whose income was not 
 then large, founded six e.xhibitions of 20/. a year, three tenable at 
 Oxford, three at Cambridge. The Company gradually increased the 
 number and value of its exhibitions, till it had in 1882 endowed 
 seventy-five exhibitions, each of the value of 50/. a year, tenable at the 
 two Universities. Many examples of the same steady increase in 
 their annual contributions to public objects can be found in their recent 
 history. The Fishmongers, Grocers, Ironmongers, Clothworkers, and 
 several of the minor Companies have similarly increased existing ex- 
 hibitions, or have founded new out of their private means. Indeed 
 the Companies largely subsidize in this respect the Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, including Newnham and Girton Colleges for 
 the higher education of women, University and King's Colleges, 
 London, and the London School Board. 
 
 They also support, to a considerable extent, out of their private 
 income between thirty and forty schools : St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', 
 Tonbridge School, Aldenham School, and Great Crosby School, besides 
 those admirable institutions, Bancroft's Hospital, the Aske Schools, and 
 the Grocers' Middle-class School at Hackney Downs. These schools 
 are distributed over fourteen or fifteen counties, and not fewer than 
 12,000 scholars are educated at them. Mr. Matthew Arnold has stated 
 his opinion that the Companies have done much useful service in this 
 respect. The Cambridge Local Examination Board has also given a 
 favourable account of their management and fruit. On Merchant 
 Taylors' School, a school without endowment, the Merchant Taylors' 
 Company proves to have expended in recent years, out of its private 
 income, a sum of no less than 140,000/. 
 
 The support given by .some of the Companies to Technical Educa- 
 tion, and to the City and Gilds of London Technical Institute, deserves 
 special commemoration. This body was founded in 1878 by a com- 
 mittee sitting at Mercers' Hall, and composed of Lord Selborne, Sir
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 8g 
 
 l'. I5ram\\cll, F.R.S., and Sir S>xincy Watcrlow and otlier members of 
 the principal Companies, together with representatives of the City of 
 London. In the autumn of this year the committee communicated 
 with and received reports on the subject of technical education from 
 six gentlemen of great scientific or practical knowledge of the question ; 
 7'fc. Sir William Armstrong, F.R.S., Mr. G. T. C. Rartley, Licut.-Coloncl 
 Donnell}-, Captain Douglas Galton, F.R.S., Professor Huxley, F.R.S., 
 and Mr. H. Trueman Wood. 
 
 In the same autumn, the Mercers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, 
 Saltcrs, Ironmongers, Clothworkcrs, Armourers, Cordwainers, Coopers, 
 Plaistcrcrs, and Needlemakers agreed to provide about 12,000/. a year 
 out of their private funds for these purposes ; and the " City and Gilds 
 of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education" 
 was provisionally constituted with the following objects : vis. (i) the 
 foundation of a central institute in London for technical education ; 
 (2) the establishment of or assistance to trade schools in London and 
 the provinces ; (3) technological examinations ; (4) grants in aid of 
 existing institutions having for their object technical education. 
 
 In the year 1879 the Institute was incorporated, and it has ever since 
 continued to prosper, with the most beneficial results to the community 
 at large. Between 1881 and 1884 the Gilds contributed about 120,000/. 
 to this object alone. The Companies have thus founded in England a 
 system of technical education, a service to the State which it is difficult 
 to over-value, and an undertaking strictly in accordance with their 
 original constitution. Moreover, the Clothworkers' Company has pro- 
 moted the establishment of Yorkshire College at Leeds, where in- 
 struction is given in the manufacture of woollen goods, and similar 
 institutions at Bradford, Huddersfield, and other places, the present 
 seats of its former trade.^ 
 
 The Companies contributed 13,000/. to the Royal College of Music. 
 The Fishmongers bore the brunt of the labour of organization in respect 
 of the " International Fisheries Exhibition," and this and other Com- 
 panies made a large contribution to the expenses. They also materially 
 assisted the " International Health Exhibition." The Grocers have 
 founded a scholarship for scientific research. 
 
 The real estate of the Companies is situated partly (i) in the City 
 of London proper, in other districts of London, and in the suburbs of 
 London ; (2) in various parts of England ; (3) in the county of London- 
 derry, Ireland. 
 
 I Metropolitan Estate. — The metropolitan estate of the Companies 
 
 ' See further particulars under the account of the Company. 
 C.C. 12
 
 90 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 consists (0 of the Halls, and such of the almshouses, schools, and other 
 institutions maintained by the Companies as are within the metropolitan 
 area ; (2) of some thousands of houses in the City of London proper, 
 many of them in excellent situations, and let as warehouses, banks, 
 counting-houses, salerooms, offices, and shops, and also of some wharves 
 with warehouses attached to them situated on the banks of the Thames, 
 some on the City side, some on the Surrey side ; (3) of house property 
 outside the City of London proper, but within the metropolitan area : 
 77',". in Stratford,' West Ham,-' Fulham,'' Hackne)-,"" Hammersmith," Lam- 
 beth,'' Islington,' Notting Hill,''' Stoke Newington,^ Stepney,"' Walworth," 
 Hoxton,'* Finsbury,'-^ St. Pancras," Southwark,'" and Whitechapel."' 
 
 2. Estates in English Counties. — The Companies of London are 
 owners of agricultural land or of house property or of rentcharges in 
 the following English counties : Bedfordshire," Buckinghamshire,^*' Berk- 
 shire, '"Derbyshire,-" Durham,^' Essex,-'^ Gloucestershire,*' Herefordshire,-'' 
 Hertfordshire,-" Kent,^*^ Lancashire,*'' Lincolnshire,-* Middlesex,*^ Mon- 
 mouth,'"^' Norfolk,-^' Northumberland,'^- Northamptonshire,'^ Oxfordshire,'* 
 Staffordshire,'" Shropshire,'"' Surrey,"' Wiltshire, '* Yorkshire,''® Sussex.'"' 
 
 ' Carpenters. 
 
 - Ironmongers,Carpenters, andSalters. 
 
 ^ Carpenters. 
 
 '' Farriers and Clothworkers. 
 
 * Brewers, Girdlers, and Clothworkers. 
 " Butchers. 
 
 ' Clothworkers, Brewers, Mercers, and 
 Glaziers. 
 *" Barbers. 
 
 * Masons and Barbers. 
 '" Coopers. 
 
 " Fishmongers. 
 
 '- Haberdashers. 
 
 "^ Blacksmiths. 
 
 " Brewers. 
 
 "* Coopers, Cordwainers, Girdlers, and 
 Saddlers. 
 
 '" Gunmakers, and Tylers and Brick- 
 layers. 
 
 " Drapers and Mercers. 
 
 " Mercers, Girdlers, and Brewers. 
 
 ''' Fishmongers and Salters. 
 
 -" Goldsmiths. 
 
 ^' Mercers. 
 
 ^^ Drapers, Goldsmiths, Haberdashers, 
 Salters, Brewers, Coopers, Fcltmakers, 
 Pewterers, Saddlers. 
 
 -^ Haberdashers. 
 
 -■' Grocers. 
 
 -' Drapers, Merchant Taylors, Cloth- 
 workers, Brewers, and Leathersellers. 
 
 ^•^ Mercers, Drapers, Fishmongers, 
 Skinners, Merchant Taylors, Haber- 
 dashers, Vintners, Clothworkers, Coopers, 
 Leathersellers, and Saddlers. 
 
 -' Merchant Taylors. 
 
 ™ Mercers and Drapers. 
 
 -" Goldsmiths, Salters, Brewers, Black- 
 smiths, Coopers, Cordwainers, Leather- 
 sellers, Musicians, and Saddlers. 
 
 ^" Haberdashers. 
 
 ^' Drapers and Fishmongers. 
 
 '^ Mercers. 
 
 "^ Grocers. 
 
 '••^ Ditto. 
 
 ^^ Haberdashers-. 
 
 3» Ditto. 
 
 -' Drapers, Fishmongers, Skinners, 
 Merchant Taylors, Haberdashers, Iron- 
 mongers, Clothworkers, Carpenters, 
 Cooks, Coopers, Musicians. 
 
 ^ Clothworkers. 
 
 ^^ Drapers and Ironmongers. 
 
 •"' Goldsmiths and Merchant Taylors. 
 
 The Clothworkers' and Brewers' estates at Islington, the Fishmongers' at Wal- 
 worth, the Haberdashers' at Hoxton, the Clothworkers' at Hackney, are very large.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 9 I 
 
 Two Companies' possess estates in Wales, and onc^ lands in the Isle 
 of Man. 
 
 3. Irish Estate. — Some of the Companies still possess a considerable 
 amount of real property in the county of Londonderry, which tliey, 
 with the Irish Society, were led to purchase at the commencement 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 A larf^e proportion of the Companies' estates in the City and in the 
 metropolitan area is at present let on lontj building-leases, on the ter- 
 mination of which there is a certainty of an increased ground-rent. 
 We regard this circumstance as conclusive evidence that the value of 
 the Companies' estates is at present increasing, although the value of 
 their agricultural property in England is at present depressed. 
 
 About 60,000/. a year arises from trust property invested in consols 
 and other securities ; (2) some of the small Companies, which do not 
 own land, derive their whole permanent income from savings, accumu- 
 lations of fees and fines, similarly invested ; (3) a part of the sum is 
 derived from the purchase-money of houses in the City of London, in 
 some cases corporate, in other cases trust property, which the Companies 
 have been compelled to surrender, under the provisions of the Lands 
 Clauses Consolidation Act, for the purposes of railways, docks, and 
 other public undertaking.?. 
 
 The contributions of existing members, consisting of quarterages, 
 entrance-fees, livery-fines, and fines on promotion to the Court or to 
 ofifice, appear to amount to from 15,000/. to 20,000/ a }-ear. In other 
 words, existing members contribute from suth to s^th or thereabout of 
 the total income. 
 
 Expenditure : (i) Trust, (2) Corporate. 
 
 The income of more than 200,000/ a year derived from trust propert}' 
 arises from about 1,100 benefactions, the earliest certainly not less 
 ancient than the fourteenth century, the latest under wills proved within 
 the last few years. Of this sum about 140,000/ a year arises from rents 
 and rentcharges, the remainder from dividends. 
 
 It appears from official sources that in 1862 about one-half the 
 trust income was expended upon the inmates of almshouses and poor 
 members, about one-quarter on schools, apprenticing charities, and exhi- 
 bitions at the Universities, and about one-quarter on charitable objects . 
 of a general kind ; the two principal charities of this third class being 
 endowments for the relief of the indigent blind and a fund for the sus- 
 tentation of elementary schools connected with the Church of England. 
 
 Since 1862 there has been a considerable alteration in the distribution 
 
 ' Grocers and Drapers. " Clothworkers.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the charitable income of the Companies, owing to the increase of 
 the rents of certain of the educational foundations. In 1882 it was 
 estimated that (i) about three-eighths, or 75,000/. a year, was expended 
 on the support of almshouses and the relief of poor members ; (2) about 
 three-eighths on education, as above defined ; (3) about one-quarter on 
 charitable objects of a general kind. 
 
 Some of the charities of the third class are bequests for purposes 
 which are obsolete, such as the relief of the inmates of debtors' prisons ; 
 others are bequests for purposes which seem to have become imprac- 
 ticable, owing to the difference between ancient and modern times ; as 
 for instance, portions to poor maids and loan-charities for advances to 
 young men commencing business. 
 
 Many of the Companies' charities are for the benefit of the inhabitants 
 of provincial towns and villages. In early times persons from the 
 provinces came to London to engage in business, and when thc)^ had 
 amassed fortunes, left legacies, not only to the Gilds to which they 
 belonged, but to their native places. 
 
 I. As regards the sum of 75,000/. which is spent on almshouses and 
 poor members. Most of the great Companies, and several of the minor 
 Companies, maintain almshouses for their poor. Probably as early as 
 the fourteenth century they possessed several in the City of London. 
 The principal now existing are Whittington College in Islington, 
 maintained by the Mercers ; St. Peter's Hospital at U'andsworth, main- 
 tained by the Fishmongers ; the Goldsmiths' almshouses at Acton, 
 Middlesex, and Hackney, the Merchant Taylors' at Lee, Kent, the 
 Skinners' at St. Helen's and Mile End, the Salters' at Watford, the 
 Ironmongers' in Kingsland Road, the Vintners' at Mile End, the Cloth- 
 workers' at Islington, the Armourers' in Bishopsgatc, the Bakers' in 
 Hackney, the Brewers' at South Mimms, the Carpenters' at Twicken- 
 ham, the Coopers' at Stepney, the Dyers in the City Road and in 
 Spitalfields, the Framework-knitters' in Shoreditch, the Girdlers' at 
 Peckham, the Leathersellers' at Barnet, the Saddlers' in Isleworth, the 
 Tylers' and Bricklayers' at Islington, and the Weavers' at Wanstead. 
 
 These institutions have in almost all cases been largely endowed by 
 bequests of land or money of a date subsequent to their foundation. 
 Upwards of 500 of the 1,100 charities administered by the Companies 
 relate to the sustentation of the almshouses, or to the relief of im- 
 poverished members, or that of the widows and orphans of members by 
 gifts of money, food, or clothing. Very many trusts of this kind have 
 been created during the last century, and not a few during the present, 
 the benefactors having been in every instance, it is believed, members 
 of the Companies.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 93 
 
 All these foundations from a very early period have been assisted by 
 s^rants from corporate income. In many cases existing members have 
 subscribed toward them out of their private means. During the past 
 and the present centuries, moreover, almost all the almshouses have 
 been rebuilt, to a large extent out of the Companies' corporate estates. 
 
 The almshouses vary in size, some being mere cottages, others, like 
 Whittington and St. Peter's Colleges, large establishments, managed by 
 a governor, a chaplain, and a considerable staff of servants. Besides 
 the almspeople, a large number of pensioners, decaj-ed liverymen and 
 freemen, and widows and orphan daughters of former members, who 
 are in an indigent condition, are supported or assisted out of the trust 
 income of the Companies. More than 600 charities exist for this 
 purpose. There are far more female than male inmates, and a large 
 majority of the pensioners are the widows and orphans of poor members 
 who have never been called to the Livery. 
 
 The number of almspeople, pensioners, and persons otherwise relieved 
 by the Companies may be about 2,500. There have been exceptional 
 cases where the recipient was a member of the Court of one of the 
 larger Companies, or where the relief went to the family of a deceased 
 livcr\-man, in which as much as 400/. and 250/. a year respectively have 
 been granted. But there are very few pensions of more than 100/., or at 
 most 150/., a year, and the great majority do not exceed 50/. a year, 
 while many consist of much smaller sums. The expense of maintaining 
 the almspeople may be estimated at about 60/. a year each. 
 
 2. As regards the sum of 75,000/. which is spent on education, the 
 objects supported are (l) the Universities of O.xford and Cambridge, 
 (2) certain schools. 
 
 (i) The Arabic Professorship at Cambridge derives a portion of its 
 endowment from the funds of one of the Companies. Several of the 
 great Companies, and a few of the minor, are trustees of funds for the 
 maintenance of scholarships or exhibitions at each University. The 
 number of such foundations at Cambridge is considerably larger than 
 that of those at O.xford. The trusts are generally in terms for the 
 benefit of " poor scholars," and candidates, the means of whose parents 
 are small, are sometimes preferred. At the two Universities there are 
 generally upwards of 100 undergraduates who derive assistance from 
 the Companies. As a rule, no preference is shown to members of the 
 Companies or to their relatives. 
 
 (2) Five schools of high repute, at which a classical education is given, 
 arc managed by the Mercers, Merchant Taylors, Skinners, and Brewers. 
 These are St. Paul's, founded by Dean Colet in 15 10, Merchant Taylors', 
 founded in 1561, Tonbridge, founded in 1553, Aldenham, founded in
 
 94 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1599, and Great Crosby, founded in 161S. St. Paul's and Tonbridge 
 Schools are two of the most richly endowed schools in England. 
 Merchant Taylors' has no endowment. The three first-mentioned 
 schools have a large number of valuable exhibitions at the Universities, 
 of some of which the managing Companies are themselves trustees. 
 
 St. Paul's School has been rebuilt at Hammersmith, pursuant to a 
 scheme of the Endowed School Commissioners issued in 1879. Mer- 
 chant Taylors' School has recently been removed to the Charterhouse. 
 Tonbridge School has also been rebuilt, pursuant to a scheme sanctioned 
 by the Charity Commission in 1870. The total number of scholars 
 receiving their education at these schools, assuming them to be full, may 
 be estimated at upwards of 2,000. 
 
 The Merchant Taylors' Company have spent on the Merchant 
 Taylors' School a very large sum out of their corporate income. The 
 Reports of the Charity Commissioners and inspectors of charities shew- 
 that the Mercers' and Skinners' Companies have in the past spent 
 considerable sums from the same source on St. Paul's and Tonbridge 
 Schools respectively. 
 
 The Companies are also trustees and managers of several middle-class 
 schools for children of both se.xes. The principal foundations of this 
 kind are (i) in London the Mercers' School, founded in 1542; the 
 Grocers' Middle-class School at Hackney Downs, founded in 1873 ; 
 Bancroft's School at Mile End, founded in 1728, and maintained by the 
 Drapers ; the Greencoat School at Greenwich, founded in 1685, and 
 maintained by the same ; Aske's Schools at Hatcham and Hoxton, 
 founded in 1688, and maintained by the Haberdashers ; Dame Owen's 
 School at Islington, founded in 1609, and inaintained by the Brewers ; 
 the Ratcliff schools at Stepney and Bow Road ' and the Stationers' 
 school.^ (2) In the provinces, — a school at Horsham, Sussex,^ at West 
 Lavington, Wiltshire,* at Oundle, Northamptonshire,'' at Colwall, Here- 
 fordshire," at Witney, Oxfordshire,^ at Tottenham, in Essex,* Sir John 
 Gresham's school at Holt, Norfolk,'-* a school at Cromer, in Norfolk,'" 
 at Bromyard, in Herefordshire,^^ at Stockport, Cheshire,'- at Ashwell 
 Hertfordshire,'-' at Wallingford, Oxfordshire,'* at Newport, Stafford- 
 
 Founded 
 
 1540 ; managed by the Coopers. 
 185S, in pursuance of a scheme es- 
 tablished by an order in 
 Chancery. 
 Managed by the Mercers. 
 
 Ditto ditto. 
 
 1556 ; managed by the Grocers. 
 1612 ; ditto ditto. 
 
 Founded 
 
 1670 ; managed by the Grocers. 
 
 I6I7; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Drapers. 
 
 1554; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Fishmongers 
 
 1505 ; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Goldsmiths. 
 
 1656; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto. 
 
 1487; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto. 
 
 1655; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Merchant Taylors 
 
 1659; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 95 
 
 sliirc,' at Monmouth,- at l?iinbur\-, Cheshire;' at Landrake, St. Erny, 
 Cornwall,' at Peel, in the Isle of Man,'' at Sutton Valence, Kent,'' and 
 at Islcy Walton, Leicestershire.^ 
 
 The number of children of both sexes who are educated at these schooLs 
 was in 1882 upwards of 10,000. It will be seen from the returns of the 
 Companies which manage them, as well as from the Reports of the 
 Charity Commission and the inspectors of schools, that considerable 
 sums have been voluntariK- .spent on them out of corporate income. 
 
 Of the total sum of 75,000/. a year applicable to classical and middle- 
 class education, including in the former category the contributions to 
 the Universities, the proportions are about 35,000/. and 40,000/ 
 
 3. Of the 50,000/ a year, which forms the division of the trust income 
 devoted to charitable objects of a general kind, about 9,000/ a year is 
 applicable to the sustentation of primary schools under the management 
 of clergymen of the Church of England in England and Wales ; ** 
 about 5,000/ is applicable to the relief of indigent blind persons;^ the 
 remaining 36,000/ a year (arising from nearly 500 legacies, bequeathed 
 during a period commencing in the fourteenth and ending in the present 
 century) is applicable (i) to the relief of the poor of the City of London 
 by doles of money and food and gifts of clothing, to the relief by the 
 same means of the poor of parishes outside the City, and of the poor 
 of many urban and rural parishes throughout England ; (2) to clerical 
 objects connected with the Church of England, such as lectureships of 
 a general or special character at churches in the City, or in connexion 
 with certain of the charitable institutions maintained by the Companies 
 in the provinces ; and to annual subscriptions to medical charities, 
 particularly the London hospitals. 
 
 The reports of the Inspectors of Charities, which accompany the 
 returns of 1884, contain detailed accounts of all the charities above- 
 mentioned, setting forth the names of the founders, abstracts of the 
 deeds or wills constituting the charitable trusts, the property which is 
 charged therewith, and the mode in which the trusts are administered ; 
 and where a private Act of Parliament has been obtained, the terms are 
 set forth. In the numerous cases in which the Court of Chancery or the 
 Charity or Endowed Schools Commissions have decreed new schemes, 
 
 Founded 
 
 1656 ; managed by the Haberdashers. 
 
 1614 ; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto. 
 
 1594; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto. 
 
 1703; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Ironmongers 
 
 1653; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Clothworkers 
 
 1876; 
 
 ditto 
 
 ditto. 
 
 1625; 
 
 ditto 
 
 Bowyers. 
 
 * The Betton Charity, founded 1723, 
 administered by the Ironmongers. 
 
 " The principal charities for this pur- 
 pose were founded respectively 1717-24 
 and 1790, 1795, 1S08, i860, and 1889, ,Tnd 
 are administered by the Clothworkers 
 and the Painterstainers.
 
 96 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the particulars are set forth. The amount of charitable property here 
 involved is very considerable. 
 
 We believe that, except in cases where the terms of the charitable 
 bequests authorize the Companies to charge for administering them, or 
 where the conditions of a new scheme expressly authorize them to do 
 so, the Companies act gratuitously. 
 
 Corporate Iiuvu/e. 
 
 Including an allowance in respect of the Halls and other buildings 
 used by the Companies, and of their plate, furniture, and other property 
 not producing income, we estimate the corporate or non-trust income 
 of the Companies at from 550,000/. to 600,000/. a year. Taking the 
 smaller sum as a basis, and deducting from it 125,000/, which maybe 
 taken to represent (i) such allowance, (2) a sum representing the interest 
 of the debt of the Companies, and (3) a sum representing the average 
 proportion of income saved annually, about 425,000/ remain to be 
 accounted for. Of this sum we compute that about 175,000/ is annually 
 spent on "maintenance," about 100,000/ on entertainments, about 
 1 50,000/ on benevolent objects. 
 
 In maintenance we include sums spent in the pa}-ment of rates and 
 taxes, in rebuilding, repairs, and other charges connected with the Halls, 
 almshouses, schools, and other buildings and improvements, in the pay- 
 ment of fees to the governing bodies for attendances, in the salaries 
 of officers and serxants employed in London and in Ireland. Of the 
 175,000/ thus spent, (i) about 75,000/ a year is spent on rates, taxes, 
 rebuilding, repairs, and improvements ; (2) about 40,000/ a year is 
 paid to members, (3) about 60,000/ a year is spent on the salaries of 
 officers and servants. 
 
 (i) Of the above-mentioned 75,000/, rates and ta.xes, which include 
 the tithe rentcharge on the Ulster estates, form the least considerable 
 item. A large proportion of the income derived from Ireland is 
 annually spent on improvements, in which term are included not only 
 drainage and farm buildings, but the construction and maintenance of 
 roads and bridges, and the support of places of worship, schools, and 
 dispensaries for the use of the tenants. Part of the fund is expended 
 on repairs and improvements in connexion with the urban and rural 
 English estates of the Companies. The largest item, however, is that 
 which is annually expended on the restoration and decoration of the 
 Halls, thirty-four in number. In 1862, the Clothworkers rebuilt their 
 Hall at a cost of ^^68,000. Several other bodies have taken the same 
 course on a smaller scale. 
 
 (2) Court fees are payments to such members for attendance at the
 
 GENKUAL INTRODUCTION. 97 
 
 meetings for ;ulmissions to the freedom, calls to the Livery, elections to 
 the Courts, appointment of officers and servants, manajjement of the 
 corporate and charitable estates, elections of almspeople and pensioners, 
 superintendence of schools, invitations to entertainments, and the con- 
 sideration of charitable offerings. 
 
 The Courts of the chief Companies meet about once a month, those 
 of the minor Companies about once a quarter. Where the business 
 is large and complex, committees are appointed for special purposes. 
 
 (3) A clerk and a beadle have been attached to each gild from time 
 almost immemorial. As the estates have increased, a number of 
 additional offices have been created, such as those of accountants, 
 surveyors, and assistant clerks, and a staff of domestic servants has been 
 engaged. Those of the Companies which retain their lands in Ulster 
 have employed resident agents since they ceased to let to middlemen. 
 
 The highest salaries paid to clerks amount to about 2,000/. a year. 
 The salary next in amount is one of 1,500/. a }-ear. The clerks of most 
 of the important Companies receive about 700/. a year. The salaries 
 of those attached to the minor Companies are small ; some receive 
 no stipend. The clerks are mostly solicitors, who in some cases are 
 allowed to carry on a private practice at the Halls of the Companies 
 which employ them or (their recompense being nominal) transact the 
 Companies' business at their own offices. In a few instances, the 
 same gentleman acts for two or even three bodies. There are, besides, 
 the salaries of the masters of the Companies' schools, those of the 
 governors, matrons, and medical officers of their almshouses, and those 
 of the chaplains and clerical lecturers whom the}- employ in connexion 
 with their charities. 
 
 The entertainments given by the Companies are of two kinds : Court 
 dinners and Livery dinners. Two or three banquets of the former kind 
 are held annually in the more considerable Companies. In those of less 
 importance not more than one Livery dinner is annualh- gi\-en ; and in 
 some cases, owing to want of funds, the members of the Liveries are 
 not entertained. It is the practice of most of the Companies to invite 
 guests on these occasions. Royal personages, members of the reigning 
 Continental houses, and persons of distinction general!}-, are frequently 
 entertained b\' the Companies, which thus assist the Corporation in 
 dispensing the hospitality of the City. Entertainments to persons of 
 eminence are frequently preceded by the ceremony of conferring the 
 freedom of the Gild, honoris causa. In many cases guests are also 
 invited to its Court dinners. 
 
 4. The part of the corporate income which is devoted to public 
 objects we estimate at 150,000/ a \-ear, of which about 10,000/ is ex- 
 
 C.C. i;
 
 98 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 pended on the relief of poor members, in addition to the 75,000/. a year 
 out of trust income. If to this sum be added the trust income of 
 200,000/. a year, it follows that about half the income is distributed 
 between benefaction and public or benevolent objects. About 50,000/ 
 appears to be expended on education. 
 
 5. About 90,000/. a year appears to be devoted to benevolent and 
 public objects of a general character. Besides the contributions to 
 churches, schools, and dispensaries in Ulster, the Companies subscribe 
 largely to other Ulster charities, both religious and secular, and also 
 have of late subsidized new railways by grants of land and loans. 
 These sums taken together amount to a deduction from the rents 
 greatly exceeding the sum commonly allowed for such purposes by 
 private landlords. On their English estates the Companies generally 
 support the religious and secular charities connected therewith. As 
 regards London, where the bulk of their property is situated, they 
 make annually a very large contribution, one probably amounting to 
 70,000/ or 80,000/, to public and benevolent objects. The London 
 Hospital, during the ten years 1869-79 received 26,500/ from the 
 Grocers alone. The hospitals for special diseases, the dispensaries, 
 and other medical charities, not only of the Cit}-, but in other parts 
 of London, receive a very large sum annuallj'. Religious charities 
 and societies having for their object the building and endowment of 
 churches and schools in connexion with the Church of England, secular 
 objects, orphanages, refuges, and funds for the relief of distress, such as 
 the poor-boxes at the Metropolitan Courts, are all supported by the 
 Companies, which are large subscribers to the Mansion House Funds 
 set on foot under special circumstances by the Lord Mayor and the 
 Corporation. Of late also, and particularly since the movement in 
 favour of technical education began, some of the Companies whose 
 names represent existing trades, have given exhibitions at their Halls or 
 elsewhere of works of art or of the processes of manufacture, and have 
 become supporters of trade benefit-societies. 
 
 l\Tode in ivJiich the Corporate Estate was Acquired. 
 
 A large proportion of the lands in the City held by the Companies 
 in their corporate right was acquired by them outside their licences in 
 mortmain under the custom and tenure of free burgage, under wills 
 constituting trusts for the maintenance of obits, chauntries, or for other 
 superstitious uses. This land the Companies recovered from the Crown, 
 at the time of the dissolution of monasteries, for valuable consideration, 
 in the reigns of Edward VI. and James I.
 
 GEXIiRAL INTRODUCTION. 99 
 
 The terms of the grants have been held b_\- the Court of Clianccry to 
 have vested in the Companies the same absolute property in these lands 
 which the act of Edward VI. vested in the Crown, and they have 
 thus been since the Reformation in the eye of the law the corporate 
 property of the Companies, free from any trust. The lands were 
 allowed to revert, because the Companies rc])rescnted to the Crown that 
 the rental was required for the support of their almshouses, schools, and 
 e.xhibitions, many of which depended for their existence on these super- 
 stitious benefactions. 
 
 It appears that the Companies have not been always able to prove 
 from their archives that the trust to purchase lands had ever been 
 executed, and that they have been in the habit of simply crediting the 
 charities with the annual interest of the sums originally bequeathed on 
 this condition. The deeds and minutes of Court which perished in the 
 Fire of 1666 might have thrown light on this matter. 
 
 For the purpose of the repurchase of their forfeited estates, and 
 of the rebuilding their Halls and house property after the Fire, and 
 of the Ulster Plantation, the Companies raised very large sums of 
 inoney between the years 1547 and 1670. The sum paid to the Crown 
 in respect of the Irish estate seems to have been levied as a civic 
 impost. It would seem that part of the money expended in re- 
 building and redemption was raised by mortgage, part by the contri- 
 butions of existing members, or members who were persuaded to join 
 for the purpose of helping the Companies out of their difficulties. 
 
 As regards the interpretation put b\- the Court of Chancery on wills, 
 where the question has been whether the charities, or the Companies 
 which administer them, were to become entitled to the increased income 
 resulting from the rise in value of house propert\' in the City, and also 
 the schemes framed by that Court in accordance with the principle of 
 cy-prcs to which it has recourse in the case of obsolete or impracticable 
 benefactions, it may be said that the function of a Court can only be 
 accurately to interpret the terms of the wills and to carry out the 
 founders' intentions ; and no doubt the rules as to interpretation 
 adopted by the Court of Chancery are judicious, while, in framing cv-pres 
 schemes, the Court has shown a wise and liberal spirit, and has done its 
 utmost to recognise changes in the circumstances. But we think it 
 impossible to pursue many of the cases without seeing that the Com- 
 panies have made good their title to unexpected increment as corporate 
 income when there was really an intestacy with respect to the fund, or 
 under circumstances where there is no proof that the testator ever 
 intended to constitute them beneficiaries. 
 
 The corporate or private property and income of the Companies
 
 lOO GENERAL IXTRODUCTION. 
 
 have been declared by the highest legal authority to be as absolutely 
 the Companies' own as those of any private person ; and we may refer 
 to the circumstances under which this property was acquired, partly by 
 purchases made out of the private incomes of the Companies, partly 
 by gifts " intended to be for their absolute use : " to the public spirit 
 shown b}- the Companies in past times and at present, in the good 
 use which they have made of their incomes : in past times in saving 
 their charities from bankruptcy and in the colonization of Ulster: at 
 present in their support of useful objects and, in particular, in the 
 establishment by them of technical education, a movement which has 
 revived in the only way now possible the connexion of the Gilds 
 with the arts and manufactures which they formerly represented. 
 
 Their property being at law the Companies' own, the product partly 
 of their own savings, partly of absolute gifts to them, and the income 
 from it being in great part spent for the public good, we deprecate 
 any State interference with this property or with the Companies in 
 their administration of the income arising from it. 
 
 As regards the trust-property of the Companies and the charities, 
 above i,ooo in number, of which they are the gratuitous managers, 
 under the control of the Court of Chancery and the Charity Com- 
 mission, the existence of several great and many small schools and 
 of eleemosynary foundations, in the benefits of which almost every 
 county in England participates, is due to the liberality and public 
 spirit shown b}' the Companies from the earliest period to the present 
 moment. 
 
 The Companies easily defeated Mr. Firth as regards ever}' part of 
 the case set up by him in his work called MiDticipal London ; 
 and a motion by him in favour of disestablishing and disendowing 
 the Companies was rejected in the deliberations of the Royal Com- 
 mission by a majority of ten to two. The gentlemen who appeared 
 before the Commission to support Mr. Firth's views were not, in the 
 Commissioners' opinion "competent by reason of their situation, know- 
 ledge, and experience to afford correct information on the subjects of 
 the inquiry " within the meaning of the terms of the Commission. 
 
 So far as we can judge, no valid or weighty objection whatever 
 exists in London either against the City or against the Livery 
 Companies ; and Mr. Firth and the few persons who were associated 
 with him were never appointed by the citizens of London to act 
 as their representatives in this or any other matter.
 
 VOL UNTAR Y ASSOC/ A TIONS 
 
 WHICH HAVE DISAPPEARED, OR HAVE MERGED 
 IN THE LIVERY GILDS.
 
 VOL UNTAR} ' ASSOC/A TIONS 
 
 WHICH HAVE DISAPPEARED OR HAVE MERGED 
 IN THE LIVERY GILDS. 
 
 ^T UMEROUS callings formerly existed in 
 ^ a separate and exclusive form, as will 
 be readily perceived on a glance at Stovv's 
 Survey, Herbert's Historical Essay, Riley's 
 MeDiorials, 1868, and Mr. Kingdon's Introduc- 
 tion to the Grocers Records, without having 
 developed into Associations. Some became 
 known under different names, and were ab- 
 sorbed in other trades, while some grew obso- 
 lete, and passed into disuse and oblivion. 
 
 These small communities or unions long contributed to influence the 
 municipal life and society of London, and existed side by side with 
 others which at the outset possessed no larger share of vitality and 
 justification ; but from a variety of agencies they failed to become a 
 permanent parcel of the wide and complex machinery of metropolitan 
 government. 
 
 The most striking characteristic features of ancient commercial policy 
 were the almost endless subdivisions of labour and employment ami 
 the larger measure of initiati\-e right ; and the tendency grew to 
 concentrate or centralize, and thus to extinguish many of the minor 
 groups of artificers as independent bodies. 
 
 Z\ic Mbitc an& JSrowtt JSahcrs. 
 
 M.VITLAND says that the Bakers {Bo/a/igerii, Fr. Boularigers) are 
 charged in the Great Roll of the Exchequer in 1155 with a debt of 
 one mark of gold, on account of their Gild, and thence deduces the fact 
 that they then held their rights in fee-farm of the Crown. But he adds 
 that they appear to have been incorporated about 1307 by letters patent 
 of Edward II. 
 
 We must once more quote Maitland for another very early notice, as 
 well as an extremelj- curious one, in connection with the Good Friday
 
 I04 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 bun : — " The Bakers, probably perceiving that great Profits arose to the 
 Clergy by the Use of the Symbols of the Cross, Agnus Dei's, and name 
 of Jesus, to oblige their Customers (for their own Interest), began to 
 imprint upon their Bread the like Representations : which induced Henry 
 the Third, by his mandate from St. Edmund's Bury, of September i, 
 1252, strictly to injoin all Bakers thenceforth not to put any of those 
 sacred representations upon their Bread." 
 
 In },o Edward i (1301-2), the Bakers were allowed to hold four hall- 
 moots yearly, to determine all offences committed in their business ; and 
 the same ordinance restrained them from selling bread save in the 
 marl<ct, on the site of the modern Bread Street. It elsewhere appears 
 that in Basinghall Street, near the spot afterward, at least, known as 
 Bakewell (or Blackwell) Hall, stood a building called the Bakeliottse, 
 doubtless the general bakery for the City within the walls. 
 
 The bread consumed in London in former times was, however, to a 
 considerable extent made, not in the City itself, but at Bromley-at- 
 Bow and Stratford-at-Bow. In 13 10 several bakeries of Stratford were 
 presented for selling halfpenny loaves of short weight ; and we learn 
 from the consequent proceedings that the bread was weighed in a hot 
 state, and that in the price paid by the customer allowance was made 
 for the shrinkage on cooling. 
 
 In 1 3 12 a baker was arrested for selling bread made of putrid 
 wheat ; and in the following year the loaf of French bread of John de 
 Blcdelow was found to weigh 29.?. 2d., the shilling being equal to three- 
 fifths of an ounce, whereas it should have weighed the same as the 
 halfpenny loaf of Wastrel bread, and it was short by I2J-. \od. 
 
 There is perhaps no vocation which so often fell under the unfavour- 
 able cognisance of the Court of Aldermen as that of the baker. The 
 regulations for the craft in the Liber Allnis and elsewhere are both 
 numerous and stringent ; but the purveyors of bread evidently laboured 
 a good deal to the intent that the law might be more honoured in the 
 breach than the observance. The cases of conviction and punishment 
 ftir selling loaves of short weight or impure material are innumerable ; 
 and one of the drawings in the fourteenth century Assisa Panis depicts 
 a baker drawn on a hurdle by two horses, with his fraudulent loaf tied 
 round his neck. 
 
 Among the Harleian MSS. is a poem by John L}-dgate, a versifyer 
 of the earlier part of the 15th century, wherein he lays deceit to the 
 charge of the Millers and Bakers of that time, and suggests that they 
 might do well to band themselves together, not merely for their common 
 benefit, but in order to enable them more effectually to despoil the 
 public : —
 
 THE BLADKSMlTllS, OK lil.ADERS. 
 
 lO: 
 
 " Let mellerys and bakerys gaclre hem a gildc, 
 And alle of assent maUe a fratcrnite." 
 
 In 1580 \vc meet with a letter from the h'arl of Leicester to the Lor^l 
 Mayor, pointing out the hardshii^ upon liumphrey Nichols, a Brown 
 Baker, b\' reason of the temporary inhibition to bake twopenny wheatcn 
 loaves ; and Lord Burghley himself intercedes for some one who had 
 made bread below the assize. But it was shown that the bread was 
 for a private household, and not for public sale. 
 
 In 1 376 tlie Bakers sent two members to the Common Council, and 
 in 1469 supplied 44 men-at-arms to the muster for watching the City 
 gates. In both cases there appears to have been only one fraternity and 
 one trade, although, according to Stow (ed. 1633, pp. 624, 642), the 
 Bakers originally formed two such, with differing arms as below. 
 
 WHITli BAKERS. 
 
 BROWN fl.\KERS. 
 
 We at all events become aware of their dual existence when they are 
 amalgamated by Henry VIII. in 1509. But this formal union was not 
 thoroughly consolidated till the middle of the 17th century ; and in 1622 
 the Brown Bakers obtained a distinct cliarter. 
 
 The unsoundness and insincerity of the alliance are exemplified by 
 the fact that in 1594 the Brown Bakers are found with a separate 
 meeting-place in the basement of Founders' Hall, Lothbury, and volun- 
 tarily contributing 6/. to the paving of the yard and kitchen, as though 
 they were tenants of some standing. The basement became generally 
 known as Brown Bakers' Hall, a name which it retained even in 1654, 
 when it was converted to other uses at a rent of 8/., and when the 
 trade was perhaps at length under one government. 
 
 Xlbe Blabesmitbs, or JBla&ers. 
 
 A GOOD deal of difficulty and friction was created about 1406-8 by 
 the deceptions and malpractices in cutlery on the part of foreigners and 
 other interlopers, who manufactured goods in unrecognised quarters 
 
 C.C. 14
 
 lOO VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 and offered them for sale, whereby, among other matters, the Blade- 
 smiths as a body incurred discredit and loss. In 1408, therefore, the 
 Association of Bladesmiths solicited and obtained the assent of the 
 Court of Aldermen to a code of articles, by which the sale of blades 
 was restricted to Gracechurch Street, the pavement near St. Nicholas' 
 Shambles in Newgate Street, and the Tun on Cornhill, and which 
 compelled the workers, under pain of forfeiture, to make the points 
 and edges of lance-heads, swords, daggers, knives, and axes hard 
 enough to bear the assay ; that the masters or wardens of the trade 
 should oversee all articles made, and that each man should to the 
 larger pieces affix his own peculiar mark. The Gild occurs down to 
 1532. In 1469 it found twenty men for the Cit\' Watch. In 1502 it 
 had a prescriptive Livery of twelve. 
 
 Stow's Continuator (1633) mentions William Palmer, a Blader, as a 
 great benefactor to the church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, under 1356. 
 
 •Ebe JSlocft=mafters. 
 
 This Association, which was in alliance with the Shipwrights, and 
 which did not obtain a charter, was at one period both numerous and 
 important. Its members were the manufacturers and salesmen of the 
 pulleys for ships' rigging and tackle, and had their centre in the purlieus 
 of the Docks. During many years it was a practice with the Block- 
 makers to go in procession, the first Friday in July, down the Mile-End 
 Road to Epping, where they attended Fairlop Fair. The cavalcade in- 
 cluded a ship or ships on wheels, with streamers and a band, and often 
 extended nearly a mile in length. The usage originated in the circum- 
 stance that Mr. Day, a member of the trade at Wapping, had a property 
 in the neighbourhood of Epping, where he entertained the whole Com- 
 pany on beans and bacon. 
 
 ICbc JSraclcrs, or Bracc=mal3ers. 
 
 This Association had Wardens and an organized system of govern- 
 ment in 1354, when the earliest bye-laws were submitted to the Court 
 of Aldermen and approved. This code is of the usual character on the 
 whole, but, as is always the case, contains one or two provisions special 
 to the particular craft, as, for instance, the admittance of strangers 
 (or other than freemen) to work after examination as to fitness and 
 position, and the enforcement of imprisonment in cases of fraud. It is 
 stipulated that the trade shall not employ sheep-leather.
 
 THE liURILLERS. lO/ 
 
 Ubc 3BurUlcr5. 
 
 This Association, which was evidently at one time of considerable 
 weight and note, was a branch of the great family of communities 
 engaged in the production of woollen cloths, and was probably of equal 
 antiquity with that of the Weavers. It received incorporation by letters 
 patent of Henry III. (1216-72), tlie terms of which indicate the vocation 
 as one of established character. 
 
 The Burillers are frequently noticed in an incidental manner in the 
 municipal archives and in the early chronicles as concerned in some 
 dispute with the other Fraternities, particularly the Weavers, with whom 
 their relations were necessarily very intimate and constant. In 1298-9 
 a serious difference arose between these two bodies in consequence of 
 the Burillers having chosen two Bailiffs from their own ranks to hold 
 Courts, and having presented them to the Mayor, who approved them ; 
 and it was settled that, where an\' matter could not be arranged in the 
 Bailiffs' Court, it was to be referred to Guildhall. 
 
 In the succeeding year another circumstance arose, of which the 
 ulterior value is to illustrate the extremely ancient standing of the 
 ]5uril!ers, as well as the archaic government of that community. The 
 Weavers appeared at Guildhall (1299- 1300) by their Bailiffs to answer 
 the Burillers " upon certain articles, points, and establishments, whereof 
 there was no memory, and in respect of which, and other things, it 
 was alleged that the defendant Association had committed trespass and 
 wrong. The controversy was referred back by the Ma\-or to a committee 
 of arbitration composed of three members of the Burillers' Fraternity 
 and their Alderman, and an equal number of the other craft ; and the 
 result was that certain heads of agreement were submitted. We hence 
 infer that the burthen of the grievance was the old story of blending 
 of foreign with English wools. 
 
 But the Alderman of the Burillers was, even at this distant date, 
 growing an obsolete designation. He was in. fact- the Master Warden 
 of the body, which gave its name to the soke or ward adopted as its 
 head-quarters, and had a proprietary and seigniorial status as distin- 
 guished from a mere electoral one, so long as he held office ; and indeed 
 we may see how in one case, that of Farringdon Ward, feudal rights 
 were acquired some time prior to these transactions by an influential 
 goldsmith on payment of a nominal tribute. 
 
 A special function of the craft of Burillers was the inspection and 
 measurement of cloth, and the summons to the Mayor's Court of all 
 such as were found on search made to have exceeded the prescribed 
 and lawful width from list to list of two ells, which, according to
 
 IC8 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Herbert, were known as burrells. This duty to some extent subse- 
 quently devolved on the Merchant Taylors. In 50 Edward III. (1376), 
 the Gild was represented by two members only on the Common 
 Council, a proportion significant of its commencing decline as an 
 independent Society. 
 
 It appears that the worsted manufacturers in Norfolk had been 
 accustomed to make their cloth at pleasure and without hinderance 
 until 2 Edward III., when some one came into those parts with a 
 commission from the king to require them to conform to a certain 
 assize ; and we gather that the trade was at that period extensive and 
 important, since a committee, with the Bishop of Norwich at the head 
 of it, was appointed to report ui^on the matter. 
 
 trbe Cappers. 
 
 This Fraternity, which (like the Hatters) was eventually engrossed by 
 the Haberdashers, received letters patent from Henry III. Its members 
 are frequently mentioned in the City archives in conjunction with the 
 allied crafts. In the charter of Henry VII., incorporating the Haber- 
 dashers, the Cappers are identified with the Hurers. 
 
 The incorporation by patent of this and other minor industries serves 
 to illustrate the tendency to decentralize labour and distribute as equally 
 as possible the details and profits of manufacture. 
 
 Xlbe Carmen. 
 
 The Carmen of the City of London were incorporated by letters 
 patent, 15 Henry VIII., and were limited to 400, including those who 
 belonged to the King's Borough of Southwark, which was within the 
 same jurisdiction. 
 
 By a reference to what is said under the account of the Wood- 
 mongers it will be observed that the control of the operative members 
 of this Gild was claimed at a later period by the Governors of Christ's 
 Hospital and by the Woodmongers. The authority of the former 
 was overruled by the Court of King's Bench. A conflict on this, as 
 on so many other, points of municipal policy arose, and the natural 
 consequence was, that there was a considerable amount of anarchy 
 and confusion. The correspondence and dispute lasted during several 
 years with intermissions. 
 
 It is difficult to discern where the independence of the Carmen
 
 THE CARMEN. IO9 
 
 as a Gild la)-, for they were certainly under the supervision of the 
 Wood mongers for some purposes, and of Christ's Hospital for others. 
 The deficiency of vehicles outside the City led to incessant requisitions 
 upon them from the Court and nobility, more especially when some 
 special circumstances called for an unusual number of conveyances, 
 both for passengers and luggage. 
 
 The proposition of the City in 1608 was, that whereas each carman 
 used time out of mind to pay a duty of four nobles a year in addition 
 to a quarter-wage of four shillings for a single cart and so ratcabl\- 
 in progression, now he should pay two nobles as duty for a single cart 
 and four shillings quarter-wage, the number of carts being limited to 
 that in the charter. 
 
 The arrangement seems to have been accepted by the Common 
 Council, and about 1620 the matters in controversy were brought to a 
 conclusion for the time, the last incident being the resistance of the 
 Woodmongers and Carmen to assessment by the Justices of Surrey. 
 
 The Carmen were incorporated with the Fiicllers in 1606 by letters 
 patent under the name of Woodmongers, and so continued till 1668, 
 when the Company was charged by Parliament with fraudulent practices 
 in the sale of coals and other fuel, and threw up its charter, the Carmen 
 reverting to their former grade as a Fellowship under a resolution of the 
 Common Council by the name of the Free Carmen of the City of London, 
 and with a governing body composed of a Master, two Wardens, and 
 forty-one Assistants. 
 
 In 1739 the now separate Company is mentioned as still flourishing, 
 and as having in the hands of its freemen 420 carts or cars for the con- 
 veyance of all descriptions of goods, coals and coke included, to and 
 from all' parts of London and its Liberties, at a tariff fi.ved by the City. 
 
 But the working carmen were placed under the control of the 
 Governors of Christ's Hospital, and each paid for his licence to the 
 Hospital I "J. 4.d. a year. The heaviest load mentioned is 2000 lbs. 
 
 The Gild yet survives, and as recently as iSgi possessed four votes 
 for the City in respect of its Livery. 
 
 The Courtier and the Carter. 
 
 The World runnes on Wheeles ; or, Oddes betwi.xt Carts and Coaches. By Julin 
 
 Taylor. 121110, 1623, 1635. With an engraving. 
 The Carmen's Remonstrance against the Woodmongers. 4to, 1649. 
 A Proclamation to restrain the E.xcessive Carnages in Wagons and four-wheeled 
 
 Carts, to die Destruction of High-vvavs. 1661. A broadside.
 
 no VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 ^be Cbeesemonoers. 
 
 "The reputable men of the trade of Cheesemongers" occur as suc- 
 cessful applicants to the Court of Aldermen in 1377 for the sanction 
 of bye-laws drawn up b}' themselves for their internal government. 
 They sold cheese and butter ; and it appears that these came into the 
 City by water, in carts, and by men on horseback. The articles sought 
 to restrain those who brought them by land from selling them otherwise 
 than at Leadenhall Market or in that between the Shambles and 
 Newgate, and before the stroke of noon, and to render it unlawful for 
 those who came by water from selling them to hucksters, regraters, 
 forestallers, and others. Special allusion is made to Welsh cheese, 
 called talgar, which is said to have been carried to London, and sur- 
 reptitiously sold in Fleet Street, Holborn, and elsewhere. Cheese 
 engrosses the entire text of the code ; and we learn that the Cheese- 
 nlongers had been required to revise their scale of prices. 
 
 In 1379 regulations were first formally made as to the sale of butter 
 within the City. The price differed with the season. No butter was 
 saleable without the porringer, which held half a quart butter-measure. 
 
 The Cheesemongers concentrated themselves in the vicinage of 
 Breadstreet Hill in the time of Stow or at least of Howes (1633) for 
 the convenience of their trade, and Thames Street has always continued 
 to be the great landing place for foreign cheeses. The earlier factor in 
 this commodity at the river-side was probabl}' a wholesale merchant. 
 
 The importation of the Dutch cheeses was probably of great anti- 
 quity. In the Abridgement of the City Charter, 1680, the waterside 
 porters are authorized to charge \2d. for unloading two cwt. of Holland 
 cheese, being the scale for foreigners, or those who were not free of the 
 City. 
 
 Cheesewright, which is at present onl)- the name of a person, was 
 obviously in the first instance that of a craft, and indicates those who 
 made the article, as the cheesemonger does those who sold it.
 
 THE FREE I-ISUEKMEN. 
 
 I I I 
 
 Zbc Comt)=nial5crs. 
 
 This Society was incorporated by letters patent of Charles the First, 
 in April, 1636, under the name of the Master, Wardens, and Fellowship 
 of the Comb-makers of London. 
 
 Maitland (1739) says that its government was a Master, two Wardens, 
 and thirteen Assistants, but that it had neither Hall nor Li\ery. 
 
 JLbc Cor&ers of tbe IRoper?. 
 
 The Ropery adjoined the Steelyard, or rather Staple-yard or House, 
 and was originally a seat of the distinct industry in which the Corders 
 engaged. The sale of ropes, cord, and other similar appliances for 
 sails and shipping was naturally allocated to the water-side ; and the 
 Corder gradually added, according to the prevalent usage, where no 
 other separate craft undertook the business, the canvas and sail-cloth 
 trades. 
 
 The Ropers and Canvassers (with the Pepperers) e\-entually merged 
 in the GROCERS. 
 
 TLbc jfree iftsbennen. 
 
 This Company was incorporated, according to Maitland (1739), in 
 the third year of James H., under this style ; but no further particulars 
 are forthcoming, except that there is a series of petitions extant, ad- 
 dressed by the body to the Government, and that, from a reference b\^ 
 Maitland in his second edition (1756), there seems to have been an 
 antecedent charter. 
 
 The Case of the Company of Free Fishermen of the River of Thames, and other 
 Fishermen of this Kingdom, using the Lobster Trade. A broadside. [About 
 1700.]
 
 112 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Zbc jforcers, or Ca5het=inakers. 
 
 The manufacture of caskets, formerly called foireis, was evidently 
 one of great antiquity and of special importance in regard to the skill 
 and taste demanded in such as were of costlier workmanship. 
 
 The bye-laws or ordinances, of which the good folk following this 
 trade solicited official approbation, apparently for the first time, in 1406, 
 stated in the premises that divers persons, both freemen of the City and 
 foreigners, were in the habit of making and vending forcers of defective 
 material and fabric, in great deceit of the people, and so forth ; and 
 accordingly the petitioners asked to be allowed to appoint from year 
 to year two Wardens, and to have certain articles for their stricter 
 governance and greater security. It is hence ascertained that the usage 
 of the trade was to make nine different sizes, of the second of which 
 only the distinctive name, a quarlct, transpires. 
 
 These caskets were originally of wood, lined with linen cloth. Like 
 the salvers and trenchers of the same material, they were the precursors 
 of others formed of the precious metals, and elaborately tooled and 
 chased. 
 
 By the Act i Richard III., dealing with the importation by foreigners 
 of a variety of goods, "painted forcers," doubtless of wood, are enu- 
 merated in the list of prohibited merchandise. 
 
 ZXit jfullers. 
 
 A CHARTER of incorporation was granted to the Fraternity or Gild 
 Perpetual of the Mistery or Craft of Fullers, April 28, 1480, 20 Edward 
 IV. The Company was ordained to consist of three Wardens and a 
 commonalty of freemen and freewomen, with a licence in mortmain and 
 a common seal, and the right of pleading and being impleaded. The 
 charter conferred the power of making ordinances for the internal 
 government of the Society, under the advice of the Lord Mayor, but to 
 be exempt from the jurisdiction of the King's courts. 
 
 This was followed by a deed executed in the name of the three 
 persons, members of the trade, who had been instrumental in obtaining 
 the charter, John Britte, Henry Lee, and Thomas Wymonde, and dated 
 October 18 in the same year. 
 
 Doubtless, the Fullers caused ordinances or bye-laws to be framed by 
 virtue of the liberty above given, but they do not seem to survive. For 
 a considerable period they remained an influential and numerous
 
 THE FUK13ISUERS. 
 
 association, and gave much trouble to the City by the disputes whicli 
 arose as to the methods of fuIHng and other points. 
 
 The Fullers had, long prior to this date, concentrated themselves, it 
 appears, in the neighbourhood of La Blanche Chapclh; or White-Chapcl, 
 where in ancient times the matfellon,' or fuller's teasel, largely used by 
 the trade in their operations, grew to such an extent that the district 
 became known as / 'ilia Bcatce Marice de Afatfelloii. They had at one 
 period a Hall in Billitcr Square. Their successors, the Clothvvorkers, 
 adopted from them the Virgin as their tutelary saint. 
 
 The question of irregular fulling in water-mills and walk-mills, instead 
 of by hand, was mooted in 1404 ; and the Mayor and Aldermen were 
 instructed to come to the aid of tlic Ilurcrs and Cappers in this matter, 
 and to enlarge the powers of their Wardens, so as to enable them to cope 
 with the grievance, which damaged their reputation and business. 
 
 Similar fellowships existed down to a much later time as separate 
 bodies in the provinces. The Fullers of Newcastle-on-Tyne, by dissolv- 
 ing themselves and dividing their corporate property, created the test 
 case, by which it was ruled by the Master of the Rolls that there was 
 a right and power resident in such societies to determine their existence, 
 and distribute the corporate estate. 
 
 TLbc jfurbisbers. 
 
 The code of bye-laws by which this Craft, no longer recognised in 
 a separate form, was regulated, bears date 1350 ; but it then already 
 possessed Wardens, and had doubtless been some time in existence as 
 an unchartered Fraternity or Association. These articles relate to the 
 manufacture of pommels or hilts and scabbards of swords, and to the 
 repair of old weapons of that class. They are few in number, and 
 chiefly of normal character. 
 
 ' In ancient times, somewhat nearer the city, in St. Botolph's parish, Bishopsgate, 
 lay Tazel Close, so called because before it was let as an archery ground the teasel 
 used to be regularly cultivated there. The area was eventually enclosed, and became 
 the Artillerv Garden. 
 
 C.C.
 
 114 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Ube Gardeners. 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 I'KESENT AHMS. 
 
 Although not now numbered among the Livery Gilds, the 
 Gardeners were twice incorporated ; namely by letters patent in 1605, 
 September 18, and by charter in 161 6, November 9. In the first 
 instance, the Company obtained enrolment in the Chamber of London ; 
 but in 1616 the civic authorities seem to have offered difficulties, as 
 happened in other cases. It does not appear under what conditions the 
 Gardeners lost this original grant, which may have applied, like that of 
 1616, to those occupied in the City or within two miles thereof; but the 
 Court of Aldermen proved obdurate, and the King wrote from Scotland 
 to endeavour to induce that body to relent, with what success we do 
 not learn. 
 
 The disappearance of the Gild may be ascribed to its lack of industrial 
 importance, and to the uncommercial character of those who, beyond 
 the working members of the craft, felt an interest in such matters. 
 
 It seems from a petition presented by the " Gardeners of the Earls, 
 Barons, and Bishops, and of the Citizens of London," that it was in 1345 
 regarded as a prescriptive usage for them to be permitted to offer for 
 sale, in front of the church of St. Martin, at the side of the gate of 
 St. Paul's church, their masters' garden-produce for their profit. But 
 the practice was represented to the Corporation as being attended by 
 such grave inconvenience to the frequenters and officials of the churches 
 and others, that, by way of compromise, the petitioners were allowed to 
 stand in future on the space between the south gate of St. Paul's and 
 the garden-wall of the Friars Preachers at Baynard's Castle. 
 
 The style of the Company was The Master, Wardens, Assistants, 
 and Commonalty of the Company of Gardeners of London. There 
 were a Master, two Wardens, and eighteen Assistants, but no Livery.
 
 THE HABERDASHERS. I I 
 
 Zbc 1babcrC»a3bcr5 of St. Hxatbci-inc tbc Utroin alt^ of 
 
 St. mtc ho las. 
 
 Two l^iothcihoods so named existed in London long before the 
 acquisition of corporate dignit\- by the Gild now known under the name 
 of Haberdashers. It was not till 1448 that the Haberdashers of hats 
 and those of small wares, the Hurers or Cappers, and the Hatters strictly 
 so termed, were finally combined in one society and under one con- 
 stitution. The most ancient references to the unincorporated Haber- 
 dashers do not state whether the)- were of St. Kathcrinc or of the other 
 Fraternity. 
 
 In 131 1 divers haberdashers and hatters were convicted of selling 
 false hats, black, white, and gray, made of wool and flocks, and the 
 goods were burned in Cheapside. It seems to have been an inquisition 
 undertaken at the request of certain hatters, who are named. 
 
 The earliest bye-laws of the Haberdashers are dated 1371. They are 
 comparatively few and simple, and merely rehearse that none of the 
 trade should take a journeyman save as an apprentice for seven years, 
 that no sales of wares should take place on Sundays or holy days, or 
 el.sewhere than in the dealer's own shop or stall, and that the fraternity 
 shall every year choose four overseers to protect the trade and present 
 defaulters to the Guildhall. 
 
 All that we are enabled to understand is, that these persons were 
 " the reputable men of the trade of Haberdashers." 
 
 Under the date 1378 we have, in Mr. Riley's Memorials, an exceed- 
 ingly curious and edifying schedule of the contents of a haberdasher's 
 shop. They comprise (i) 12 dozens of laces of red leather, value 8(f., and 
 a gross of points of red leather, value 18^/. ; (2) one dozen of cradlebows 
 made of wool and flax, 18^/.; (3) three ditto, id.\ (4) red, green, and 
 white caps, the last called nightcaps, the coloured at 2s. %d., and the 
 white at 2s. ^d. a dozen ; (5) two dozen of woollen caps of divers 
 colours, i6s. ; (6) six ditto of black wool, 4^-. ; three of blue and one of 
 russet, 2s. 6d.; (7) five children's caps, red and blue, 2s. id.; (8) one dozen 
 of black hures [caps], ^s. ; one ditto, :^d. ; (9) two hair camises [coats of 
 camlet], \2d. ; (10) one hat of russet, 6d. ; one white hat, T,d. ; two papers 
 covered with red leather, I2d. ; (11) one purse called liautoudcys [or 
 hamodeys] of sea-green colour, 6d. ; four pairs of spurs, 2^-. ; one double 
 chain of iron, lod., and another iron chain, 6d. ; (12) one wooden 
 gaming-table, with a set of men, 6d. ; (13) one cloth painted with Him 
 crucified and other figures, 2s. i\d. ; (14) eight white chains of iron for 
 ferrets ; one set of beads of jet, 6d., one other set of black alabaster, 4</., 
 and three of wood, 3c/. ; (15) two pairs of pcncases with ink-horns, "id. ;
 
 ii6 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 (i6) one pair of children's boots of white woollen cloth, 2d. ; (17) one 
 osculatory, called a paxbread, yi. ; (18) four combs of boxwood, 4c/.; 
 (19) two wooden boxes, 3</. ; (20) two wooden pepper querns, 3(/. ; (21) 
 two lbs. of linen thread, green and blue, 2s. ; (22) two wooden frames 
 for cushions, 2d. ; (23) six purses of red leather, A,d. ; (24) four eyeglasses, 
 2d. ; (25) eighteen ink-horns, \%d. ; (26) one black girdle of woollen 
 thread, 2d. ; (27) thirteen quires of paper, 6s. 8d. ; (28) other paper, 
 damaged, 6d. ; (29) one wooden block for caps, 2d. ; (30) six skins of 
 parchment, called soylepeles, 6d.\ (31) one wooden whistle, 2d. ; (32) seven 
 leaves of paper, \d.; (33) three pieces of whipcord, 3</. 
 
 The preceding inventory, when we consider its date, is of singular 
 interest and pertinence. It probably represents the remainder-stock 
 of a dealer, insolvent or deceased, and is remarkable enough for the 
 diversity and range which the business had at that time assumed. It 
 further proves that the haberdasher was accustomed to keep miscel- 
 laneous goods of almost every description for domestic use other than 
 apparel and furniture. 
 
 Ube 1l3atbanb /IDahers. 
 
 This Society was incorporated by letters patent of 13 Charles I., 
 12 December, 1638, as the Master, Wardens, Assistants, and Fellowship 
 of the Mistery of Hatband-Makers of the City of London. The govern- 
 ment was by a Master, two Wardens, and twelve Assistants. There was 
 no Livery. 
 
 The Company flourished so long as the fashion prevailed of wearing 
 rich and costly hatbands; but even in Maitland's time (1739) had 
 dwindled down to two or three members. It has lone: been extinct.
 
 THE HOSTELERS AND HAV.MOXGERS. I I 7 
 
 XTbe Ibatters. 
 
 These existed as a separate body down to the fourteenth century, but 
 appear to have been eventuallj' amalgamated with tiie Haberdashers. 
 
 The bye-laws of the Hatters were approved by the Corporation in 
 1 347, and included the usual provisions and safeguards, with power of 
 search and of appointing six overseers. They prohibited the sale of 
 foreign hats, except in gross and to freemen. 
 
 XTbe Ifjcaiuners. 
 
 The men of the trade of Helmetry, eventually merged in the 
 Armourers, submitted their Articles or bye-laws to the Mayor and Court 
 of Aldermen for approval in 1347, and they were passed. Besides the 
 habitual conditions as to freedom, apprenticeship, and such points, the 
 Heaumers were empowered to elect Wardens or supervisors, to prevent 
 the employment of unskilful workmen, to the discredit of the craft and 
 the common deceit ; (2) to make assay of all helmets of foreign fabric, 
 and mark them before they could be sold ; (3) to see that all helmets 
 whatsoever were properly stamped with the sign of the maker. 
 
 TLbc llDostelers an5 1F3asinongers. 
 
 These are cited in a petition of 1327, as if they formed one and the 
 same body, in connexion with a grievance as to the misdemeanour of 
 certain foreigners who, whereas they were entitled to sell only in gross, 
 brought their hay in small bottles in carts, so concealed as not to be 
 readily obser\-able, and retailed it for half-pence and farthings, not only 
 in the forenoon, but in the later part of the day. 
 
 On the I2th December, 1446, certain men of the Mistery of Hostelers 
 of the City preferred a petition to the ]\Iayor, which prayed for the 
 confirmation of their ordinances ; and the same was granted, and 
 the ordinances entered on record. Here there is no mention of the 
 Haymongers ; — and about twenty-seven years later (October 28, 1473) 
 we detect a further development of the organization in another address 
 to the Court at Guildhall, in which the Wardens and other men of 
 the Mistery of Iniiholders represent that they had been heretofore 
 improperl)' designated Hostelers, which Hostelers were verily their 
 servants, and begging that in this renewal of their ordinances and 
 henceforth they might be called Innholders ; whereto the City assented.
 
 ii8 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 This incident closes therefore the annals of the Hostelers, whose 
 future career may be found narrated under their correct appellation 
 or style. But we see in these passages the origin of the modern 
 hostler ox ostler ; and it may be the fittest opportunity of pointing out 
 the need of remembering, when we consider the subject of English 
 Inns and their keepers or holders, the primitive nucleus of the principle 
 and institution, and the transitional stages through which they passed, 
 before they attained even the form assumed by them in the days of 
 Chaucer. 
 
 At the outset, the Inn was merely a 
 lodging for travellers, not necessarily a 
 public one, on or near the wayside along 
 the principal routes for pedestrians, riders, 
 or packhorses throughout the kingdom. 
 Private householders, who had sufficient 
 accommodation or a desire to earn money 
 by such means, received strangers under 
 their roofs for the night, or at most, — • 
 if they had satisfactory credentials, — for 
 two or three day.s. Ordinarily, all that 
 was offered was the shelter for man and 
 beast, and perhaps the bait for the latter ; 
 but the guest was supposed to bring his 
 own commissariat. From certain persons thus placing their dwellings 
 at the disposal of casual visitors, when there was no other refuge, and 
 where it was not a party carrying its own tent, or where, again, there 
 was an absence of facilities afforded by ancient ruins or dense sylvan 
 cover, it became a natural evolution to the professional host, who 
 adapted his premises to public and general requirements, and soon 
 learned to find in the purveyance of refreshments, both liquid and 
 solid, an additional and leading source of profit. The growth of the 
 Inn was at once the cause and consequence of an increased habit of 
 travelling, through the extension of inland commerce and the rise of 
 provincial towns into greater importance and into more regular inter- 
 course with the metropolis ; and the houses of public entertainment 
 in London and in other chief centres, especially sea-ports, were fostered 
 and multiplied by the floating population, which gradually rendered the 
 City itself so cosmopolitan. 
 
 The original combination of the hay- dealer with the Hosteler or 
 Hostler simply had in view the habitual demand for the article on 
 the part of ordinary customers and the incidental sale to others. We 
 do not accept without reserve the statement of the Innholders in 
 
 THE .\NCIENT HOSTELER.
 
 THE HOSTELERS AND IIAV.MONGERS. II9 
 
 1473, that the Hostelers were subordinates. In the official returns of 
 1469, touching the City Watch, the Hostelers are charged with furnishing 
 eighteen men, and there is no reference to the Innholdcrs ; but it may 
 be the fact that, when inns became of greater importance and dimen- 
 sions, the office of hosteler, and the term, acquired a new and modified 
 meaning, and that the individual, who kept the rudimentary establish- 
 ment, transferred his name to the superintendent of the stable under 
 the innholder. But by whatever title he was known, the hosteler has 
 never become an extinct type ; he was the keeper in the Stuarts' time 
 of the petty ostery, or cheap lodging-house and restaurant ; and he still 
 survives among us. 
 
 From the mention of the Hostelers and Haymongcrs in very early 
 records as a branch of trade and as a recognised association, almost 
 before we meet with the Innholder, it seems possible that the latter 
 was an aftergrowth,' and that the accommodation of travellers at bed 
 and board in town or country, especially in places off the high roads, 
 followed the supply of mere entertainment for man and beast on their 
 way from point to point. The person who kept the inn not un- 
 naturally acquired an importance superior to the person who kept the 
 stable, ha\--loft, and brewery-tap or brasserie; and these premises 
 became a subsidiary portion of the establishment ; but the still not un- 
 frequent separate tenure of the outbuildings may be viewed in the light 
 of a survival, and as shewing the germ of the inn. 
 
 In not a few of the Ordinances of the other Gilds we meet with 
 injunctions against the sale of goods by craftsmen in hostels in lieu 
 of the open market ; and this Irregular practice was discountenanced, 
 because it was held to be a vehicle and facility for fraud, where the 
 Wardens had no opportunity of control. But it was also the origin of 
 the later usage of employing inns as a rendezvous for travellers and 
 itinerant dealers, and the foundation of the Commercial Room. 
 
 Within the confines of the City itself, however, the practice of fur- 
 nishing entertainment and sleeping accommodation for the traveller 
 more speedily followed than elsewhere; and in 1365 the hcrbergeonr 
 or keeper of the aiibcrgc, subsequently known as the innholder, was 
 already a familiar institution, around which sufficient time had elapsed 
 for the growth of abuses. For we encounter about that period, when 
 Chaucer must have been intimate with such resorts, and was studying 
 character with rich profit to us all, that the authorities had to put pres- 
 sure on certain herbergeours to restrain them from baking their own 
 
 ' .Somewhat on the same principle that the Frenchman's shirt is said to have been 
 an aftergrowth from his wristband.
 
 I20 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 bread, and from selling ale, except to stranger guests, — the bond fide 
 traveller of those days, — or unless the landlord was also a common 
 brewer; and all loaves supplied to customers were to come from the 
 baker, and to bear his mark. 
 
 The ordinances of 1365 prescribe the scale at which the innkeeper 
 should charge for his hay and oats, whether the former was sold by the 
 bottle or otherwise. 
 
 Tlbe 1F3urcr5, Ifjurricrs, or /llMlIiitcrs.' 
 
 This Fellowship, with those of the Hatters and Cappers, was perhaps 
 at one period associated with the Mercers, while the latter still retained 
 their small-ware trade. The Hurers and Hatters were united by letters 
 patent of Henry VII. ; and this body, again, with the Cappers and 
 two Fraternities of Haberdashers, constituted the Gild of HaberdasJiers, 
 incorporated under that title in 1447. The Court of Aldermen found it 
 imperative to devote a considerable share of time and attention to the 
 trades' unions and Gilds, among which questions of law or right were 
 continually arising. In 1376, the Hurers or Hatters complained that 
 certain persons fulled caps or /aires, or hats, in the same manner as 
 clothes, at a certain water-mill, and shewed that these things so fulled 
 with the clothes were very inferior to those done by hand ; and, on 
 sufficient proof being given, the Court acceded to the Hurriers' prayer 
 for a restraint of the practice. 
 
 The Hurers recur in 1398, under the first mayoralty of Sir Richard 
 Whittington, as receiving an official sanction to supplementary articles 
 for the government of their trade. These prescribed that caps or hures, 
 or other matters, should not be scoured in the public thoroughfares, but 
 on private premises — a provision occasioned by the practice of hurers 
 sending their assistants, and even children, down to the river side to 
 scour their goods, and great dissension and even bloodshed arising, to 
 the great scandal of the trade, besides that they were often sent thither 
 " amid horrible tempests, frosts, and snows." 
 
 The Milliner seems to have been recognised as a separate employ- 
 ment and denomination, and to have occasionally become one of great 
 importance and wealth, for in 1552 Baptist Borrow, milliner, in St. 
 Giles's Cripplegate, is recorded as being buried " with a pennon, a 
 coat-armour, and a herald ; " and there were twenty-four torch-bearers, 
 the Company of Parish Clerks, and many other mourners ; and the 
 church v\-as hung with black. 
 
 ' The woid 'iiilliner is usually derived from Milan, Milaner, a dealer in Milanese 
 "oods.
 
 THE MARBLERS. 
 
 12 I 
 
 Zbc Xiiicii iDrapcrs. 
 
 Ln the notice of the Drapers' Company some account will be found 
 of the somewhat slow and tardy development of a branch of business 
 which is at present so universal and lucrative. The introduction of linen 
 fabrics from abroad was long opposed by vested interests here ; and we 
 have to wait till the latter half of the 15th century before we gain any 
 tidings of this industry as the foundation of a I'ellowship or F"raternity. 
 In 1469 the Linen-Drapers, then evidently of humble rank, gave a quota 
 of four men-at-arms to the City Watch, the viaxiiiuDii being 210. In 
 23 Henry VIII., they are enumerated among the bodies which sent 
 representatives to a municipal banquet ; and whereas the Drapers them- 
 selves were allowed to fill twelve places besides those of their Wardens, 
 the Linen-Drapers were obliged to be content with two. They had at 
 this period no Livery, and apparently never achieved any other progress 
 toward independence. 
 
 One of the most distinguished followers of this calling was James 
 Heyward, whose place of business was on Fish Street Hill. He died 
 in 1776 in Austin Friars, in his seventieth year. He had in his younger 
 days contributed to the Spectator, and he bore a name which, during 
 centuries had been associated with letters — nearest to his own time in 
 the person of Mrs. Eliza Heyward or Hayward the novelist. 
 
 The Merchant's Warehouse laid open; or, the Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper. 
 Shewing how to buy all sorts of Linnen and Indian Goods. By J. F. l2mo, 1696. 
 
 Xlbe /niarbIci-5. 
 
 Stow says : " The Company called by the name of Marblers, for 
 their excellent knowledge and skill in the Art of Sculpturing personages 
 for Tombs, Grave-stones, and Monuments in Churches and elsewhere in 
 Religious places : their antiquity and what respect they have carried 
 is unknown to mc, nor can I find them to be incorporated ; but [they] 
 
 C.C. 16
 
 122 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 hold some friendship with the Masons, and are thought to be esteemed 
 among them in Fellowship." 
 
 In the list of burials in the Priory of Blackfriars occurs, under date 
 of June 6, 1527: "Thomas Raynton, citizen and n/arbli-r." This 
 Raynton must have been a person of some consideration, as he directed 
 that he should be interred here " within the cloister, nigh as may be to 
 the grave where Dr. Morgan, late Prior, lies buried, if he fortunes to 
 decease within the City." Hugo Marleberer, one of the Sheriffs of 
 London in 13 Edward III. (1339-40), may be probably claimed as a 
 member of the same calling. That was a period when the avocation 
 still bestowed the patronymic or surname. 
 
 Other Gilds, which have disappeared from observation, are never- 
 theless more or less fully recorded and known, as we shall point out 
 elsewhere ; but this is the only reference to the Marblers with which 
 we recollect to have met, beyond the passage in the Survey of London 
 and two notices in Riley's Memorials under 1281 and 1284. They 
 merged perhaps in the Masons. 
 
 This obsolete or amalgamated Gild must have been for a length of 
 time of very considerable eminence and wealth ; and to its members 
 or the followers of the vocation we doubtless owe great part of those 
 fine monuments of deceased celebrities which were erected in former 
 times in London, Southwark, Westminster, and elsewhere, and of which 
 many perished in the Fire of 1666. 
 
 The pages of Camden (Latin account of the Roja/ and Noble 
 Burials in St. Peters, Westminster, 1600 and 1606), Payne Fisher 
 {Tombs and ATonuments in St. Paul's, 1684), Weever {Ancient Funeral 
 Monuments, 163 1 and 1767), and Dingley {History from Marble and 
 Welsh Journal') afford some idea of the extent and rank of this industry, 
 when during centuries such a succession of costly tombs was demanded 
 by our wealthy and powerful families, and the art was confined to a 
 few individuals, bound together by ties of fellowship and reciprocity. 
 
 That a good deal of their work has disappeared, we need not doubt 
 for an instant. Successive improvements and other changes, and fires, 
 have done their part ; and in certain cases the monuments have been 
 removed for the sake of the material, as when, in 1564, Sir Martin 
 Bowes, a member of the Goldsmiths' Company, and then Lord Mayor, 
 sold for 50/. the grave-stones and monuments at the Greyfriars — of 
 course only one instance out of many, where a person of such station 
 could be guilty of such an act. 
 
 The Marblers .are pretty clearly identical with the LAPIDARIES. 
 Speaking of the Gildhall of the Merchants of the Hanse of Germany 
 in Thames Street, Stow's Continuator (1633) mentions that the Gild
 
 THE PARISH CLERKS. 
 
 123 
 
 hired in 6 Richard 1 [. a house adjoining, some time belonging to Richard 
 Lions, a famous Lapidary, one of the Sheriffs of London in 49 Edward 
 in. and in 4 Richard 11., taken forcibly from that house by the rebels 
 under Wat Tyler, and beheaded in Cheapside. 
 
 XLlK iparisb Clcrhs. 
 
 PRESENT .\KMS. 
 
 This Brotherhood was incorporated by letters patent of 17 Henry 
 111., in the year 1233, by the name of the Fraternity of St. Nicholas, 
 and again by patent of 9 James L, 19 January, 161 (-12, under their 
 present designation. The grant was renewed 1 1 Charles L, 27 
 l-"ebruary, 1636-7. 
 
 In 27 Henr\' VI. certain tenements at Bishopsgate, on the left hand 
 side of the street from the gate, were granted to the fellowship for the 
 purpose of endowing and maintaining two chaplains in the chapel of 
 St. Mary Magdalen, near Guildhall. In this concession the property 
 is described as having formerly belonged to " a Brotherhood of St. 
 Nicholas " ; but it may be presumed that that was the germ of the later 
 body. 
 
 The Parish Clerks were bound under the old law to register the 
 weekly christenings and burials in their respective parishes by six 
 o'clock p.m. on each Tuesday ; but the time was changed to two 
 o'clock, to enable the authorities to have knowledge of the figures and 
 facts in advance. 
 
 A decree of the Court of Star Chamber in 1625 gave the Parish 
 Clerks liberty to have on their premises a printing-press for the purpose 
 of the periodical Bill of Mortality, and the Primate assigned them a
 
 124 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 printer to superintend it. But the list was confined to deaths witliin 
 the City bounds, and is consequently very defective. 
 
 The charter of 1637 conferred jurisdiction over the Cities of London 
 and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and fifteen out-parishes ; 
 and the corporation consisted in 1739 of a Master, two Wardens, 
 seventeen Assistants, and all the Parish Clerks c.i officio within the 
 Bills of Mortality. 
 
 In 1391 the Fraternity, consisting of the clerks of the various parish 
 churches of the metropolis and others of a similar calling, performed 
 at Skinners' Well, Clerkenwell, the Creation and the Passion before the 
 King, Queen, and nobility, and received under writ of privy seal 10/. for 
 their pains ; and in 1409 there was a second representation before Henry 
 IV. and his Court of the same kind, but of ampler extent, which lasted 
 seven days. In his Miller's Tale, Chaucer makes jolly Absolom, the 
 parish clerk, take the part of Herod in exhibitions of this character. 
 
 This Fraternity seems to have borne a part in those frequent religious 
 ceremonials which marked the life of former days. In the Corpus 
 Christi procession of the Skinners, described by Stow, no fewer than 
 two hundred are said to have attended. 
 
 In the Founders' accounts for 1497 there is, in connection with the 
 celebration of a mass, a pa\-ment to two parish clerks of eightpence, or 
 a groat each. 
 
 Maitland states in 1739 and again in 1756, that the Hall of the Com- 
 pany was in Wood Street, Cheapsidc ; it is at present in Silver Street, 
 a turnins: out of that thoroughfare. 
 
 .•\RMS, 1633 (FROM STOW). 
 
 E.\RLY ARMS. 
 
 But their earlier, if not their original, seat was at Bishopsgate, where 
 at the very beginning the Clerks were established. As we have above 
 mentioned, houses near the gate were vested in them in the reign of 
 Henry "VI. to found a religious service with two chaplains near Guild- 
 hall, and this circumstance doubtless led to their eventual migration to
 
 TIIK I'.WIOL'RS. 
 
 i: 
 
 that vicinity. One of the houses so devised was the Wrestlers' Inn, 
 and another, the Angel ; the Parish Clerks' Hall lay behind, and was 
 approached b\- a court. The premises consisted of the Hall itself and 
 seven ahri-shouses, and at the Dissolution were granted to Sir Robert 
 Chester. The former owners took legal proceedings against the in- 
 truder, and anticipated a successful issue ; but Chester determined the 
 suit by pulling down the Hall, and disposing of the materials. 
 
 Xlbc lpaviom-3. 
 
 OLD .\U,MS. 
 
 PKESENT .^R.MS. 
 
 Stow (ed. 1633, p. 641), says: "The Company of the Paviours no 
 doubt have beene a Company of antiquity, and maintained a Community 
 or Brotherhood among themselves, but for incorporation no Record 
 doth testifie it to me, and therefore I have lesse to say of them." 
 
 It seems reasonable to conclude that this Association could not have 
 acquired much importance in earl}' times, when the use of pavement, or 
 even of paved stone ways, was excessively limited. 
 
 By the regulations as to wages of various trades, set down in the 
 Lidcr A/l>i{s, paviours were not entitled to charge more than twopence 
 for making seven foot and a half of pa\"emcnt of the foot of St. Paul 
 in breadth. This was termed a toise ; and the workman was further 
 bound to conform to the Assize. 
 
 No paviour might lay his work at a different level or elevation from 
 that of the neighbouring premises. 
 
 In 1739 and 1756 Maitland refers to this as a Company by prescrip- 
 tion, and as consisting of three Wardens and twenty-five Assistant.s, 
 without a Livery.
 
 126 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Ube pcppcrcrs. 
 
 A COMPARATIVE examination of the records and notices relative 
 to this most ancient Fraternity seems to lead to the conclusion, that 
 they were the descendants of the " Emperor's men," or Teutonic 
 Society, which in the tenth century obtained a grant of land or a site 
 at Dowgate by the river's bank, and held it by a sort of feudal custom, 
 namely, by a half-yearly delivery to the Crown of ten pounds of pepper. 
 They may well have derived their appellation from this source ; but 
 they soon began to extend their transactions, and united with the 
 Corders and others in forming a more or less irregular Gild, which 
 doubtless made it a primary business to supply and monopolize the 
 riparian trade in that quarter. In 1180, according to an entry in the 
 Pipe Rolls, they had attained sufficient eminence to find a place among 
 the eighteen "adulterine" Gilds, which were fined because they had 
 not sought a royal licence. They were required to pay sixteen marks. 
 The same thing happened to some of the bodies which now form the 
 twelve great Companies. 
 
 The Pepperers and Corders (with whom were subsequently associated 
 the Farriers, Apothecaries, and others) obtained the nomination of 
 the keeper of the King's Great Beam at the Staple- Yard or Steelyard, 
 the goods brought or shipped there being almost exclusively such as 
 fell under the heav_\' standard. The importance of accurate determi- 
 nation of weight was far greater when the state of the currency 
 necessitated a large resort to barter. 
 
 The earliest ordinances of the Pepperers with which we are ac- 
 cjuainted are those which the)' made, with the assent of the Lord 
 Mayor and Aldermen, in 131 5-16, wherein they are described as 
 " the good folks of Soper Lane of the trade of Pepperers," and credit 
 themselves with the desire to settle certain undermentioned points for 
 the common benefit. 
 
 They are ranged under four heads : namely, That no one of the Craft 
 shall directly or indirectly mix or adulterate goods of different quality 
 and price. That no one shall tamper with bales, so as to change or 
 transfer the contents of any bale, or place false wares beneath true 
 ones. That no one shall moisten saffron, alum, ginger, cloves, and 
 such other merchandise, in order to increase the weight. That every 
 vendor shall have true uniform measures and weights, shall sell by 
 the hundredweight of one hundred and twch'e pounds, fifteen ounces 
 to the pound, save confections and powdered goods, which shall be 
 sold by twelve ounces to the pound. 
 
 This shews that, prior to their combination with the Spiccts under
 
 5 / 
 
 c =
 
 128 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 the name of Grocers, the Pepperers had in use both the avoirdupois 
 and troy or tron weights. 
 
 The Pepperers steadily rose in wealth and dignity. On the decline 
 of the influence of the Jews and Italians, they gradually added to their 
 functions those of bankers and pawnbrokers, before the Goldsmiths' 
 Gild made those departments of business their particular province. 
 The F"raternity had strengthened its ranks indeed by admitting to 
 membership some of the more eminent merchants of foreign origin, 
 whose experience and connexions were apt to prove of essential 
 service in an industry of varied character and incidence. Among 
 these we may mention Andrew Bokerel and Sir John de Gisors. 
 
 Bokerel in 1225 farmed the revenues of the King's Exchange, near 
 St. Paul's, where all transactions in the precious metals were once 
 conducted. He was succeeded at intervals in this responsible and 
 honourable office by other Pepperers, and in 1231 was chosen Mayor, 
 holding that position till 1237. Between the latter date and 1345, the 
 year of the incorporation with the Spicers, eight other brethren of 
 the Gild filled the mayoralty. In 13 12, of the twenty persons spe- 
 cially charged by Edward II. in his letters from York to hold the 
 City in his obedience, nine were Pepperers. It was the frequent 
 absence of our kings from London, and the \\'eakness of the central 
 authority, which favoured the growth of municipal power. 
 
 Some suppose that Bucklersbury, to which the followers of the 
 mistery shifted somewhat later from Sopers' Lane, owes its name 
 to Bokerel, who had his mansion house there. We observe that in 
 the Coroner's Roll of Edward I. for 1278 Broad Street Ward is 
 described as the Ward of William Bokerel. He was the proprietary 
 or feudal Alderman, and as in the case of the Faringdons the estate 
 remained some time in his family. Isabella Bokerel, whose will, dated 
 1280, is enrolled in the Court of Husting, was doubtless of this ancient 
 stock ; she appears to have possessed property in the Saddlery adjoin- 
 ing Cheapside. This illustrious municipal family first presents itself 
 to our notice in the person of Thomas Bokerel, Sheriff in 1216-17, 
 2 Henry III. He was probably related to Andrew, who was Sheriff, 
 8 and Mayor, 15-21, of the same reign. In the 11 and 12 Henry III. 
 Stephen Bokerell was one of the Sheriffs in the mayoralty of Roger 
 Duke, and in 40 of that king Matthew Bokerell filled the same office. 
 
 The Fraternity migrated at a later period, perhaps about the first 
 quarter of the fourteenth century, to Sopers' Lane, where they con- 
 tinued to rise in importance and reputation as dealers or factors in 
 an extensive choice of necessaries for consumption or use, as bankers, 
 and as financiers.
 
 Tiiii riiprKKERS. 129 
 
 Riley prints an indenture as to a sale of jewels by Walter Adryan, 
 I'eppcrcr of London, in 1338, to Margery Randolf; which jewels were 
 presumably his private property, and must have represented a con- 
 siderable moncy-\alue. 
 
 The I'epperers, with whom were associated the Spicers of Cheap, 
 a second opulent body, both of whom may have felt the need, as 
 their business and resources expanded, of some system of defensive 
 co-operation, though ostensibly for the maintenance and increase of love 
 among themselves, formed themselves on St. Anthony's Day (May 9) 
 1345, into a fraternity, called the Fraternit)' of St. Anthony, "to the 
 honour of God, the Virgin Mary, St. Anthon\-, and All Saints," and 
 agreed to dine together, being two and twenty persons, on June 12 
 following, at the palace of the Abbot of Bury [Hevis Marks] in Thread- 
 needle Street, near St. Anthony's Hospital, when two Wardens were 
 elected for the government of the body, and certain ordinances were 
 settled among themselves, providing for conditions of membership, the 
 payment of fees, the maintenance of a priest, the choice of a common 
 livery, arbitration between brethren in cases of dispute, attendance at 
 mass and at a banquet on St. Anthony's Day, when the Wardens were 
 required to wear chaplets, and crown their successors for the year next 
 ensuing, the rules of apprenticeship, and the relief of the poor of 
 the Brotherhood. The Wardens of 1346 delivered to those of 1347 
 all the property of the Association, namely, 61. 6s. in money, the 
 Halliwell chalice, and a vesture. 
 
 The assemblies at the Abbot of Bury's, a house exempted by charter 
 from episcopal, and perhaps from other save regal, interference, and 
 contiguous to the hospital and church of the patron-saint of the 
 Pepperers, were purely temporary, and the new Gild returned shortly 
 after to quarters in Sopers' Lane, their former centre, by St. Antho- 
 lin's Church, at the junction of the lane with Watling Street and 
 Budge Row ; but we shall see that, during a lengthened period, the 
 Fraternity had no fixed abode or address, and occasionally met in St. 
 Antholin's, or whither the Wardens summoned them. 
 
 Mr. Kingdon has taken singular pains to trace and establish a link 
 between St. Anthony's in Threadneedle Street (a presumed cell of St. 
 Antoine de Vienne in Dauphiny) and the long commercial relation- 
 ship of the Pepperers with Alexandria, the seat of the worship of 
 the Coptic personage of the same name, who is commonly known as 
 St. Anthony ; and that gentleman ascribes the Association of the 
 Pepperers with the Hospital or Hospice in the City of London to 
 their espousal of the Alexandrian anchorite as their tutelary saint. 
 
 Sopers' Lane, Cheapside, the modern Queen Street, appears to have 
 
 C.C. 17
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 been from the most ancient times a busy and noisy spot. It owed 
 its name to the Soapers or Soap-makers, who, at a period when 
 Cheapside was still a comparatively open space, were left at liberty 
 to pursue their calling here. The Pepperers, a far more important, 
 influential, and respectable body, perhaps succeeded them. In 1297 we 
 come across an ordinance of the City to forbid evening " cheapings " 
 here and to abolish what is termed the New Fair. At this time, and 
 till some centuries later, Cheapside extended only from Sopers' Lane 
 to Foster Lane. On the removal of the Pepperers, or rather Grocers, 
 to Bucklersbury, the Curriers and Cordwainers settled here. 
 
 In the time of Stow's Continuator (1633), a chain was drawn across 
 the middle of this lane, which was, no doubt, just such a narrow 
 thoroughfare as many yet remaining thereabout. 
 
 In 1348, the widows of free Pepperers were allowed to preserve 
 their membership, to apply for relief, and to attend the dinners, so 
 long as they remained in that state, or did not remarry out of the 
 Fraternity; and in the same year a beadle was appointed to summon the 
 members. 
 
 The Pepperers and Spicers, as an independent Gild, may be con- 
 sidered as having determined their career some time previously to 
 1 373, when they had apparently enlarged their sphere of activity and 
 influence, and designate themselves Grocers, otherwise dealers in whole- 
 sale or gross ; for the contention of ]\Ir. Kingdon, that they were so 
 called because they adopted the avordupois standard is rebutted by 
 the evident circumstance that they used both standards. 
 
 It is certain, however, that anterior to 1345, namely, in documents 
 of 1 3 10 and 132S, the appellation Pepperer is rendered by the Latin 
 word Grossarius, as if they were beginning to gain recognition under 
 the latter, which found its way into our language through the mediaeval 
 form Grocere.
 
 TlIK TINNERS OR I'IN-MAKERS. 
 
 XTbe ipimicrhj or ipiu=nial?cr3. 
 
 In 1376 the Pinners returned two members to the Common Council, 
 and in 1469 supplied twenty men to the City Watch — a fair quota, as 
 the Saltcrs made themselves answerable only for a similar number, 
 while many of the minor Companies contributed no more, or less, than 
 half 
 
 By the charter granted to the Girdlers, 10 Elizabeth, the Pinners and 
 Wire-workers,' who had been one body at least since the time of Edward 
 IV., and kept their accounts together, were united with them ; and this 
 is the last intelligence which we gain of the present Association, until 
 1598 or thereabout, when it appears to have abandoned its Hall in 
 Addle Street, rented from the Plaisterers, through a depression in the 
 industry, and to have removed elsewhere. 
 
 After existing during three centuries, perhaps, by prescription, or as 
 a subordinate member of the Girdlers, the Pinners obtained separate 
 letters patent of incorporation, 11 Charles I., August 20, 1636, when the 
 home manufacture of this article of constant use began to grow more 
 extensive and regular, and to supersede the foreign trade, which is said 
 to have been so large in the previous reign that 60,000/. a year left the 
 country to pay for our imports. Its style was. The Master, Wardens, 
 Assistants, and Commonalty of the Art or Mistery of Pin-makers of the 
 City of London. The government was a Master, two Wardens, and 
 eighteen Assistants. There was no Livery. 
 
 We have already traced the Pinners to Addle Street as lessees ; and 
 from a broadside in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, ascribed 
 to 16 19, we learn that the Company then had a Hall at St. Mary at 
 Hill, but were on the point of migrating to a new one at St. Katherine 
 Crie, where they were prepared to supply customers. Here there is evi- 
 dence to shew that they continued to exercise their trade, and to hold 
 
 See the account of the Tin Plate Workers in the next division of the book.
 
 132 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 periodical assemblies until 1723, when the Hall was diverted from its 
 purpose, and let as a Presbyterian meeting-house. Like that of the 
 Founders, it lay back from the thoroughfare in Old Broad Street, and 
 was approached by an alley still known as Pinner Court. It was taken 
 down in 1797. But over the building at the end of the court Pinners' 
 Hall is inscribed in bold characters. The whole group of modern 
 brick and mortar is a nest of offices. The footfall of a Pinmaker has 
 not been heard there these hundred and fifty years passed. 
 
 Prior to the happy discovery of the notion and art of making this 
 diminutive essential, thorns, stone, bone or metal skewers, brooches, and 
 bodkins, the two latter often of silver or gold, were employed by all 
 classes. 
 
 This was a part of the primitive mercer's occupation, which he 
 eventually relinquished to the hurer or milliner, and which became in 
 turn one of the lucrative specialties of the haberdasher of small wares. 
 
 Here the retailer acquired a footing more advantageous than that of 
 the manufacturer ; for the corporate privileges of the Pin-makers appear 
 to have lapsed, and very little is heard or known of them as a Company 
 or Gild after their original incorporation. The combined influence of 
 the bodies interested in keeping them under normal mercantile control 
 was very strong. 
 
 Account Books of the Pinners and Wire-makers, temp. Edward IV. Egerton 
 M.S. Brit. Mus. 1142. 
 
 Minute Book of the Pin-makers, 1710-23. .MS. in the Guildhall Librarj'. 
 
 To all Haberdashers and other Tradesmen whatsoever, buyers and sellers of 
 Pinnes within the Cite of London and suburbs thereof. [Notice by the Master, 
 Wardens, Assistants and Companie of Pin-Makers, of the Removal of the Hall 
 heretofore on S. Mary Hill, to near S. K. Crie Church, where the Companie 
 have in readinesse all sorts of Pinnes. [1619.] A broadside.] 
 
 tlbe BMancrs. 
 
 A NOTICE of this Craft Gild will be found under the account of the 
 Joiners in the follov>-ing section. Like the Sawyers, they long main- 
 tained an independent position as a trade's-union, and were manifestly 
 recognised as such so late as 1629, in which year they contributed 
 4/. 6s. to the civic expenses connected with a coronation, against 
 8/. \6s. demanded from the Joiners, and 10/. 15^. from the Carpenters. 
 
 The Planers must have constituted a regular and important organiza- 
 tion, distinct from both, and were constructively of great antiquity, 
 although their rise into prominence doubtless resulted from the develop- 
 ment of the special branch of the art which they professed. They, 
 equally with the Sawyers, however, failed to hold their ground.
 
 THE POUCH-.\IAK.liRS, 
 
 TL\K iPottcrs. 
 
 This Brotherhood probably mcr<;cd in tlic Armourers and Braziers. 
 It is to be conchided that it possessed no constitution or governing 
 body. 
 
 In proceedings which took phicc in 1316 before tlie Maj-or and 
 Aldermen, " the good folks of the trade of Potters in London " made 
 plaint of abuses and frauds committed to their detriment by persons 
 who sold pots of bad metal by .setting them on the fire and thus making 
 them look like vessels of good material ; and these offenders aggravated 
 their delinquency by offering the goods for sale in West Cheap on 
 Sundays and festival daj-s. 
 
 The Mayor's Court directed that steps should be taken by honest 
 men of the trade to make assays, and determine in what proportions 
 lead and copper ought to be employed in the manufacture. But the 
 record, whence these particulars are taken, was left incomplete. 
 
 XLbc iPoucb=maI?cr5. 
 
 We first hear of this Fraternity in 1 339, when overseers were appointed 
 to order the trade, and detect fraudulent or irregular practices. From 
 new articles or ordinances framed for them in 1371 it is readily inferable 
 that they had obtained antecedent regulations. Those of 1371 pre- 
 scribed an exclusive right of sale for purses and straps of leather in the 
 City, but during the day and in their shops only, and not privily in 
 hostels; that no serving-man or apprentice of the trade should work 
 under any person of another trade, lest he might teach him the craft ; 
 that no apprentice should be received who was a common brawler or 
 otherwise of evil fame ; and that an infringement of the rules of the 
 Society should be punished by a fine. Here they are termed "the 
 reputable men of the trade of Pouch-makers," and it is express!}- 
 mentioned that the articles have not yet been " enrolled " among the 
 archives of the Fellowship. 
 
 In the following year a fresh code of bye-laws was drawn up for the 
 Pouch-makers and Leathersellers jointly ; and we shall find that the 
 latter ultimately absorbed the former and more ancient union. 
 
 In 1400 the Pouch-makers obtained from the Court of Aldermen the 
 supervision of galoches of wood, which they shewed to the Court that 
 they had invented and established. These were apparently clogs or 
 pattens with leathern straps, to lift the wearer above the kennels of the 
 City, and were probably a foreign fashion temporarily brought into use
 
 134 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 here. As early as 1469 a Society of Patten-makers e.xisted, as we sliall 
 see hereafter, but was not incorporated till 22 Charles II. 
 
 In 1488 and 1501 the Court of Aldermen made further ordinances 
 for the regulation of the craft. In 1501-2 they are reckoned in an 
 official list as the fifty-sixth Gild, coming between the Broderers 
 and the Woodmongers ; in 23 Henry VIII., at the Lord Mayor's 
 banquet, they ranked fifty-third, following the Carpenters ; and they 
 appear to have then possessed a Livery, though in 1501-2 they are 
 classed with the bodies which had none. But, on the other hand, it is 
 stated that in 1517, by virtue of an order of the Court of Aldermen 
 of November 17, they had joined the Leathersellers. 
 
 They long continued, however, to be an influential bod}'. Under 
 March, 4, 1503-44, among the burials at Blackfriars, occurs that of John 
 Burton, Citizen and Pouch-maker, who directs that he shall be buried 
 where God shall provide ; but if he deceases within seven miles or 
 thereabouts, in the body of this church, as nigh as may be to the image 
 of our B. Lady. He bequeaths 6s. Sc/. to the Prior and Convent to 
 fetch his corpse to sepulture, and for their accustomed divine services. 
 
 On their union with the Leathersellers, the Pouch-makers brought into 
 the common chest a large and valuable assortment of plate, pewter, 
 mascrs, and table-linen, besides a picture of the Assumption ; shewing 
 that they were a substantial and thriving Fellowship. The inventory of 
 their goods is still extant.^ 
 
 tTbe pursers or 6lovcrs pursers. 
 
 Some notice of this Fellowship, which was incorporated with the 
 Leathersellers in 1502, will be found under the accounts of that and the 
 Glovers' Companies. 
 
 Zbc Sbearinen I'panuarii) or IRetuttSers. 
 
 In 1527-8 these, with the P""ullers, were constituted a Company under 
 the name of Clothworkers. They first occur to notice in 11 80, among 
 the eighteen adulterine Gilds, and arc described as Pannarii. 
 
 Although the Shearmen e.xisted so much earlier, and formed a 
 member of the group of industries represented by them, the Weavers, 
 Fullers, and Dyers, there is no trace of any charter of incorporation 
 prior to that of January 24, 1507-8,23 Henry VII., under the Great 
 
 ' Histoiy of the Leathersellers' Company, by W. H. Black, 1871, p. 48.
 
 THK SHEARMEN (rANXARIl) OK RKTUXDERS. I35 
 
 Seal, ill which licence is given to the men of the misteiy of the 
 Shearmen within the City of London and their successors to found a 
 Mistcry or Gild in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin, with power 
 to elect from \^ear to year out of tiieir own body a master and two 
 Wardens, with the rights of mortmain, of pleading and being impleaded, 
 of having and using a common seal, and of framing ordinances. 
 
 Tlie Shearmen, however, under the name of Paiuiarii, occur among 
 the eighteen unlicensed Gilds, fincil b\^ the Crown in 1 180, but paid, or 
 became liable to pay, only one mark. Their Alderman was then John 
 Maur. This is the only explicit allusion to them, till we find them in 
 possession of bye-laws in 1350, under the approval of the Corporation; 
 and indeed the Tclarii, or Weavers, who were closely associated with 
 the Shearmen during the employment of unmixed woollen fabrics or 
 the Old Drapery, had them before the reign of Edward I., since in these 
 latter there is an express reference to anterior ordinances not at pre- 
 sent known. Those of Edward I., as thc\- more particularly concern 
 the Weavers, may be better reserved for another place. 
 
 The code of 1350 does not essentially or greatly vary from that in 
 force among the other early brotherhoods. But it may be noted (i) 
 that none should engage a foreigner to be a partner with him in his 
 business ; (2) that all disputes arising between man and man were to be 
 referred to the Wardens, and that no more strikes among the members, 
 in the way of conspiracy and combination, were to be suffered. 
 
 We learn that the Shearman at this period received, according to the 
 season, from 3^'. to \d. a day and his table, and nothing extra in the 
 winter for night-work. 
 
 The labour of the Shearman in the middle of the 14th century is 
 elucidated by the entry among the City Regulations of 1350, where 
 the prices chargeable by him are specified and fixed, namely, for a 
 short cloth, \2d.; for a long one, 2s.\ and for a cloth of rayed or 
 striped soy, and shearing the same, 2s. This scale was applicable to 
 piece-work only. 
 
 Prior to their union with the Fullers in 1528, this Society seems to 
 have had its bye-laws at least twice renewed, namely in 1452-3 and in 
 1507-S. In the former they are described as the Shermeii-Craft of the 
 House of the Augustine Friars in the City of London ; and the code is 
 stated to be acknowledged in the presence of the Official of the London 
 Consistory Court in a certain upper hall called Lombard's Hall, within 
 the said House of Augustines. It is curious that in the date not only 
 the regnal year of Henry VI., but that of the pope, is furnished. 
 
 In 1453 the Shearmen seem to have numbered sixty, the Wardens 
 inclusive, but not reckoning the sisters, who formed part of the Socict}-,
 
 I .,6 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 and joined, if not in the labour, at least in the ceremonial observances, 
 as they shared its privileges and obligations. The ordinances of this 
 date cite a Council of twelve persons to advise and control the Wardens, 
 the prototype of the more modern Court of Assistants ; and they 
 contain a curious provision, interdicting the acceptance of anything in 
 payment of labour from a Lombard or stranger but coined money, to 
 some extent in forestalment of the Truck Act. The remainder of the 
 code is occupied by injunctions as to religious observances, quarter- 
 wages, fines, and methods of regulating work. 
 
 A very short time after this date, in 35 Henry VI. (1456-7) and 
 wliilc the Shearmen yet preserved their individualit)', John Hungerford 
 and others. Citizens and Shearmen of London, acquired by deed from 
 John Badby " a tenement and mansion-house, shops, cellars, and other 
 the appurtenances lying in Minchin Lane, to the use of themselves 
 and their heirs for ever," The grantor of this property, which is still 
 vested in the Shearmen's successors, was perhaps related to the person 
 of the same name, of Taplow, Co. Bucks, who had rights over Boveney 
 Lock, near Eton, in 1375. 
 
 The ordinances of February 18, 1507-8, were approved by the Lord 
 Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and 
 Chief Justice of the Common Plea, at Westminster, and mainly follow 
 the lines of 1452-3. But here we find the twelve Councillors of 1452-3 
 explicitly called Assistants, and one of the Wardens distinguished as the 
 Upper or Llaster Warden, the origin of the later office of Master ; this 
 functionary must have served twice the office of Lower Warden. The 
 seat of the Company is now termed its Common Hall, and the Livery 
 occurs by name as a body entitled to receive from the common purse at 
 intervals new clothing of the same colour and hooding. We perceive 
 that it is indifferently, here and elsewhere, cited as the Livery, the 
 Clothing, and the Vesture, and special officers were set apart to attend 
 to the provision of it from time to time. 
 
 One of the articles of 1507-8 deals with the relief of poor members 
 out of the common box and alms of the Craft, while in another is the 
 direction, at the obsequies of a member, that all his brethren shall follow 
 him to the grave in their proper dress. 
 
 These are by far the most elaborate and exhaustive regulations with 
 which we have met at so early a period, and they embrace the oaths 
 to be administered to new comers, as well as to the officers of the 
 Company.
 
 Till". SlllVKR.S. 137 
 
 Tibc Sa\vv}ci"3. 
 
 UNPliK tlic account of the Joiners we have taken occasion to notice 
 the origin of that Craft Gild as an offshoot from the Carpenters. In 
 1670, the latter drew up a series of objections to the incorporation of 
 the Sawyers, and were seconded in their resistance to the proposal by 
 the Joiners and Shipwrights. The main argument was, that the Sawyer 
 was a labourer, whose work was necessarily overlooked by masters, and 
 who sought independent jurisdiction as a method of still further en- 
 hancing the price of his work, which used to be 5^-. and 6s. per load, 
 and since the Fire had risen to Ss. and 9^. ; and that the Carpenters 
 themselves in their shops used the long or whip saw, and sometimes 
 employed their own journeymen or apprentices, sometimes the class 
 which now made pretension to become a Company. 
 
 The matter did not probably proceed beyond a preliminary stage or 
 a tentative discussion. 
 
 Zbc Sbeatbers. 
 
 These were absorbed in the Armourers, but for a length of time, 
 like the Bladesmiths, Furbishers, etc., constituted a distinct, though 
 unchartered Society. 
 
 XT be Sbivers. 
 
 For a brief period, while commercial intercourse with the Peninsula 
 was interrupted by the war between the French and ourselves (1809-12), 
 the manufacture of wooden bungs for casks developed into an important 
 industry' ; and a short-lived Association, called the Shivers' Companj', 
 sprang into e.vistence. But the inconveniences arising from the want 
 of flexibility and elasticity in wood naturally led to a prompt disuse of 
 the new custom and to the early dissolution of this modern and most 
 fugitive of trade misteries. 
 
 Oaken shives are still made and used to a limited e.xtent, but by far 
 the greater part of the immense quantity of shives required by British 
 brewers and others is supplied from America, the soft wood used being 
 compressed by the process of manufacture, and becoming perfectly 
 liquor-tight on contact with fluid. 
 
 c.c. 18
 
 1^,8 
 
 3^ VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Zbc Silhincn. 
 
 In i6ii the Commissioners for Suits referred a petition from the 
 Silkmen of the City, praying incorporation, to the Lord Mayor by 
 command of his Majesty ; and the Corporation reported that the 
 Company was neither profitable nor necessary, and would entail great 
 and sundry inconveniences. They alleged that the step would lead to 
 abuses in working, in dyeing, and in weighing ; and for all the purposes 
 ^\•hich it set forth provision was already made by custom of the City or 
 by statute. 
 
 The Silkmen, who, as we perceive, had their own arms, and were 
 plainly a numerous and important body, are named in the course of the 
 controversy and correspondence which took place between 1607 and 
 1616 in relation to the dyeing of silk. We hence learn that there was 
 a certain description of silk then sold under the designation of London 
 or liglit-iveight silk, and that many other abuses existed in the trade, 
 which the King or his nominee thought should be remedied by some 
 new machinery, but with which the City declared itself competent to 
 deal. 
 
 This Fellowship obtained letters patent, 7 Charles I., May 23, 163 1. 
 The government consisted of a Master or Governor and twenty Assist- 
 ants. But it possessed neither a Livery nor a Hall.
 
 THE SILK-THROWERS OR THROWSTERS, 
 
 139 
 
 Zbc Sil[;=irin'owcr3 or Tlbrowstcrs. 
 
 It appears that, at some considerable period prior to the institution 
 of this Company, the trade was chiefly in the hands of foreigners ; but 
 their descendants by intermarriage and naturah'zation acquired a suffi- 
 cient footing to obtain in 1622 recognition as a Fellowship by the City, 
 and in 1630 (April 23) a regular charter, with a government consisting cf 
 a Master, two Wardens, and twenty Assistants. There does not seem 
 to have ever been a Livery or a Hall. 
 
 In an Act of Charles I., the Silk-throwsters are described as broad- 
 silk weavers, and are declared admissible into the Weavers' Company, 
 provided that they were " conformable to the laws of the realm and to 
 the constitution of the Church of England." But the evidence goes 
 rather to establish that this proposed union did not take place, inasmuch 
 as subsequently to the Restoration the Throwsters still appear to have 
 been an independent body, and no one was at liberty to engage in the 
 trade, unless he had served his seven years' apprenticeship to the Gild, 
 and been admitted to the freedom. 
 
 A very Considerable and Lamentable Petition to the Honourable House of Com- 
 mons, Febiuar)' the 12th, 1641. The Humble Petition of the Master, Wardens, 
 and Commonalty of the blister)' or Trade of the Silk Throsters of London. A 
 broadside. [1642.]
 
 140 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Zbc Soapers or Soap^mal^rs. 
 
 Under the notice of the Pepperers we have introduced a reference to 
 Sopers' Lane in Cheapside, wliich was successively occupied as a seat 
 of trade by the Pepperers and by the Curriers and Cordwainers. But, 
 prior to either of these, and constructively at a period of extreme 
 antiquity, the spot formed the centre of the soap manufacture, of the 
 origin of which we do not hear much, but which, during the reign 
 of the later Tudors and the Stuarts, became an object of profitable 
 employment, and consequently a prize for the patentee and monopolist, 
 who bought his right from the Crown or its agents, and then farmed it 
 to others. 
 
 In 1579-80 we come across the Soap-makers, and discover them in a 
 dilemma, by reason that the Lords of the Council pressed upon them 
 the sole purchase of oils from one Laurence Mellow, whereas the trade 
 demonstrated, to the apparent satisfaction of the Court of Aldermen, 
 that Mallow's oils were of the worst quality, and unfit for their purposes. 
 The matter ended by the Lord Mayor sending samples of the stuff to 
 the Council, and leaving Mellow to shift as he could. 
 
 The term soap-boiler occurs among the trades which were admitted 
 to membership of the Merchant Taylors' Company at a somewhat late 
 date. They are named in the Ordinances of 1661. 
 
 Many years after, the Soap-makers obtained a charter (13 Charles I., 
 May 22, 1638), and had a government composed of a Master, two 
 Wardens, and eighteen Assistants. But they never possessed a Livery 
 or a Hall, aud in the last century transacted their affairs at Guildhall. 
 
 A Proclamation concerning Soape and Soape-makers. 1633. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation for tlie Well Ordering and Settling the iSIaniifacture of Soape. 
 25 Jan., 1633-4. A broadside.
 
 THE SPURRIERS. 141 
 
 A Proclamation concerning the Well-Ordering,' the Trade of Making and Selling of 
 
 Soape. 13 July, 1634. A broadside. 
 A Short and Trve Relation concerning the Soap-business. 410, 1641. 
 Tvstin's Observations, or Conscience Emblemc. . . . By nic, John Tustin, who 
 
 hath bcnne plundered and spoylcd by the I'atcntecs for white and gray Soape. 
 
 Aug. 27, 1646. A broadside. 
 The Soap-Patentees of London's Petition Opened and Explained. V>y Richard 
 
 \\"ilkins. 4to, 1646. 
 
 A Looking-Glasse for Soap-Patentees. 410, 1646. 
 
 The Soap Makers' Complaint for the Losse of their Trade. 4I", 1650. 
 
 The Soap-Makers' Petition : Whipt and Stript. 4to, 1650. 
 
 Zhc Spiccrs. 
 
 The Spicer.s of the Ward of Cheap are coupled with the Pepperers 
 of Sopers' Lane in an instrument of 1345, which practically laid the 
 foundation of the Grocers' Company, and which in its unincorporated 
 state was known and recognised as the Fraternity of St. Anthony. 
 Of the Spicers (Fr. espiciers or cpiciers) as a separate body we do not 
 gain much intelligence prior to their union with the perhaps more 
 wealthy and important Merchant Gild of Pepperers. Their subsequent 
 history is bound up with that of the GROCERS. 
 
 It seems to be thought that the Spicers of Cheap did not confine 
 themselves to spices and other fine goods, sold by the troy weight, or 
 Goldsmiths' measure of twelve ounces to the pound, but had trans- 
 actions in sundry choice and costly specialties, such as precious stones, 
 jewellery, and other Oriental products or merchandise of a portable and 
 luxurious character. 
 
 TTbe Spurriers. 
 
 This Brotherhood, which subsequently merged in the Loriners, 
 obtained a set of Ordinances in 1345, by which, among other usual 
 stipulations, it was prescribed (i) that no one of the trade shall work 
 longer than from daj-break till curfew rung out at St. Pulcher's, 
 Newgate, by reason of deceptions practised, as the use of false or 
 cracked iron, and the laying of gilding on false copper, and further, 
 because certain would wander about all the day, and go to their work 
 at night drunk, and blow up their forges to the peril and discomfort 
 of all ; (2) that none shall expose his spurs for sale on Sundays or 
 double feasts, but only his sign, and shall, if he then sell, do so within ;
 
 f4^ 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 (3) that all Spurriers shall be freemen ; (4) that none shall offer old 
 spurs regarnished, or change them for new ones ; (5) that no foreigner 
 shall be admitted, unless he has been enfranchised ; (6) that none shall 
 work on Saturdays after noon till the Monday morning ensuing. 
 
 In 1 501-2, the Spurriers were the seventy-sixth Company, and are 
 marked as having a Livery. 
 
 In 1509, they were the last in order of the forty-seven Companies 
 which lined Cheapside at the coronation of Henry VIII. They were 
 still a separate Gild in 23 Henry VIII. 
 
 Stow says (1633) that Huggin Lane, in Queenhithe Ward, wa.? 
 formerly called Spuren, or Spooner, Lane ; but the name Spuiru seems 
 rather to indicate the seat of the Spurriers — the lane of spurs. 
 
 The same writer informs us that Water Lane in Tower Street Ward 
 was once known as Spurrier Lane. Roth thoroughfares were within a 
 short distance of each other, and doubtless owed their designation to a 
 similar circumstance— the selection of the locality as a seat of the 
 Craft. 
 
 ^be Starcbmahers. 
 
 On February 5, 1 607-8, the Grocers' Company represented to the 
 Lords of the Council, through the Lord Mayor, the evils likely to 
 arise from the incorporation of " certain persons allowed and using the 
 trade of starchmaking" by letters patent. The petitioners alleged 
 that the price of the article would be increased, and great inconvenience 
 and annoyance caused to the public. As we hear no more of them, the 
 Starchmakers did not probably then obtain their charter, even if they 
 paid for it. 
 
 They were, however, afterward incorporated by letters patent of May 
 13, 1622, 20 James I., and consisted of a Master, two Wardens, and 
 twenty-four Assistants, without Livery and Hall. 
 
 Stow {Annals, 161 5, p. 869,) notices the coming to London in 1564 of 
 Mistress Dinghen van den Plasse, a Fleming, with her husband. She
 
 THE STOCK-FISHMONGERS. 143 
 
 was the daughter of a man of good position, and the)- removed to 
 England for greater security. The wife started in business as a 
 Starcher, and acquired a large custom from her own country-people 
 here. Her fame as a starcher led to the more general use of cambric 
 and lawn ; and she took pujjils, whom she charged from 4/. to 5/. for 
 instruction, and 20j'. for initiating them into tlie art of seething or 
 boiling the starch. 
 
 A Proclamation for tlie \Vell-(^rdering the Making of White Starch within this 
 Reahn, and for Restraint of the Importation thereof from Foreign Ports. 1661. 
 A broadside. 
 
 Zbc Stocft^fisbinonoers. 
 
 In the patent granted to the Fishmongers' Company in 1364, this 
 other Fraternity is described as enjoying an exclusive right of selling 
 stock-fish in such places as were set apart for the purpose. They are 
 frequently mentioned b)' Stow and others ; but wc do not learn at what 
 precise date they acquired the King's licence and the recognition, which 
 are indistinctl}- stated in Edward's patent to the Salt-fishmongers. 
 
 It is clear that they had their own places for transacting business 
 and displaying their goods. In the charter to the Salt-fishmongers in 
 1399, we meet with a notice for the first time of Stock-fisliinongers Row, 
 that part of Upper Tharnes Street between the Water Gate or Oyster 
 Gate and Old Swan Lane. One of the wharves in that thoroughfare 
 was known as Fresh-fish Wharf; and the members of the Fraternity 
 possessed a station at or near St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate. They were 
 debarred from selling before morning mass. 
 
 In 1406, Peters, who brought fresh fish for sale in the City, were 
 allowed to stand in Cheap, and nowhere else. 
 
 Several distinguished men raised themselves to eminence by a suc- 
 cessful career in this species of business, and among them Sir William 
 Walworth, whose gallantry displayed itself in the rebellion of Wat 
 Tyler. 
 
 But at length, in 24 Henry VII., September 20, 150S, after perhaps 
 two centuries of life as a single Association, and five years after their 
 actual union and employment of a common Hall, " Le mester de stok- 
 fisshmongeres," as they are termed in the charter of 1 399, was statu- 
 torily incorporated by the name of the Wardens and Commonalty of 
 the mistery of Stock-fishmongers of the City of London, with per- 
 petual succession, a common seal, a licence in mortmain, and the 
 power of pleading and being impleaded. 
 
 The two Gilds were amalgamated 27 Henry VIII. Among the
 
 144 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 municipal archives of this year is an order of the Court of Aldermen, 
 under December 12, giving precedence to this then new Gild after the 
 Vintners; and a further one of July 2, 1509, places them next to the 
 Grocers, when the Companies assembled on public solemnities in St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, and in processions next to the Vintners, as in 1508, 
 and before the Dyers. 
 
 Stock-fishmongers' Hall stood in Thames Street, a few doors eastward 
 from the other Company's seat, on one of two pieces of ground belong- 
 ing, 42 Edward III., to Sir John Lovekyn and others, and then the site 
 of four tenements. Lovekyn's residence is described in an inquisition, 
 22 Richard II. (1399), as " one tenement on the Oyster Hill, in the parish 
 of St. Magnus, London," and is valued at lis. 4d. a year. The Hall 
 was built at the back of Lovekyn's house between 1368 and 1399. 
 Contiguous to it were premises on a part of which stood one of the 
 common privies, then and long after a not very picturesque or sanitary 
 feature in the landscape. 
 
 'C;be Stringers. 
 
 The good folks of the trade of Streiigers, that is, bow-string makers, 
 represented to the Court of Aldermen in 1416, a period of great mili- 
 tary activity in connexion with our French wars, that grave inconvenience 
 and loss had accrued by the use of defective strings ; and that whereas 
 complaints have been made to them by persons in authority, officers of 
 the King and others, that some remedy ought to be found for this evil, 
 they prayed that they might have Wardens and Ordinances, as other 
 trades had, to see well that the material and workmanship were good. 
 This requisition was granted. 
 
 This appears to be the same body which, under the name of Long 
 Bow-String-Makers, is described by Maitland as a Company b_v pre- 
 scription, yet in possession of a coat of arms as given above. Its 
 governing body consisted of two Wardens and nineteen Assistants ; 
 but there was no Livery.
 
 THE SURGEONS. 1 45 
 
 tibe Siu'ocoits. 
 
 This appears to have been a short-lived association, arising out of 
 the "-rant in 1 461 of a charter to the Barbers, and the evident feeUng 
 of the necessity for a higher grade of practitioner in difficult cases, 
 or indeed in almost all outside phlebotomy and dentistry. Its name 
 occurs in 1469 among the Companies then liable to participate in 
 guarding the City gates ; but it is described as contributing nothing, 
 and in 1501-2 was one of the twenty-eight bodies without a Livery. 
 The other official lists contain no reference to it. But the two 
 bodies were, as we shall hear, united by Act of Parliament in 1548, 
 and remained so till 1745, when the Surgeons were erected into a new 
 and independent Company from consideration of the great increase of 
 knowledge among them, and the peculiar importance of their calling, as 
 well as from a widelj'-diffused persuasion that the Barbers were playing 
 a double part, incompatible with the public interest and security. 
 
 The Surgeons' Company was appointed to consist of a Master, two 
 Wardens, twenty-one Assistants, and ten E.xaminers ; and the same 
 privileges and powers were conferred on the governing body as were 
 contained in the charters of Henry VIII. and Charles I., and in the Act 
 of 1548. 
 
 Under the account of the B.^RBERS some further details of the 
 original Surgeons' Society will be found. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Noble Experyence of the Vertuous Handy Warke of Surgery Practysed and 
 
 Compyled by Jlierome of Bruynswj'ke. Folio, 1525. 
 The Practyse of Cyrurgeons of Moimt-piller [Montpelier]. 4to [about 1525]. 
 An Act Concernyng Barbers and Surgeons to be of one Conipanie, within the Citie 
 
 of London. Sni. folio (with other Acts), 1540. 
 The Byrth of Mankynde, Newly Translated out of Latin into English. 4to, 
 
 1540, 1545, 1549, 1552, 1613, 1626, 1634. 
 The Qliestionary of Cyrurgyens. With the Formulary of a Lytell Guide in 
 
 Cyrurgie. 4to, 1541. 
 
 c.c. 19
 
 146 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Compendiosa totius Anatomie Delineatio, cere exarata per Thomam Geminum 
 Londiiii. Folio, 1545. With copper-plates. 
 
 A Most Excellent and Learned Woorke of Cliirurgerie, called Chirurgia Pania 
 LanlVanci. Translated and Published (with Additions) by John Hall, of Maid- 
 stone, Surgeon. 4to, 1565. 
 
 The Historie of Man, Sucked from the Sappe of the most Approved Anatho- 
 mistcs. By John Banister, Master of Chirurgerie, etc. Folio, 157S. 
 
 The French Chirurgerye, or All the Natural! Operations of Chirurgerye, with divers 
 and sundrye Figures. By Jaques Gyillemeau. Folio, Doit, 1598 ; 4to, London, 
 1635. 
 
 A Discovrse of the "Whole Art of Chyrvrgerie. . . . Compiled by Peter Lowe, 
 
 Scoltishman, Doctor in the Facultie of Chirurgerie at Paris : . . . The 
 
 Second Edition corrected, and much augmented and enlarged, by the Author. 
 
 4to, [1605] 161 2, 1634. With woodcuts. 
 
 The first portion is inscribed to James Hamilton, Earl of Abercorn, and others ; the second, to 
 
 John, Archbishop of Glasgow. There are verses by Thomas Churchyard, Esquire. John Norden, 
 
 Physician, and G. Baker. The author dates the second edition from his house in Glasgow, Dec. 20, 
 
 1612. 
 
 Description of the Body of Man, with the Practise of Chirurgery. By Alexander 
 
 Rhcad. 4to, 1634. With engravings. 
 The Surgeon's Mate; or, f.Iilitary and Domestique Surgery. By John Woodall, 
 
 Master in Chirurgery. Folio, 1639. 
 
 In this book the use of lemon-juice in cases of scurvy is first recommended. 
 
 The Chyrurgeon's Store-House. Furnished with Tables cut in Brasse. By 
 
 Johannes Scultetus [Schultz] of Ulni. Translated by E. B. Svo, 1674 With 
 
 43 copper plates. 
 Compendium Anatomicum, Novo Methodo institutum. By John Case, M.D. 
 
 121110, 1695. With copper plates. 
 Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris ; or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared 
 
 with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. By Edward Tyson. 4to, 1699. 
 
 With engravings. 
 
 The Judicial of Vryns. Folio [about 15 10]. 
 
 *#* Two or three editions. 
 
 The Seynge of Urynes. 410 [1525.']. 
 
 *^* Several editions. 
 
 The Ivdgement of all Urynes. Svo [about 1 540]. 
 
 The Differences, Cavses, and ludgements of Vrines. By T. F., Svo, 159S; the 
 same, by J. Fletcher. Svo, 1641. 
 
 The Urinal of Physick. By Robert Recorde, M.D., of Tenby. Svo, 1548. Dedi- 
 cated to the Wardens and Company of the Surgeons of London. 
 *^* There are several later editions, down to 1665. 
 
 The Arraignment of Vrines : Wherein are set downe the manifold errors and 
 abuses of ignorant Vrine-monging Empirickes, cozening Ouacksaluers, women- 
 physitians, and the like stuffe : Confining the vrines within their owne lists and 
 limits, . . . Collected and gathered tog^ether . . . and written first in the 
 Latine Tongue, and diuided into three Bookes by Peter Forrest D. of Physicke, 
 and natiue of the Towne of Alcmare in Holland. . . . Translated into our 
 English Tongue by Lames Hart D' in the foresaid Faculty. 4to, 1623. 
 
 The Anatomie of Vrines. Containing the Conviction and Condemnation of them. 
 Or, the second Part of our Discourse of vrines. Detecting and vnfolding the 
 manifold falshoods and abuses committed. . . . Neuer heretofore pub- 
 lished. By James Hart of Northampton. 410,1625.
 
 THE GREY TAWVEKS OR TANNERS. 1 47 
 
 Zbc Xlapisscrs or Ilapc5tn>inal!cr3. 
 
 The ordinances of " the good folks" of tliis trade were made and 
 approved by the Corporation in 133 1. They refer to the removal from 
 the Fellowship of any misdoer or thief, to the tapice being of the lawful 
 assize used in ancient times, and if of the common assize, four ells in 
 length and two in breadth ; and if of the smaller assize, three ells in 
 length, and 1.', ells in breadth. No tapice or carpet was to be made 
 with arms thereon, unless it were wholly of wool. No cushion or 
 banker' was to be made with arms thereon, unless it were all wool, and 
 half an ell square, and at least an eighth of an ell deep. No one not 
 free of the City was to keep any handiwork belonging to the trade, on 
 pain of forfeiture. No material was to be used henceforth in the trade 
 but good English or Spanish wool. Of course cases often occurred in 
 which spurious material was used by the original Fellowship, and if the 
 fraud was detected the goods were burned. 
 
 The Tapissers probably became absorbed in the Broderers. They 
 are specially mentioned b}' Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, written 
 about 1388, as a separate and conspicuous body; but it may be sur- 
 mised that they had branched off from the Tapestry W'eaver.s. 
 
 Ube 6re\? xra\vv?cr5 or XTaiincrs. 
 
 Tins was a minor craft immediately in connexion with the Pelterers 
 or Skinners, being the mechanics who flayed the animals ; and its b\-e- 
 laws, made in 1365, chiefly relate to its obligations to the more impor- 
 tant and powerful body. Some of the provisions were sufficiently 
 drastic. They recite, besides other matters, that no Tawyer should deal 
 in any peltry ; that he should not act as broker between one dealer and 
 another ; that he should not make old budge into new leather, and that 
 he should not cut off the head of any work ; and the penalties were 
 almost always in the form of imprisonment, in addition to a- fine. 
 
 The oath to be administered to the Tawyers is found in the Liber 
 Aldus. It solely concerns the prohibition from flaying horses within 
 the City and its then suburbs, and belongs to the fourth year of 
 Edward III. 
 
 The Grey Taw}-ers appear to have had no Liver}-. In 1469 they were 
 sufficiently prosperous to equip twenty guards for the City gates ; and 
 in 1 53 1-2 they W'Cre represented by two members, besides their Wardens, 
 at the Mayor's feast. 
 
 ' A cushion for banks or benches.
 
 I 48 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 TLbc Mbite Uaw^ers. 
 
 Both this communit}- and the fore-mentioned are shown to have 
 been in close relations with the Skinners and Upholders, of whom 
 accounts are given elsewhere. 
 
 The White Tawyers acquired by-laws in 1346, and are there described 
 as "the good folks the Megucers, called Whittazvyers." This code is 
 rather lengthy, and comprises some unusual provisions: (i) That they 
 would find a wax candle to burn before Our Lady in the church of All 
 Mallows, London Wall, and put money in the Box to support the same. 
 (2) That if any of the trade should fall into poverty, he should, if he were 
 a man of fair repute, receive yd. out of the Box weekly, and his widow 
 after his decease during her widowhood and good behaviour. (3) That 
 one wdio died, and had not wherewithal to bury him, should be buried out 
 of the Common Box, and that all the Brotherhood should attend the 
 vigil, and make offering on the morrow. (4) That Overseers should be 
 elected once a year with the customary powers and duties. (5) That none 
 shall take for his work more than the fixed price: namely, for the dicker 
 of Scots or Irish stags, \ mark ; for the dicker of Spanish stags, io.f. ; 
 for the hundred of goats'-fells, 20s. ; for the hundred of roe-leather, 
 i6s. ; for the hundred of hinds'-calves (young female deer) or kids'- 
 fells, 8.y. These are the persons who are described in 13 11 as preparing 
 white leather with alum, salt, and other materials. Some further account 
 of them is given under that of the Leathersellers. 
 
 UFje ^obacco=lptpe /IDafters. 
 
 This Fraternity obtained letters patent 15 Charles II., April 29, 1663, 
 incorporating them as the Pipe-makers of the Cities of London and 
 Westminster, with a Master, two Wardens, and eighteen Assistants, but 
 with no Livery. 
 
 Nothing appears to be known of them except that they still existed 
 in needy circumstances in 1826, when they applied without succe.ss 
 to the Founders (and probably to other Companies) for assistance.
 
 THE WATKKMKN. [49 
 
 Uhc {\M\icv3 Of Dtncoar, Hiiua Dita:, anC> Hiiua 
 (lomposlta. 
 
 This was evidcntlj' an unendowed I'elluwship of recognised standing 
 in 1594, when the Court of Aldermen supported it against a patent 
 granted by the Queen to Richard Dickes, to the prejudice of the civic 
 body. It doubtless eventually merged in the Distillers' Gild, which was 
 incorporated in 1638, but not enrolled till 1658. 
 
 Ubc Matcrnicn. 
 
 In 1372 the City authorities enacted that no boatman should take 
 for his fare between London and Westminster more than two pence ; 
 and the same, until his boat is full of people, when he shall take three 
 pence at the highest for his boat, himself, and his partner, on pain of 
 imprisonment as well in London as in the Staple of Westminster, and 
 that no boatman should withdraw himself from serving the people on the 
 same pain. 
 
 From e.Ktant printed monuments we learn that there was in 
 1559-60 an established scale of fares for passengers between London 
 and Gravesend and London and Windsor; and in 1641 the Watermen 
 are expressly described as a Company, possessing ancient Overseers, 
 Rulers, and Assistants, or, in other words, a government of long continu- 
 ance. 
 
 By the Act 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, the Court of Aldermen was 
 invested with the duty and power of electing, out of the whole body 
 plying between Gravesend and Windsor, eight Overseers ; and beyond 
 the regulations made by this statute we find others under i James I. 
 cap. 16. 
 
 The Watermen (with whom were subsequently, but before 1700, 
 associated the Lightermen) of London and Westminster were never 
 formally incorporated ; but under the government of their Overseers the 
 provisions of the law were enforced, as may be judged from a long 
 account in Maitland, who appears to have taken particular pains to 
 ascertain all that was possible about the Society ; in his time, the
 
 150 VOLUNTARV ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 number of boats and barges belonging to the Free Watermen was 
 computed at about 7,000. 
 
 By the 11 and 12 William III. cap. 21, the Watermen of London and 
 Westminster were at liberty to ply for hire on Sundays ; and in the case 
 of those of Westminster, who appear to have been independent of the 
 London body, the proceeds were applied to charitable purposes. It 
 was officially stated that in lyoi this fund amounted to 800/. a year. 
 The interests and resources of the Fraternity were fatally affected by 
 modern improvements. 
 
 The tariff, originally fixed in 1559, was revised from time to time. 
 Maitland prints that in force in 1671, including the "Rates for carry- 
 ing of Goods in the Tilt-Boat between London and Gravesend." 
 
 The Table of Fares " from London to places on the River Thames 
 without the Bill of Mortality " contains the charges for the boat and the 
 Company as far as Gravesend one way and Windsor the other. The 
 payment to Chelsea, Battersea, or Wandsworth was is. 6e/. and y/. for 
 the Company ; that to Putney, Fulham, or Barn- Elms, 2s. and 4//. ; 
 that to Hammersmith, Chiswick, or Mortlake, 2^^. 6d. and 6d. The rate 
 of course increased with the distance ; Twickenham cost 4.V. and 6^^. for 
 the Company ; Hampton Court, 6s. and is. ; Weybridge and Chertsey, 
 IOJ-. and IS. ; and finally Windsor, 14J. and 2s. It was almost a 
 monopoly. 
 
 An Act was framed in 1729 to amend the previous Acts relating to 
 Watermen, Wherrymen, and Lightermen, w^orking on the Thames. 
 
 The Watermen, although we do not find any trace of a charter, 
 constantly describe themselves as a Company ; and in an order of 
 1 70 1, to check the use of bad language on the river, the Hall is ex- 
 pressly named, but without an indication of its locality. 
 
 It was first and long situated, however, in Lower Thames Street, near 
 the Three Cranes, in Vintry Ward, on the site of Calvert's Brewery, 
 was burnt down in 1666 with most part of the contents, and rebuilt 
 twice, in 1667-8 and 1722. But in 1776 the Company parted with the 
 property to the brewing-house, and transferred its quarters to St. Mary- 
 at-Hill, near at hand. 
 
 The Company was particularly honoured by the eminent literary 
 qualifications and special standing of John Taylor, called the Water- 
 Poet, one of the most prolific writers of his time, both in prose and verse. 
 His publications range in date from 1612 to 1653, and in subject over 
 the whole field of social and political life. He was a zealous and staunch 
 Royalist, and after the death of Charles I. confined himself to the pro- 
 duction of fugitive pieces on miscellaneous topics. Two engraved por- 
 traits of Taylor exist.
 
 THi: WOOUMONGERS. I5I 
 
 He was certainly a man of unequalled versatility with his pen ; and 
 his writings shed a remarkable light on contemporary usages and events. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Prices of Fares and Passages to be Paid unto W.itermen from London to 
 ( Inivcsende, and likewise from Gravesende to London, and to every Common Place 
 betwene : and also between London Bridge and Windesoure. [1559] Abroad- 
 side. 
 
 The Prices and Rates that every Particular Person ought to Pay for his Fayre or 
 I'assage vnto Watermen or Whyrrymen from London to Gravesende. . . . 
 [1559-60.] A broadside. 
 
 Cas Merveilleux d'un Bastellier de Londres, lequel, sous ombre de passer les 
 passans outre la ri\iere de Tliames. les estrangloit. 8vo, Lyon, 1586. 
 
 To the Right Honourable Assembly, the Lords, Knights, Esquires, and Burgesses 
 of the Honourable House of Commons in Parliament : The Humble Petition of 
 the Ancient Overseers, Rulers, and Assistants of the Company of Watermen. 
 Written by John Taylor. 410. 1641, 1642. 
 
 To the Right Honourable the Lord Mayoi", Aldermen and Commons of the City 
 of London, . . . The Humble Petition of the Sea-men and Watermen in and 
 about tlie said City . . . 1659. .^ broadside. 
 
 To the Supreme Authority of the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England. 
 The Humble Address and Congratulation of many Thousands of Watermen 
 belonging to the River of Thames. 1659. A broadside. 
 
 Zbc TlCloo^mo?^ocrs. 
 
 The sole very early reference to this Association occurs in an indenture 
 of 1375 between the Woodmongers of London and John Baddeby, of 
 Taplow, in the county of Buckingham,^ whereby the latter renounced 
 his alleged right to a toll on all vessels passing through Baddeby's 
 Lock, probably, as Mr. Riley suggests, Boveney Lock, near Eton. 
 
 Hence it is to be inferred that the Woodmongers brought this 
 commodity from a distance in various directions by water for sale in 
 the metropolis. From an order of Common Council in 1379, it is clear 
 that buyers of billets, and perhaps firewood generally, brought by water 
 were bound to go direct to the wharves, and that middlemen were not 
 
 ' See the account of the Shearmen, supra.
 
 152 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 allowed. Two persons, presumably forestallers, who were found in 
 this year to have 6,000 billets stored up for re-sale, forfeited them to the 
 authorities. 
 
 But in the case of large contracts for timber for building purposes, 
 the Companies' archives and other authorities combine to establish that 
 the contractor or architect bought his material direct from the estate, 
 as when, in the restoration of Goldsmiths' Hall in 1666, a negotiation 
 is conducted with Colonel Nevill, near Windsor, for the required supply. 
 
 In 1 501-2 the Fellowship is returned as fifty-seventh in order, and 
 stands between the Pouchmakers and the Turners. In 23 Henry VIII. 
 where the precedence is not strictly marked, it is forty-eighth, and is 
 said to have no Livery. 
 
 We learn from Stow (ed. 1633, p. 642) that "the Company of the 
 Woodmongers, being a very ancient Fellowship, and of good and 
 amiable agreement together for long time, became to be incorporated 
 the nine and twentieth day of August, in the third 3'-eare of the Reigne 
 of our Sovereigne Lord King James ; " but in this statement the old 
 historian is not perfectly explicit, as will be seen on a reference to the 
 account already given of the Carmen. 
 
 John Dyer, Citizen and Woodmonger of London, is named as the 
 plaintiff in a case of alleged forgery in 141 2. 
 
 From some correspondence between the Lords of the Council and 
 the City in 1601, it appears that the Woodmongers had the supervision 
 of the Carmen within the civic boundaries, and that the Mayor found 
 difficulty in dealing with both. The City was expected to find at short 
 notice carts and hackney carriages for the purposes of the Court, and 
 the payment was evidently irregular and precarious. Two hundred two- 
 horse carts were demanded to convey the King's effects to Greenwich 
 in 1604. The hackneymen and coachmen who served the King of Den- 
 mark during his visit to England in 1606 were furnished by the civic 
 authorities. 
 
 It is remarkable that in 161 5 this Society subscribed as much as 200/. 
 to the Ulster Plantation scheme, as sub-sharers with the Vintners. The 
 sum was equal to that given by the Carpenters, and far in excess of the 
 quota found by several bodies still surviving. The ininitmtm was 20/. 
 
 As we perceive from the language of a tract quoted below, it 
 was still in existence in 1649, and was then engaged in defending its 
 interests against hostile encroachment. Elsewhere we take an oppor- 
 tunity of shewing that there were at one period relations between the 
 Woodmongers and the Clockmakers, through the call for the old- 
 fashioned cases for coffin-clocks. 
 
 But after a troubled and chequered career, the Woodmongers aban-
 
 THE WOOL-rACKEKS. I 53 
 
 doned their charter in 1668, in consequence of charges preferred against 
 them in Parliament. 
 
 In 1694, however, thc\' were resuscitated by a resokition of Com- 
 mon Council on a smaller basis, with the rii;ht to keep 120 carts, 
 independently of those maintained by the Carmen for the conduct of 
 their own business. 
 
 The Woodmongers' Remonstrance, or, The Carmen's Controvcrsie rightly stated ; 
 Wherein the present Jurisdiction and Corporation of tlie Woodmongers is 
 vindicated ; (2) the Original and Nature of Cars and Car-rooms; (3) the Incon- 
 veniences attending the Erroneous Conceit of accounting them Goods and 
 Chattels; (4) the Mistake concerning Sea-coal Sacks rectilied. By \V. L. 4to, 
 1649. 
 
 Zbc MooK>ncF5cri5. 
 
 It is to be presumed that this was no more than a voluntary un- 
 chartered Association, and was superseded by the WOOLMEN. Stow 
 observes (ed. 1633, p. 640) : "The Company of Wooll-packers, I know 
 not what to say of them, because it seemes that there were such men 
 in the Haunse dayes, when the Wooll-Staple flourished, and that our 
 WooU-merchants had their eminency." In 1588 we find a stationer 
 established in Hosier Lane, Smithfield, at the sign of the Woolpack. 
 
 The Wool-packers were probably not an union of the operatives or 
 yeomen of the trade employed by the woollers or woolmen ; but the 
 masters who conducted that branch of the business, and it is highly 
 questionable whether they were, at least originally, connected with the 
 Wool-winders. The Association, of whose history Stow avowedly knew 
 next to nothing, long continued to be a distinct and respectable one, 
 under that name ; although, in 1416, John Russell, one of the members, 
 was sentenced to the pillory for slandering an Alderman. 
 
 It is evident that this was a very ancient body, for it is not only 
 mentioned in a return of 1469, but among the forty-eight Gilds enume- 
 rated and placed in order of priority in 15 15, it stands forty-fifth. 
 
 CO. 20
 
 154 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 proposeb Corporatton or Socictv of IRetail Ura&ers of 
 XonC)oii anb the Suburbs. 
 
 It appears that in 1636 a charter was in readiness to pass the Great 
 Seal for incorporating both freemen of the City and others resident 
 within three miles' compass, as well as foreigners (by special payment to 
 the Crown), being Dealers by Retail, except weavers, tilers, and brick- 
 layers, who were reserved for future consideration. But as we hear no 
 more of the scheme, which was set on foot, of course, as a method of 
 raising funds for the King, it probably dropped, although considerable 
 efforts were made to give effect to the charter. 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS WHICH SURVIVE 
 IN THAT FORM. 
 
 tEbe jfcllowsbtp (porters. 
 
 THIS is a body of some length of standing, and still preserves the 
 form of an Association, but has never, we believe, been chartered 
 or incorporated. The members, all of whom appear to be practical 
 'working craftsmen, discharge the duties of loading and unloading at 
 the Docks and the vicinity, and occasionally have collisions with rival 
 unions. The Porters possess no arms, and use those of the City of 
 London, whence their authority arises. 
 
 This community does not appear to possess any distinct organization, 
 and is the only survival of many attempts on the part of the journeymen, 
 yeomen, or denizens in trades in former days, to combine for something 
 more than self-defence. But the resources of the Porters are too in- 
 significant to render their influence sensible. The Fellowship Porters 
 appear to have consisted of more than one body, as we hear of the 
 Billingsgate section, about 1620, as having, "time out of mind," attended 
 to that particular .service. The Fishmongers' Company used to appoint 
 two of its freemen Tackle- Porters, as they were termed, to attend to the 
 lading and unlading of its vessels at the water-side. 
 
 Some light is cast on this Fraternity by the City Regulations of 
 1350, where their tariff between certain distances is laid down, and 
 by the entries in the Reiiieinbrancia, wherein it is set forth that the 
 charges made by them for portage or porterage had been so settled b)- 
 Act of Common Council, and that the employment was a very ancient
 
 THE FELLOWSIIU' I'ORTERS. 155 
 
 one, wlicrcon a j^rcat number of pocir freemen of the City depended 
 for their livcHhood. Amont,' others who complained of the unreason- 
 able demands of the Porters were certain maltsters of Henley-on- 
 Thames. 
 
 The tariff chargeable by the Packers' Water-side Porters for landing 
 or shipping goods and persons, not freemen, was regulated by the City 
 authorities, and a table of rates is appended to An Abridgement of the 
 Charter, 1680. 
 
 Maitland (1739-56) speaks of the Porters as consisting of Tackle and 
 Ticket Porters, and says that they constituted a Fraternity by Act of 
 Common Council in 1646, with the power of annually choosing from 
 among themselves twelve Rulers, six of each denomination (two of 
 whom must be registrars), for the good government of the whole and 
 the settlement of all differences, but with a right reserved to the Court 
 of Aldermen to intervene and arbitrate. 
 
 The church of St. Mary-at-Hill, between Billingsgate and East-Cheap, 
 is the annual scene of an ancient ceremony or usage performed by this 
 Fraternity, of which the members, on the Sunday ne.xt after Midsummer 
 Day, attend here in the morning, and while the psalm is being sung, 
 march up, two and two, to the rails of the communion table, where, in 
 two basins placed there for the purpose, they make their offerings. The 
 rest of the congregation follow the example, and the fund thus collected 
 is applied to the relief of the aged and sick of the body. 
 
 There were, as in the case of other Associations, similar bodies in 
 the provinces, and more especially at the sea-ports. Among those at 
 Faversham some were known as backers. 
 
 To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, in the Commons 
 Hovse of Parliament now assembled. The humble Petition of 15,000 poore 
 labouring men, known by the name of Porters, and the lowest Members of the 
 Citie of London. 1641. .\ broadside. 
 
 Other unincorporated Societies, whose names occur in early official 
 lists as of recognised position, were the Foisters, Netters, Mailmakers, 
 Corsors [Horse-dealers], Cartwrights, Box-makers, and Instrument- 
 makers. The three last are mentioned in 1672 as branches of the 
 Carpenters. The Corsors were incorporated with the Innholders, the 
 Mailmakers with the Pouchmakers, and the Foisters (perhaps) with the 
 Watermen.
 
 156 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 FOREIGN CORPORA TIONS. 
 
 TTbe alien Meavers. 
 
 REGULATIONS for this Union or Fellowship were made in 1362 
 at its own request, and three Overseers appointed to be chosen, to 
 control all proceedings, to maintain peace, and to adjudicate in certain 
 cases, as for instance, where a workman purloined from his master the 
 first time, and both were willing to have the matter amicably settled. 
 
 ^be jfletnisb Meavers. 
 
 How far this evidently very ancient bod)' was identical with the Alien 
 Weavers just mentioned, or, again, with the Easterlings of the Steelyard, 
 with which riparian vicinity they were apparently connected, we hardly 
 know. The bj'e-laws proposed in 1366 for formal acceptance by the 
 Corporation speak of their long establishment in London ; but the 
 oldest mention of them seems to be the royal protection accorded to 
 John Kemp, a Fleming, on his coming to London in 1330 to follow the 
 art, and to teach it to others. The encouragement thus given led to 
 an influx of seventy families, it is said, from Flanders and Brabant, who 
 quartered themselves in the Ward of Candlewick or Cannon Street. 
 
 The draft code of 1366 seems to point to a good deal of habitual 
 discord among the members of the colony. It also contains a provision 
 that all existing ordinances may remain in force. Certain questions, 
 if in dispute, are to be referred to a committee of four-and-twenty 
 members, chosen or approved by the Mayor and Aldermen. This was 
 a large number, and if it was not disproportionate, indicates a very 
 extensive assemblage of artificers and a very prominent industry. 
 
 It elsewhere appears that the Flemish Weavers and those of Brabant 
 were distinct communities, and that in 1370 the serving-men of the 
 former stood for hire in the churchyard of St. Lawrence Pountney, and 
 those of the latter in that of St. Mary Somerset at Queenhithe. They 
 were placed thus far apart, because they were addicted to fighting each 
 other. But no opposition was offered by either or by the authorities 
 to the common employment of workmen by the two Associations.
 
 MERCHANTS OF THE STAPLE. 
 
 .■>/ 
 
 OTHER Rn'ERSIDE TRADING COMPANIES. 
 
 ALLIED to the Liver}' Gilds and otlier Fellowships of a mercantile 
 character by communit)' of origin and aim were certain other 
 Associations, which arose to meet the gradual dev^elopment of com- 
 mercial enterprise, and to co-operate with such bodies as the London 
 Companies at home in carr\-ing native products or manufactures abroad, 
 and exchanging them for those of otlier countries. 
 These cognate corporations were : 
 
 1. The Easterlings of the so-called Still or Steel yard [Sfabi/e 
 Emporuini, or Staple-Hof]. 
 
 Of the members of this Gild probably the best knoun name is that of 
 George Gizen, whose portrait by Holbein is preserved at Berlin. 
 
 2. The Almaines [Germans], belonging to the Hanse or Gild of the 
 merchants of Almaine, first in Thames Street, and then at Bishop.sgate, 
 or perhaps, for some time concurrently at both. 
 
 This body was possibly connected with the Hamburgh merchants, who 
 in the time of Elizabeth had quarters in Lothbury at Founders' Hall. 
 
 MERCH.\NTS OF THE ST.\PI.E. 
 
 3. The Alerchants of the Staple, incorporated by Edward HL 
 #** Their original Staples seem to have been at Calais and Antwerp.
 
 1 58 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 MERCHANTS ADVENTUKEKS. 
 
 4. The Merchants Adventurers, incorporated by Edward IV. 
 
 j^*i^ Their privileges, etc., were confirmed and enlarged by Elizabeth in 1564. 
 This body had been originally a branch of the Mercers, and had sprung from tlie 
 ancient Fraternity of St. Thomas k Becket ; but it eventually severed itself from that 
 tie, and became an independent trading body in London and elsewhere. Its members 
 simultaneously belonged, in some cases, to the City Gilds. The principle of dividing 
 a vessel into shares, which was older than this Society, and is a feature in the story of 
 Richard Whittington, still prevails. A sixty-fourth part is, we believe, the iniiiimuin. 
 
 MERCHANTS OK ELBING. 
 
 5. The Merchants of Elbing, incorporated by Elizabeth.
 
 MERCHANTS OK THE LEVANT. 
 
 159 
 
 MERCHANTS OF RUSSIA. 
 
 6. The Moscovite Company, incorporated by Edward VI. 
 ^*^ Their privileges were confirmed and enlarged by Elizabeth. 
 
 MERCHANTS OF THE LEVANT. 
 
 7. The Levant, or Turkey Company, incorporated by Elizabeth. 
 #*4t. Their charter was confirmed by James I.
 
 i6o 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 THE VIRGINIA COMPANY. 
 
 8. The Virginia, Bermudas, or Sommers Islands Company. 
 
 THE AFKICAN COMTANV. 
 
 9. The African Company, incorporated in 1588 by Queen Eh'zabeth, 
 again in 1662 as Tlie Company of Royal Advenhirers of England to 
 Africa, and a third time in 1672, under the title of The Royal African 
 Company. This scheme, owing to opposition, chiefly by the Dutch, was 
 by no means successful, even with parliamentary support and the 
 prestige of having the King himself as its honorary Governor. 
 
 A passing mention of its foundation and scope may prove of interest 
 on more than one account, however, as we have at this moment all sorts 
 of similar speculations on foot for the ostensible betterment of our 
 fellow-creatures. 
 
 In 1791 English coins were struck for a body designated the Sierra
 
 MERCHANTS OK SPAIN. 
 
 I6l 
 
 Leone Company for local currency; and in 1818 an ackcy and half 
 ackcy were issued, with the head and titles of George III. and the 
 words Ackty Trade below the bust, and on the reverse the arms of 
 the African Compaii)-, with the legend : Free Trade to .Africa by Act 
 of Parliament, 1750. 
 
 MERCHANTS OF EAST INDIA. 
 
 10. The Merchants of East India. 
 
 #** Incorporated in 1600. In 1603 they are described as " the Governours and 
 Assistants of the East Indian Marchants in London," in a pamphlet printed in that 
 year. In 1628 they term themselves " the Governour and Company of Merchants of 
 London, trading to the East Indies." 
 
 11. New East India Company. 
 
 *** Amalgamated with No. 10 in 1699 as the United East Indian Company. 
 
 MERCHANTS OF SPAIN. 
 
 12. The Merchants of Spain, incorporated by Elizabeth 
 c.c. 
 
 21
 
 i6: 
 
 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 12*. The l-'oreign Shipwrights without the Liberties, incorporated in 
 1612. 
 
 NEW FRENCH MERCHANTS AU\KNTUKKRf. 
 
 1 3. The New French Merchants Adventurers. 
 ^,*^ Arms were granted to them in ]6l6. 
 
 FRENCH MERCHANTS. 
 
 r4 The Company of French Merchants.
 
 TIIK SOITII SI'A (OMI'ANV. 
 
 l6: 
 
 HUDSON'S DAV COMPANY. 
 
 15. The Hudson's Bay Company, incorporated in 1670. 
 ,% This importunt enterprise and institution led, among other matters, to the 
 si:bstitiitioii of beaver-skin for felt in the hat and cap trade, and injured the Felt- 
 niakers. 
 
 THE SOfTH SKA COMPANY. 
 
 16. The South Sea Company, 1710-20. 
 
 Of nos. 1-3 of these corporations some account may be found in a 
 small pamjihlet b)- the Rev. \V. H. Jones, M.A., published about 1825, 
 8vo, pp. 24 + title, called, " The Merchants of the Staple ; or. The Wool 
 Trade in England in the Olden Time." 
 
 17. The Royal Lustring Company. 
 
 Charles Knight, in liis London, 1842, in an excellent account of the 
 \\ cavers of Spitalfields, says ; — 
 
 " The silk manufacture at Spitalfields, having received an extraordinary impulse 
 from this occurrence [the arrival of the Huguenots], began to acquire considerable
 
 164 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 importance. The refugees introduced the weaving of the various silk fabrics then 
 known by the names of histrings, alamodes, brocades, satins, black and coloured 
 nientues, black Padua-soys, ducapes, watered tabbies, and black velvets ; but no 
 sooner had the strangers made a firm footing in England, than, like their prede- 
 cessors, they cried out for protection, and under the name of the Royal Lustring 
 Company, obtained an Act, prohibiting the importation of foreign lustrings and 
 alamodes. The Lustring Company was, however, defeated, not by Acts of Parliament 
 or foreign competition, but by a change of fashion, which drove histrings and alamodes 
 out of the market." 
 
 It was the practice of eminent commercial and other pubHc men in 
 former day.s, as now, to belong to two or three of these bodies. Beyond 
 them, however, and independent of their control, was at least one other 
 Association, which is proved by documentary testimony to have existed 
 in London from the beginning of the fourteenth centur)' : the Venetian 
 Vice-Consulate and the Standing Committee of Trade of that Republic, 
 which possessed a settlement of some kind in the metropolis. It was 
 from this source and channel that we derived, at and long after that 
 time, supplies of wine, silk, drapery, sugar, confectionery, alum, glass, 
 and other commodities, and either paid for them in cash or in kind, 
 exchanging the foreign goods for tin, wool, iron, hides, and other 
 staples, which, our foreign friends contended, were not invariably of the 
 best quality or of true weight. 
 
 The Venetian Company is noted as having contributed 200/. to the 
 expedition of Henry V. for the recovery of Guienne, and it had a 
 second call in 141 5, when Henry was preparing for another French 
 campaign, with a threat that, if it proved contumacious, its rulers would 
 be committed to the Fleet. 
 
 It may be added, that the " Flanders galleys " of Venice were in the 
 habit of calling, not only at London, but at Dartmouth, Plymouth, 
 Sandwich, Southampton, Rye, and L\-nn. 
 
 In his Historical Essay, 1S36, Herbert supplies a very adequate view 
 of the singularly curious development and evolution of the commercial 
 moveinent, which began at least as early as the tenth centur}- in the 
 neighbourhood of Thames Street, and which resulted, first, in the 
 establi-shment of a group of traders, chiefly of foreign origin, between 
 the Tower and Oueenhithe ; and, secondly, in their gradual disappear- 
 ance, b\- amalgamation or decay, as our native industries and industrial 
 societies gained importance, efficiency, and strength. 
 
 The Hanseatic League may be treated and received as the forerunner 
 and model of all those Fraternities which followed it in steady succession
 
 Tin: TKUTONIC GILD. 
 
 ■''^5 
 
 in other parts of the Continent and in l-".nL;lancl. It was represented 
 here by the Teutonic Gild, probabi)- the most venerable of all the bodies 
 
 HALL l.)l- lllE TEl'TONIC GILD. 
 
 of that kind, and an establishment which had its seat at Downgate 
 or Dowgate. This Gild seems to have been identical with the 
 "Emperor's men" to whom Ethelred II. in 979 accorded the right of 
 settling in Thames Street on payment of ten pounds of pepper half- 
 yearly to the Crown. This site is supposed, by a distinguished member 
 of the Court of the Grocers' Company, Mr. Kingdon, to have been the 
 spot afterward known as the Steelyard or Stilh-ard, otherwise and 
 more' accurately called Staple-yard or Staple-Hof, being the wharf where 
 the King's Great Beam was kept for the weighing of avoirdupois 
 merchandise. When Howes published his edition of Stow, in 1633, the 
 Old Hall, as it was then called, was still standing ; and we are told that 
 it " is large, builded of Stone, with three arched gates towards the street, 
 the middlemost whereof is farre bigger than the other, and is seldome 
 opened, the other two be mured up : . . ." 
 
 It is very likely that the custody of the two Beams, the Great one for 
 avoirdupois, and the Small one for troy, standard, was always entrusted 
 to denizens ; but the Pepperers and Corders are the earliest persons of 
 whom there is any certain record in connexion with this matter. As 
 we have stated, the Woollers or W'oolmcn subsequently attended to the 
 troy balance, and the Grocers to the avoirdupois. In Scotland, the 
 term Iron, if it was identical with Tro}-, signified the weighing-machine 
 for heavy goods also. 
 
 It was through the temporary influence of Richard Earl of Cornwall, 
 brother of Henrj' III., when he was, in 1257, nominated King of the 
 Romans, that the Teutonic Gild gained a stronger footing in London
 
 I 66 A'OLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 and throughout the kingdom. Rut this colony seems to have finally 
 transferred its headquarters to the neighbourhood of Bishopsgate ; for 
 in lo Edward I. arose the dispute between the Germans and the Mayor 
 respecting the repair of the wall in the latter quarter, to which they 
 would scarcely have been liable, if located on the riverside. In the 
 thirt}'-third \-ear of the same reign the Teutonic Gild is quoted as well 
 established at Bishopsgate. 
 
 Stow tells us that the Merchants of Almaine, whom we apprehend 
 that he confounds with the Flemings, imported wheat, rye, and other 
 grain, cable, ropes, masts, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, linen cloth, wainscot, 
 wax, steel, and other profitable commodities. 
 
 The Hithes hereabout, l^dred's Hithe, Queen-hithe, etc., were all 
 landing places for goods, both from English and foreign ports, and 
 stations where custom was payable. The receipts from the vessels un- 
 loaded at Oucenhithc belonged in the time of Henry III. to his queen, 
 or were usually farmed b\' some adventurer, who paid his composition 
 at Clerkenwell half-yearly. 
 
 In 5 Edward VI. the Crown sequestered the privileges of the foreign 
 [Merchants of the Staple and the other alien communities carrying on 
 trade in that vicinity, in consequence of complaints made as to their 
 interference with the rights and interests of denizens. But of course a 
 strong element of this character survived, as it continues to do. Custom 
 and prescription have always offered obstacles, a kind of Z'!s inertuc, 
 to the literal execution of a country's laws.
 
 THE ORE. IT COMPANIES.
 
 THE GREAT COM PAX I ES. 
 
 Ube /IPscrccrs. 
 
 T' 
 
 'HIS Gild, at present acknowledged to 
 be the premier one in ceremonial pre- 
 cedence, is also probably one of the most 
 ancient, and doubtless, like many or most 
 of the others, existed by royal licence some 
 centuries before it acquired a charter and 
 a fixed constitution. The origin of this 
 and other communities of the same class is 
 seldom traceable beyond a point of time 
 when they are accidentally brought to light 
 by some fortuitous or indirect means. 
 The genesis of the Mercers is almost lost in myth. It is associated 
 with the Hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon, founded at the end of the 
 twelfth centurj' by the sister of Thomas a Becket and her husband on 
 the site of the birthplace of St. Thomas. The founders, as well as 
 Gilbert a Becket, St. Thomas's father, are reputed to have belonged to 
 the Fraternity of Mercers ; and the latter is supposed, prior to the Refor- 
 mation, to have been intimately allied to the religious establishment, 
 simultaneously dedicating itself, on the common principle and law 
 of all these medioeval secular bodies, to the conduct of trade and the 
 performance of almsdeeds. 
 
 We have nothing better than presumption and tradition to guide us 
 until we reach the close of the reign of John, when the Mercers gave 
 their first Mayor to the City in the person of Robert Searle, although 
 the two earliest magistrates, Henry and Robert FitzAlw>^n are equally 
 claimed by the Gild as members. 
 
 The fortunes of the Mercers remained bound up during a very 
 lengthened period with those of the Merchants Adventurers, and down 
 to 1526 the two bodies registered their transactions in the same books. 
 The Adventurers, in fact, conducted the export and import trade in 
 alliance with the London firm or body ; and the goods in which they 
 dealt were multifarious enough about the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
 C.C ^^^ 2 2
 
 170 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 tury, comprising linen cloths, buckrams, fustians, satins, jewels, fine 
 woollen and linen wares, cottons, threads, drugs, wood, oil, wine, salt, 
 copper, and iron. In other words, the Gild at first engrossed the sale 
 by retail of an assortment of items which subsequently became separate 
 industries and emplo\"ments. 
 
 In 1393 the first charter was obtained, probably through the agenc}- 
 of Sir Richard W'hittington, from Richard II., at a cost to the recipients 
 of over 87/. out of a total income of less than 300/. ; and shortly after 
 a licence in mortmain was granted by the same prince, enabling the 
 Mercers to hold land to the value of 20/. a year. In this parent charter 
 they are described as the " Men of the Mistery of Mercery of the Cit)- 
 of London." 
 
 But large as was the outlay, the incorporation of the Mercers un- 
 doubtedly repaid them, and bore indeed early fruit, not only in the 
 confidence in their stability which it imparted, but in the distinction 
 which it brought in its train. We shall probably never know to the full 
 extent the obligations under which the then young Company lay to 
 Whittington, through his benefactions to it after his death and during 
 his lifetime, as well as through his good offices with the King. It is 
 evident from existing documents that his standing with Richard II. was 
 exceptionally influential ; and it is equally clear that Dean Colet and 
 others were favourably induced, by the relationship between him and his 
 sovereign, to give a preference to the body to which he belonged as one 
 of the founders, in making their testamentary and other dispositions. 
 For we find that with the fifteenth century the bequests to the Mercers 
 for charitable, religious, or corporate purposes began to flow steadily in ; 
 and, from their prevailing nature as freeholds in the central portion of 
 the City, laid the foundation of that princely estate which now belongs 
 to the Gild either in fee or trust. 
 
 Foremost in the long series of the benefactions of Sir Richard 
 Whittington, curiously enough, however, was his purchase in 1408 or 
 1409 of Leaden Hall,^ a private residence of the Nevilles and De 
 Bohuns, and his presentation of it, not to the Mercers, but to the City 
 authorities. The second charter of 1424-5, dated from Westminster, 
 February 14, 3 Henry VI., was accorded at the express request of the 
 four executors of Whittington ; and besides being an inspcximus of that 
 of 1393. bestowed on the Company the right of a common seal, and of 
 suing and being sued in all courts. 
 
 ' A front view of Leaden Hall, as it appeared in 1756, is given in Maitland, second 
 edition, vol. ii., p. 999. The market is said to have been established by Sir Simon 
 Eyre in 1446.
 
 THE MERCERS. 
 
 171 
 
 Some years elapsed after the concession of tlie first charter before 
 the Company proceeded, so far as our present knowledge extends, to 
 the formulation of Ordinances or bye-laws for the internal management 
 of its affairs and the proper control of its officers and members. Such 
 a code was framed in 1407, and again in 1410 ; and in 1424, consequently 
 on the important W'hittington benefactions, Ordinances were made fir 
 his almshouses. 
 
 The ordinary b\-e-laws above mentioned, and those which succeeded 
 them at intervals, provided for the trial by the Company's officers of all 
 weights and measures belonging to freemen ; and a few years prior 
 
 a^^^^^^ \ ^-^^/.fe^i;. ^ «^^^,,#^ 
 
 
 THE DEATH OF WHITTINOTON (from his MSS. Oriiiiiaiues, 1424). 
 
 (1403) the Company purchased on its own account two brass measures, 
 an ell and a yard long respectively, and a pile of brass, with a coffer to 
 hold them. But neither in these more ancient bye-laws nor in those 
 of later origin was the power of search, which was the usual accom- 
 paniment of them, bestowed ; nor do the Mercers seem to have ever 
 possessed any legal title of this description, although they at one time 
 exercised it in some particulars. 
 
 Sir Richard Whittington had died in the beginning of 1423-4 at his 
 house in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster in the Royal [Reole], and 
 his will was proved by his four executors in March of the same year.
 
 I 72 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 All his foundations and bequests were confirmed by Act of Parliament 
 in 1432. The Mercers did not enter into possession of the income till 
 1424, or at least the earliest accounts bear that date. The revenue was 
 at that time 2S0/. 1 1.?. ic/.,^ and the expenditure 265/. i\s. S^ir/., while 
 the aggregate corporate revenue of the Company appears to have been 
 \-ery little, if at all, in excess of 300/. ; and indeed in 1448 it is returned 
 at only 261/. odd. A distinction, however, is to be drawn and under- 
 stood between the estate of the Mercers as a Gild and the personal 
 property of the members. For a levy of 500 marks on the Mercers, 
 toward the expense of the king-maker Warwick in his expedition to 
 the North in 1461, was e.xplicitly raised from 145 freemen of the Gild; 
 and in the statute of i Edward IV. for the quieting of titles, the City 
 Companies are only indicated in general terms, whereas the Mercers 
 stand alone in being mentioned by name. 
 
 Unquestionable the capital incidents in the early annals of the 
 -Mercers were their appointment, under the will of Whittington (Sep- 
 tember 5, 142 1 ), as trustees of the charities which he established, and 
 their selection by Dean Colet to the permanent care and control 
 of the new school of St. Paul's, founded and endowed by him after 
 his father, Sir Henry Colet's, death in 15 10. It is almost needless to 
 point out, that in each of these cases the eleemosynary spirit was 
 paramount ; that the value of the foundations at the period, and very 
 long after, was comparatively small ; and that the vast expansion of 
 the rentals or other income has partaken of the influence and benefit of 
 the revolutionary change in the estimation of land and tenements in 
 London. It is not more than equitable to state, that not only was Colet 
 the third person who had instituted an educational seminary in St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, but that the notion had been broached so early as 
 1456 by the Master and Brethren of St. Thomas of Aeon, in Cheapside, 
 who petitioned Parliament for power to found a grammar school " to 
 teach all that will come." 
 
 The whole of the Whittington estate amounted, as we have said, in 
 1425 to 280/. a year ; the Colet, when it had been augmented by 
 supplementary grants under his will, represented no more than 112/. 
 and a fraction ; and both, the former more especially, included leading 
 sites in prominent City thoroughfares. A portion of the Dean's post- 
 humous benefaction consisted of property at Stepney, which was 
 claimed by his heirs, because the testator was not entitled to amortize 
 copyhold ; but the difficulty was arranged, and this property is at 
 present, next to that in the City itself, the most lucrative part of the 
 
 ' The present income appear.s to be over 12,000/. a jear.
 
 THE MERCERS. 
 
 / J 
 
 bequest, the character of the locaUty liaving undergone of late years 
 an entire transformation through buiding leases and railway enterprise. 
 
 The Whittington estate seems to have lain exclusively in the metro- 
 polis, and to have been distributed among the parishes of St. Martin's 
 C)utuich; St. Mary-le-How ; St. Lawrence, Old Jewry; St. Mary Mag- 
 dalen, Milk Street; All Hallows, Barking; St. Dunstan's in the East; 
 St. Leonard, Eastcheap ; and others— all in the vicinity of Cornhill 
 and such now bu.sy and densely built neighbourhoods. 
 
 The present writer has elsewhere ' entered into some particulars of the 
 life of Whittington and of his charitable foundations, 
 partly carried out by his four executors. He was a 
 just and upright man, but toward the close of his 
 career seems to have contracted the character of 
 being a somewhat severe and even arbitrary reformer 
 of abuses. His personal influence and prestige lent 
 his views and aims peculiar weight ; and so long as 
 he lived he was a law to the City. One of the 
 ordinances of his college was, that the almsmen 
 should pray in perpetuity for the souls of Sir Richard Whittington and 
 
 CREST OF WHITTINGTON. 
 
 ' Tales ami Lcge/!ifs^ 11^92, p. 406 et seqq. But it may be suggested that the rough 
 portrait inserted above is a comparatively late reproduction of an earlier print or 
 likeness, when the cat myth had acquired currency. The assignment of the prodigy 
 was, perhaps, topographically unfortunate, as there is no ground for supposing that 
 in that part of Africa the domestic cat was unknown or uncommon even in the 
 fifteenth century.
 
 174 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 ORIGINAI^ ARMS. 
 
 wife, Sir William Whittington and his wife, father and mother of the 
 said Sir Richard, and King Richard II., promoter of Sir Richard 
 Whittington ; and the solidity of his reputation led to the Mercers, 
 after his death, approaching Henry VI., through his executors, with a 
 pra3'er for a new charter. 
 
 The youthful and somewhat feminine 
 physiognomy of Richard II., who may be 
 treated as with Whittington the co-founder 
 of the Mercers, possibly favoured the no- 
 tion, when the Company transferred its 
 allegiance to the blessed Virgin, that a 
 very slight modification of the portrait in 
 the old arms, as they are given in the 
 folio edition of Stow, 1633, would answer 
 for an effigy of the new patron. We should 
 ratlier have seen the king retained. The Mercers owed more to him 
 than to Our Lad}'. 
 
 The original foundation of Colet, whose father, as well as himself, 
 belonged to the Company, consisted of lands in Buckinghamshire and 
 Hertfordshire ; and had he not added by will the residuary devises, 
 and been followed by others, particularly Sir Baptist Hicks, Viscount 
 Campden, who had amassed a fortune as a mercer, the school could not 
 have assumed its actual proportions without substantial assistance. 
 
 By the scheme removing the building elsewhere, all the old atmo- 
 sphere and association have been necessarily sacrificed. As a modern 
 piece of machinery for the public instruction of boys, the great seminary 
 at Hammersmith is, no doubt, incomparabh' preferable. Its historical 
 ties were completely severed, when it ceased to stand under the shadow 
 of the cathedral of which its founder was Dean. 
 
 Before we quit the subject of Colet's St. Paul's, to which we can 
 obviously devote no more than a passing notice, we may call attention 
 to the statutes which the Dean established for this charity, of which 
 all are conceived in that spirit of frigid austerity which distinguished 
 scholastic training down to modern days, and of which some, again, are 
 curious as demonstrating the primitive arrangements for the comfort of 
 the boys. 
 
 For the period which witnessed its institution, in 15 12, the school, 
 with its high-master, under-master, and chaplain, must have been 
 regarded as a great advance and improvement, preceding b}' so many 
 years Christ's Hospital and the other Edward the Sixth schools. Nor, 
 when we take into account the experimental or tentative character 
 which belonged to the new St. Paul's (for there had been at least two
 
 THE MERCERS. I 75 
 
 antecedent places of instruction close at hand), are we at all to blame 
 Colet for the harshness, narrowness, and barbarism, from our point of 
 view, of many of his injunctions. 
 
 On the contrar}-, let us always remember his answer to those who 
 expressed surprise at his not placing the school under clerical super- 
 intendence : " That there was no absolute certainty in human affairs ; 
 but, for his part, he found less corruption in such a body of citizens (as 
 the Mercers) than in any other order or degree of mankind." This 
 manly secularism placed him immeasurably in advance of his time. 
 
 In connexion with St. Paul's School, though at a period posterior 
 to the founder's time, it is to be remembered that the boys, like those 
 of Merchant Taylors', occasionall)-, in the reign of Elizabeth, performed 
 plays before the Court and otherwise. The Merchant Taylors' boys 
 are often called Mulcaster's, or Munkester's children, from the name 
 of the first head-master, Richard Mulcaster, under whom (a man of 
 some literary taste) they were trained. 
 
 It is so far curious, that with both their earliest acquisitions out of 
 their own funds they afterward parted. These were the Pye at Bishops- 
 gate, consisting of three messuages and eight shops, valued at 10/. a year, 
 and the Crown-field in Westcheap, being a meadow and shops, valued 
 at 7/. 135. 4^. a year. It had been to enable them to hold the former 
 that they sought and obtained the licence in mortmain. 
 
 But the most signal and tantalizing example of unlucky miscarriage 
 occurred to the Mercers in a case, where some land in the suburbs of 
 London was devised to them, and subsequently allowed to pass from 
 their possession. 
 
 In 15 13, the widow of Thomas Bradbury, Mercer, and late Lord 
 Mayor of London, gave to the Compan\- in trust for certain superstitious 
 and charitable uses land of the then estimated value of 20/. a year, 
 being the Conduit Mead and appurtenances. This was the ground on 
 which New Bond Street and the adjoining thoroughfares were eventually 
 built ; and, as Herbert remarks even in 1836, had the Mercers kept the 
 property, " it would have more than quadrupled the value of all their 
 present estates." 
 
 By deed of October 18, 161 8, the Irish Society erected a portion of 
 the Count}- of Londonderr}-, the whole of which had been vested in it 
 by letters patent of March 29, 161 3, into a Mercers' manor, and con- 
 veyed it to the Company by feoffment two da}-s later, subject to the 
 usual conditions. The Company associated with it as sub-sharers 
 the Innholders, the Cooks, the Broderers, and the Masons. Upon 
 the re-incorporation of the Society in 1662, the Mercers commenced a 
 system of letting their manor for successive terms of years at a rental
 
 176 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 and fine. The first lease (1663-17 13) was at 300/. a year and 500/. 
 fine ; the second was raised to 420/. a year and 6,000/. fine ; and the 
 third, which was for si.xty-one years and three Hves, realized to the 
 Mercers the same rent, with a fine of 16,500/. The last life expired in 
 1 83 1, and the Mercers have since managed the property through an 
 agent. 
 
 The present may be the most suitable place for presenting a view of 
 the mode in which the property was apportioned among the fifty-five 
 corporations then existing, and in which the manors were constituted. 
 The Companies marked with an asterisk have parted with their interest. 
 
 Mercers. 
 
 Innholders. 
 
 Cooks. 
 
 Broderers. 
 
 Masons. 
 
 Grocers.* 
 
 (No sub-sharers.) 
 
 Drapers. 
 Tallow-Chandlers. 
 
 Fishmongers.* 
 
 Leathersellers. 
 
 Plaisterers. 
 
 Glaziers. 
 
 Basket- Makers. 
 
 Musicians. 
 
 Goldsmiths. 
 
 Cordwainers. 
 
 Painter-Stainers. 
 
 Armourers. 
 
 Skinners. 
 Stationers. 
 White-Bakers. 
 Girdlers. 
 
 Merchant-Taylors.* 
 See Clotlnvorkers. 
 
 Haberdashek.s.* 
 Wax-Chandlers. 
 Turners. 
 Founders. 
 
 Salters. 
 
 Dyers. 
 
 Saddlers. 
 
 Cutlers. 
 
 Joiners. 
 
 Woolmen. 
 
 Ironmongers.* 
 Brewers. 
 Scriveners. 
 Coopers. 
 
 Pewterers. 
 Barber Surgeons. 
 Carpenters. 
 
 Vintners. 
 Residue of Grocers' 
 
 Share. 
 Wood mongers. 
 Weavers. 
 Plumbers. 
 Poulterers. 
 
 Tylers and Bricklayers. 
 Blacksmiths. 
 I'ruiterers. 
 Curriers. 
 
 Clothworkers.* 
 Overplus from Merchant- 
 Taylors' share. 
 Butchers. 
 Brown-Bakers. 
 Upholders. 
 Bowyers. 
 Fletchers. 
 
 Herbert furnishes an interesting account of Mercery, with an explana- 
 tion of the ancient meaning and scope of the term, and he also refers to 
 the early state of the corresponding industry in France. " Mercerie," 
 he says, " comprehended all things sold by retail by the little balance or 
 small scales, in contradistinction to things sold by the beam or in gross." 
 He adds that the mercers who in 1299 attended the French fairs, if the\^
 
 Tin: MKRCKUS. I 77 
 
 sat on the Ljniimd to sell their wares paid a halfpenny toll, but if they 
 occupied a stall they paid double. As early as the commencement of 
 the eighth centur)', merceries arc mentioned as dutiable in France. But 
 we .seem to have very little information about thcni prior to the notices 
 in the Charta Mercatoria of Edward I. (1302). The ancient mercer was 
 a pedlar ; but he was so at a period when such a mode of conducting 
 inland business was almost the only one available. Mis multifarious 
 stock antl transactions, with his relatively limited expenditure, favoured 
 the growth of his trade ; and circumstances eventually detached from it 
 those branches which became by natural development separate vocations, 
 until at last the mercer reserved to himself only the higher and costlier 
 class of goods in his own department, and allowed the rest to devolve 
 on the draper and the haberdasher. 
 
 As the butchers with bad meat, the fishmongers with putrid or fore- 
 stalled fish and unlawful nets, the bakers with bread of light weight or 
 unwholesome quality, and the vintners with wine unfit for use, were a 
 constant source of trouble to the authorities, so the mercers come under 
 our notice at regular intervals as vendors of false blankets and other 
 cognate wares, the haberdashers and hatters of spurious head-gear, and 
 the shoemakers and cordwainers as purveyors of commodities fashioned 
 out of defective or fictitious material. But it is the individual manufac- 
 turer or retailer who is in all cases the delinquent, and who is brought to 
 justice by the Fraternity or Gild. 
 
 One of the circumstances which stimulated the demand for silk goods 
 was the presentation to Queen Elizabeth in 1560 by her silk-woman, 
 Mistress Montague, of a pair of silk stockings ; and it is said that Eliza- 
 beth thereafter never wore any other material. She had always used 
 cloth. 
 
 It may be inferred from the terms of the dedication prefixed to a 
 popular tract of 1607, that Elizabeth appointed a special Mercer to 
 supply her wardrobe. Sir William Stone at one time held this position. 
 
 The Mercers profited by the increasing taste for expenditure and 
 show under the later Tudor and the Stuart rule, not merely in the intro- 
 duction of silk as a substitute for cloth in articles of apparel, but in the 
 demand for other commodities on sale by them. .Stow's Continuator 
 mentions stockings of Spanish silk as worn both b_\- Henry VIII. and 
 his son ; but they were exceptions to the prevailing custom, and, in the 
 former case at least, were a gift from Spain. The same writer remarks 
 that gowns of Bruges satin, cushions and window-pillows of velvet, 
 which at one period were considered suitable only for persons of the 
 highest rank, had come into use in the City at last. 
 
 Occasional complaints were addressed by the Crown to the Corpora- 
 
 C.C. 
 
 -o
 
 178 THE CRKAT COMPANIES. 
 
 tion, accompanied by threats of revocation or forfeiture in reference to 
 the alleged exorbitance of charges made by the mercers for their goods, 
 even when the prices had generally receded ; and in one instance, when 
 the Lords of the Council intervened (1551), the Mayor prayed the 
 Mercers to sell as cheaply as they could, " although to their loss," which 
 may have been no more than the commercial parlance which is so often 
 heard among us still. For among all the manifold forms of business, 
 larger fortunes were probably made by mercery than by any other, as it 
 comprehended such a wide variety of articles in constant demand, and 
 appealed to all classes, till the draper and haberdasher constituted 
 separate departments, and subdivided the trade. 
 
 The earliest vestige of a seat of business, rather than a Hall, occurs 
 under 141 3-14, when the Company hired or borrowed from the Master 
 of St. Thomas of Aeon a small room, which at once served as an office 
 and a chapel. But in 15 17, at a date more or less posterior to the 
 evacuation of that locality by the Ironmongers, whose spacious quarter 
 
 THIC 01. 1) 11 \I 
 
 had been immediately contiguous, what is termed the New Hall was 
 commenced, and was finished in 1552, although the new chapel had 
 been consecrated so far back as 1523. In 1538 the Company, on the 
 suppression of the college of St. Thomas of Aeon, purchased the site 
 and buildings, including the church, cloister, chapter-house, burial- 
 ground, and other houses, with the church, parsonage, and advowson of 
 St. Mary Colechurch, and other properties, for 969/. \js. 6d., and a 
 reserved rent of 7/. 8j. \od., afterward redeemed. The transaction in- 
 volved the necessity of borrowing the mone\-, which was partly obtained 
 by loan from Sir Richard Gresham and others, and partly from St. Paul's 
 School Chest. But it was a wise and fruitful investment. 
 
 The site of the Hall and the buildings attached is of very peculiar 
 interest, as it not only represents the earliest settlement of the Mercers 
 in London, but, according to tradition, was once occupied in part by the 
 shop of Gilbert Becket, Mercer and Portreeve of London, the father of
 
 TMK MERCERS. 
 
 •79 
 
 tlie future Ari:hljisli()[). l^eckct'.s place of business, before the Hospital 
 of St. Thomas was erected on the ground, is supposed to have stood 
 near the present entrance to the Company's hall in Cheapside. It is 
 deserving of mention that in 1660 the Council of Trade was allowed to 
 h<ild its meetings at Mercers' Hall, and that in 1694 the Company lent 
 the apartment for the first meeting of the newly established Bank of 
 England, and in 1698 for the reception of the subscribers' names to the 
 United ICast India Companj-. 
 
 THE MODERN HALL, 184Z. ENTRANCE IN CHEAPSIDE. 
 
 The story goes that, many years since, the Mercers felt some anxiety 
 as to the soundness of the woodwork of their Hall and the durability of 
 the general structure, and asked their then surveyor for a report. He 
 pronounced that it might last ten years ; but a second opinion was 
 fortunately taken, and this guaranteed the building for a century. The 
 latter professional gentleman superseded the utterer of the rash view 
 by which the Hall was nearly sacrificed. A similar incident occurred 
 to the Clothworkcrs, who were less cautious, and let their old place go.
 
 I So 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 The Court of Assistants was established in 1463, in consequence of the 
 expansion of the volume of business demanding constant and anxious 
 attention, and of a feeling that the responsibility was too onerous for 
 the Wardens. The Court was appointed to consist of twelve sad and 
 discreet persons to be assistant to the Wardens ; but its meetings were 
 at first designated asscinhltcs. This new body steadily acquired great 
 power and ascendency, and obtained the virtual right of electing the 
 executive of the Gild. 
 
 This momentous development of the constitution carried with it the 
 necessity of providing for the more complex administrative machiner}- 
 a fuller and more comprehensive bod}' of ordinances for mutual and 
 common observance ; and in i 504 a code framed by the Company was 
 approved by the Primate, the Chancellor, and the two Chief Justices. 
 This new code extended to fift}--one Articles, and contained at the end 
 the oaths to be administered to apprentices, freemen, servants going 
 
 bej'ond sea for their masters, and shop-holders. These oaths were prac- 
 tically mercantile contracts. 
 
 The Mercers have always remained a comparatively limited Companj' 
 in point of numbers, and this feature is ascribable to the ancient regu- 
 lation, arising out of the disputed admittance in 1403 of the freeman 
 of another Gild, that in future no stranger should receive the freedom 
 without the consent of the whole commonalty. 
 
 In 1474, the Freemen, householders, and Livery of the Company 
 amounted to seventy-four; in 1537, there were fift3'-three only; in 
 1573, they represent themselves as having shrunk in number, partly b)- 
 reason, no doubt, of the incessant exactions of the Crown ; in 1701, 
 they had more than quadrupled; in 1722, the number was considerablj' 
 reduced ; in 1742 the figures again stood within three of those of 1701 ; 
 in 1833, the total was 120; but in 1880, the figures had considerablj-
 
 TlIK MKRCEKS. 
 
 i8i 
 
 risen, as the returns of that year shew: Freemen, i66; Livery, 157 ; 
 Court, 28 ; Master and Wardens, 3 ; total, 354. In 1892 the Livers- 
 numbered 185. The exact computation of numbers in tlie earlier periotl 
 is rendered difficult b}- the inability in ever}- instance to ascertain whether 
 the statistics given are inclusive. The returns made to the Royal Com- 
 mission of 1882 are often conflicting. 
 
 The figures given on page 180 are supposed by Herbert to represent 
 liverymen of a Cit)' Gild ; but the spirit and pose, and even the fall of 
 the dress, appear to be borrowed from the familiar group of Venetian 
 senators or decemvirs in the work of Vecellio, published in 1590. We 
 apprehend the subjoined representations to be truer to luiglish costume. 
 
 l.IVEKYMEN TEMP. HKNRY VI. (A.D. 1444.) 
 
 MVEUYM.VN TEMP. J.\.\IE.S 1. 
 
 With the exception of Richard II., its first patron, whose portrait 
 formed part of its arms, till he was displaced b\' the Virgin, the present 
 Prince of Wales, and a few of the nobilit}', this Gild is far from being so 
 rich as many in its roll of eminent honorary members, although in its 
 own ranks it has counted a long array of distinguished individuals, who 
 have risen by successful careers in the business, including Sir Richard 
 Whittington ; Sir Godfrey Bullen, a mercer in the Old Jewry and 
 Lord Mayor in 145 1, and great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth; the 
 Greshams; Sir Henry Colet ; and Sir Baptist Hicks, afterward Viscount 
 Campden. 
 
 The Gresham family is mentioned in the person of William Gresham 
 as belonging to the Gild in 1537; this gentleman traded with the 
 Levant, and in some early account books, 1521-39, cited by Mr. 
 Burgon,' is described as a factor on the Maty George. Sir Thomas 
 Gresham, founder of the Royal E.xchange and Gresham College, the 
 confidential and trusted servant of princes, in his way, and Sir Richard 
 Whittington and Dean Colet in theirs, make ample amends by their 
 noble acts and self-sacrificing careers for the general deficiency of the 
 
 ' Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1839, vol. i. p. 8.
 
 i8: 
 
 Tin-; r,RF:AT companies. 
 
 ]\Iercers in famous members. We cannot fail to observe how Sir 
 Thomas, in his letters to Queen Mary, proclaims his pride of his 
 calling and his Gild b\' subscribincr himseU A/eirer. 
 
 SIR THOMAS GRESHAM, CITIZEN AND MKKCEH. 
 From the Painting by Sir Antonio More, 
 
 In addition to the lustre shed on the Mercers b\' the names which 
 we have enumerated, it must be remembered that by far the most 
 illustrious of our early printers, William Caxton, served his apprentice- 
 ship to Robert Large, a distinguished and philanthropic member of 
 this Gild, and thus indirectly honoured it ; and Maitland tells us that 
 John Iwyn or Ewin, a London physician, gave the ground on which 
 the monastery of the Greyfriars by Newgate was built, and enrolled 
 himself a lay brother thereof. His fair and honourable repute was 
 long preserved in the designation of the church of St. Nicholas, which
 
 TIIK MERCERS. 
 
 was more properly called St. Nicholas Iwyn, and only by popular habit 
 St. Nicholas Flesh-Shambles. 
 
 A peculiarly interesting association with the chapel formerly attached 
 
 ■^^)>=^^F'orTj?t post [ a.'^:<c];i 
 
 to Mercers' Hall remains to be noticed. It was in the porch that Thomas 
 Guy, founder of Guy's Hospital, was bound apprentice to a bookseller 
 in 1660. 
 
 The Mercers were obliged to go to the Crown for new charters at
 
 184 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 least at each change in the succession ; this was, in fact, among the 
 devices of our sovereigns for raising funds. They surrendered their old 
 grants in the customary fashion in 155S, 1560, 161 5, and 1684. In 
 1652, the Long ParUament commanded the attendance of the governing 
 body with their charter ; but nothing was actually done. Cromwell 
 left the Companies unmolested, where he did not reinstate them, as 
 happened in one or two instances, in their franchises or possessions. 
 
 So early as 1658, notwithstanding a long succession of rich bequests 
 and donations, and a commencing advance in the value of existing 
 properties, the Mercers had found their affairs gradually growing more 
 and more embarrassed. From this date forward their practical com- 
 mand of the market, through industrial and legislative changes, 
 particularly the impulse received from the Huguenot settlement at 
 Spitalfields, had declined, if not determined. On the other hand, the 
 endless series of subsidies, contributions, and assessments to which the}', 
 in common with all the other great Fraternities, had been subjected 
 during the Tudor and Stuart reigns, both within ' and without the 
 civic jurisdiction, the commercial depression attendant on the Civil 
 War, and the shrinkage in their internal income from the decline in 
 their numbers, united to shake the Company's stability ; and the Great 
 Fire completed and crowned the catalogue of disasters, and brought 
 matters to a climax. In that holocaust perished the Company's Hall 
 and Church, nearly all the premises belonging to it in the City, the 
 Mercers' and St. Paul's Schools, and the Royal Exchange. Gresham 
 College escaped the flames ; and the governing body temporarily used 
 it as a place of meeting and business. Everything was suddenly para- 
 lysed, and the greatest distress prevailed among the officials, servants, 
 and almspeople dependent on the Company's employment or charity. 
 Moreover, the work of restoration was retarded by the want of funds, 
 and even the money obtained was borrowed. This incident, in short, 
 was a blow which it occupied the Mercers nearly a century and a half 
 to retrieve. The details are of no general interest ; but at the com- 
 mencement of the present century (1804) the Company was out of 
 debt. 
 
 The pecuniary difficulties in which the Companies, and conspicuously 
 the Mercers, found themselves still entangled long after the Fire, naturally 
 tended to relax their conditions of entrance, in order to obtain funds ; 
 and the Common Council considered it necessary in 1697 to pass an 
 Act whereby no one was qualified to be a liveryman of one of the great 
 
 ' From the early part of the fifteenth century the Gilds were required to furnish 
 their quota toward the storage of grain and coal aganist the ever-recurring contin- 
 gency of a dearth.
 
 Tin; MERCKRS. 
 
 iS = 
 
 Companies, unless he had an estate of l,ooo/., or of the minor bodies, 
 if he was not worth a moiety of that sum. 
 
 At the present moinent, it stands at the head of ail the Gilds, not 
 only by civic precedence, but by virtue of its sjiiendid revenue, whicii is 
 fast approaching 100,000/. a year. 
 
 The staff consists of a numerous and liberally paid body of officers 
 and servants, including the Irish Agent and Clerk, of whom the former 
 resides in the manor house at Kilrea, the latter in Lontlon. The Irish 
 Agent and the Land Agent are nominated by the Court of Assistants, 
 the Chaplain by the House-warden, and the other officers by the general 
 Court. The Clerk receives emoluments amounting to about 2,100/. a 
 year, besides a residence. 
 
 mercers' comp.vny s.-\lt-celi,ar {i7lh Century) 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE.S. 
 
 Reasons Humbly offered for the Passing a Bill for the hindering the Home 
 Consumption of East-India Silks, Bengals, etc. And an Answer to the 
 Author of several Objections against the said Bill, in a book, entituled An Essay 
 on the East-India Trade. With a Postscript containing the P'rench King's 
 Decree concerning India Manufactures. By T. S., Weaver in London. 8vo, 1697. 
 
 An Account of Dr. Assheton's Proposal (as improved and managed by the 
 Worshipful Company of Mercers London) fur the Benefit of Widows of Clergy- 
 men and others. l2mo, 1699. 
 
 Dr. Assheton \\as Vic;ir of Reckenham. 
 
 A Full Account of the Rise, Progress, and Advantages of Dr. Assheton's 
 Proposal. i2mo, 1710. 
 c.c. 24
 
 I 86 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 The History of Richard Whittingron, of his low birth, his great fortune, as yt was 
 
 plaied by tlie I'rynce's Servants. Entered at Stationers' Hall, February 8, 
 
 1604-5. 
 A Ballad, called The vertuous Lyfe and memorable Death of Sir Richard Whil- 
 
 tington, mercer, sometymes Lord Maiour of the honorable Citie of London. 
 
 Entered at .Stationers' Hall, July 16, 1605. 
 The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington. By T. H. 
 
 8vo, 1656 ; 4to, 167S and n. d. W'itli woodcuts. 
 
 London's Glory, and Whittington's Renown : Or, A Looking-Glass for Citizens 
 
 of London. A ballad. [About 1650.] 
 An Old Ballad of Whittington and Ms Cat. [.\bout 1700.] A broadside. 
 
 Absohitissimus de octo orationis partium constructions libellus. Per Joannem 
 
 Coletum. 8vo, 1533-4, Mensis Manii. 
 Joannis Coleti Theologi, olim decani diui Pauli, ;cditio. 8vo, 1534. 
 
 Tills includes some of Lily's J-iudiiin/ifs of Grammar. It was reprinted with the Gramninr 
 Rules, etc, for Wolsey's School at Ipswich, 8vo, 1535, 1536. 
 
 A right fruitfvll monition, cocerning the ordre of a good christian mans 
 
 Lyfe. By tlie famouse Doctour Colete. iSvo, 15A3. 
 A Sermon of Consecrating and Reforming, made [in 1511] by John Colet. Svo, 
 
 \bb\. 
 Preces in Usum Antiquse et Celebris Scholae juxta D. Pauli apud Londinates. 
 
 l2mo, 1677, 
 
 Sir Thomas Gresham his Ghost. 410, 1647. 
 
 On the title-page is a woodcut of Gresham rising full-dressed from his shroud. The tract refers 
 to certain alleged abuses in connexion with his benefactions. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS. 
 
 Charity Triumphant; or, the Virgin Show: Exhibited on the 29th of October, 
 1655, being the Lord Mayor [Alderman Dethicke's] Day. [By Edm. Gayton.] 
 4to, 1655. 
 
 London's Yearly Jubilee: Performed on Friday, October 29, 1686, for the Entertain- 
 ment of tlie Right Honourable .Sir John Peake, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City 
 of London. With a Description of the several Pageants, Speeches, and Songs 
 made proper for the Occasion. All set forth at the proper Costs and Charges of 
 the Right Worshiped the Company of Mercers. Composed by M. Taubman. 
 410, 16S6. 
 
 London's Anniversary Festival : Performed on Monday, October 29, 1688, for 
 the Entertainment of the Rt. Hon. Sir John Chapman, Knight, Lord Mayor 
 of the City of London ; being their great Year of Jubilee : with a Panegyric 
 upon the restoring of the Charter ; and a Sonnet provided for the Entertain- 
 ment of the King. By M. Taubman. 4to, 1688.
 
 THE GROCERS. 
 
 187 
 
 tCbe (Broccrs. 
 
 Thk Grocers, eventually one of the wealthiest, most important, and 
 most beneficent of the City Gilds, trace their descent and origin from 
 an amalgamation between the Pepperers of Sopers' Lane and the 
 Spiccrs of Cheap in 1345. The former communitv is found, as we 
 
 OLD AKMS. 
 
 have elsewhere noted, in the enjo)^ment of a high and influential 
 position in the earlier moiety of the preceding centur}-, and probably 
 absorbed the Corders, Canvassers, and other bodies ; so that the final 
 union of 1345 amounted to the formation of a great commercial federa- 
 tion, embracing in itself several once separate and thriving industries. 
 But somewhere about 1370 an extension of the business of the 
 Fraternity of St. Anthony, as the united Pepperers and Spicers styled 
 themselves, led to the adoption of the more modern and more com-
 
 1 88 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 prehensive name, which obviously signifies engrosser, or dealer in miscel- 
 laneous articles of consumption, as the haberdasher, and indeed the 
 primitive mercer, were in articles of dress or ornament. 
 
 The development of business in retail forms a subject which has 
 never been hitherto very attentively considered. In the provinces it 
 was long conducted beyond doubt, to a large extent, by the pedlar 
 and traveller ; and even in the streets of London the hawker soon be- 
 comes a familiar figure as well as an early ground of complaint. Fairs 
 and markets were formerly more frequent and more generally diffused, 
 and many of the trades chiefly depended on them for their miscel- 
 laneous custom. The Grocers, Haberdashers, Drapers, and others, 
 until the fashion set in for converting many of the religious and secu- 
 lar buildings into shops or warehouses after the Reformation, must have 
 been almost exclusively merchants in gross, who reached the com- 
 munity through itinerant middlemen. 
 
 In 1^73 we first meet with the current designation in the records of 
 the Company ; and it then consisted of 124 members. Three years 
 later a new set of Ordinances was drawn up, directing the two Wardens, 
 now called Masters, to convene four meetings or common congregations 
 in the year, appointing si.K persons to assist them — in other words, a 
 Court of Assistants — and a common box, to which every member of the 
 Fraternity should contribute tenpence a quarter for the relief of the 
 poor brethren. These regulations further prescribed, that no freeman 
 or member of another mistery should be admitted without the common 
 assent, and should then pay 10/. at least — an almost prohibitive scale. 
 
 The Grocers — still, be it recollected, only a voluntary unchartered 
 Association — are included under the operation of the Ordinances made 
 and published by the City in June, 1386, for the general control of 
 the trades of London ; and among these occur a grant of the power 
 of search to the Wardens or Masters of the Grocers over all spicers, 
 whether freemen or not, and likewise a stipulation that every member 
 of the mistery shall be entitled to have his weights and measures 
 assayed by the Wardens on bringing them to their hotel for the time 
 being. Eight years afterward, in consequence of a joint complaint 
 by the Grocers and certain Italian merchants, the Court of Aldermen 
 sanctioned the appointment by the former of a garbler or inspector 
 of spices and other " subtle wares." 
 
 We have here an outline of the history of the Grocers anterior to 
 the concession of their parent charter, February 16, 142S-9, 7 Henrj- 
 VI., wherein they are specified as "the Freemen of the Mistery of 
 Grocers of the King's City of London." 
 
 By this instrument the new Company was made one perpetual com-
 
 THE GROCERS. i 89 
 
 nu)nalt\-, and was authorizcil and empowered to appoint a governing 
 body for the supervision and control of its affairs and businesses for 
 ever, to hold a common seal, to receive and enjoy quietly lands and other 
 possessions within the City of London to the value of twenty marks 
 by the year in free burgage, and to have the right of pleading and being 
 impleaded in all courts : provided always that there was nothing in the 
 premisses tending to the diminution of the honour or authority of the 
 Crown. 
 
 In a Patent Roll of 1447 the power of search, conferred bj' the civic 
 Ordinances of 1386, was revoked so far as the City liberties were con- 
 cerned, but was enlarged so as to comprise the whole kingdom with 
 that exception, the Court of Aldermen having perhaps preferred to 
 retain this jurisdiction, yet occasionally delegating it to members of 
 the trade as experts. These letters patent amount to a supplementary 
 charter, and are extremely interesting and valuable, as shewing the 
 wide variety acquired at that date in the business of a Grocer. I'or 
 we perceive that purchasers resorted to their emporia to obtain an 
 almost endless assortment of domestic necessaries. The articles on 
 sale included all kinds of spices, drugs, medicines, oils, ointments, and 
 plaisters, confectionery, syrups, and waters ; and we may particularize 
 (i.) pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon, rosin ; (ii.) rhubarb, senna, 
 electuaries, syrups, turpentine, annis, ammonia, wormseed, wax, spike- 
 nard, waters, ointments, oils, plaisters, powders ; (iii.) green ginger, 
 succade, cardamums, dates, almonds ; (iv.) canvas and alum. Man\- 
 of these articles of commerce had been imported from the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and from the East by the Pepperers 
 and Spicers time out of mind. The last-named produce, which was 
 brought from Egypt and elsewhere, formed the subject of an attempt 
 in London in 1627 to supersede it by a home manufacture, to which a 
 reference will occur again, and about 1660 alum works were estab- 
 lished in Lancashire by James Benson. 
 
 The enumeration of the groceries supplied for the Goldsmiths' Feast 
 in 1498 embraces cinnamon, sugar, comfits, ginger, carraways, loaf- 
 sugar (6 lbs. at 2^d. per lb.), pepper, English saffron, dates, almonds (16 
 lbs)., mi/k, raisins, prunes, cloves, mace, aniseed, rice, great raisins, 
 broken sugar, and thirty-eight messes of wafers at ^s. 41/. In statements 
 of a somewhat later date oranges occur ; they had been introduced in the 
 reign of Edward L through his consort Eleanor of Castile, but they arc 
 not frequently mentioned in early entries. Loaf-sugar had become much 
 commoner, since in the reign of Henry III. the King desired the Sheriffs 
 of London to send him four loaves to Woodstock, if they could procure 
 so many. Later charters include tobacco, while they omit drugs and
 
 igO THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 medicines on account of the separate enfranchisement of the Apothe- 
 caries in 1617. 
 
 The right of search practically determined at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century, when the Company seems to have largely discontinued 
 its direct association with commerce, which was distributing itself into 
 new channels and becoming a machinery composed of wholesale and 
 retail dealers. 
 
 In the reign of Charles I., when Stow's Continuator wrote (1633), the 
 Grocers and Apothecaries made Bucklersbury their centre, as the 
 Drapers did Watling Street, the Goldsmiths Cornhill, and so on. 
 
 The charter of 1607 did not foresee the imminent severance of the 
 Apothecaries from the Grocers, and in it the Company is explicitly re- 
 incorporated as " the Freemen of the Misteries of Grocers and Apothe- 
 caries of the City of London " ; whence it is perhaps inferable that the 
 latter vocation had grown of sufficient importance to be specially named 
 in conjunction with the other. The Apothecaries were in fact ripe for 
 secession ten years before that event occurred. 
 
 An incident of capital interest in the history and affairs of the present 
 Company was its participation in the Irish scheme of 161 3. The 
 Grocers did not join, however, till 161 7, when they paid 5,000/. for a 
 share, less a portion which was taken over by the Vintners. Be- 
 tween that date and 1622 they expended a further sum of 2,000/. on 
 improvements, and the five years' receipts shewed a loss of 6,150/ 
 During a long series of years, which embraced the Civil War, nothing 
 was obtained in the shape of rents, and in 1658 an agent, sent over to 
 make inquiries, remitted 100/ 
 
 In 1675 matters had so far improved that the Grocers' manor in 
 Ireland could be let on a thirty-one years' lease at a rent of 10/ and 
 a fine of 3,660/ ; but in 1689 political disturbances again threw the 
 country back, and although great expense was incurred from time to 
 time in repairs and works, in 18 10 the Company took the management 
 into its own hands from dissatisfaction with the system of leases for 
 lives. In 1872, at a fortunate juncture, the resolution was definitively 
 formed to part with the whole property ; the tithe-charge was redeemed 
 for 7,358/ and the estate was submitted to auction in eleven lots, pro- 
 ducing 157,256/ The total net rental at the time appears to have 
 been about 2,500/ only, but ten lots out of the whole fell into the hands 
 of outside investors. It should be borne in mind that the former owners 
 had laid out very large sums in the endeavour to improve the lands ; 
 and indeed, not merely was the income in 1872 nearly treble the returns 
 of 1 83 1, but the deductions in future years for expenses were bound to 
 decrease.
 
 Till-; GROCKRS. 191 
 
 The Great Fire, succeeding' the long series of political troubles in 
 England and Ireland, prostrated the Grocers' Company, which lost, like 
 the Mercers, nearly everj'thing which it possessed in the City, its muni- 
 ments being saved by their storage in a tower which escaped the flames. 
 The disaster was not fully retrieved within a century, and the Gild was 
 brought to the verge of ruin. Its plate was melted in the fire ; but the 
 metal was recovered, and was sold toward the relief of the prevailing 
 distress. It is said to have weighed 200 lbs. It had been gradually 
 accumulating since 1346, when Geoffrey de Halliwell,pepperer of Sopers' 
 Lane, presented to the Fraternity a silver chalice and cover, weighing 
 twelve ounces goldsmith's weight, and other things of value. 
 
 Nothing short of the most generous conduct on the part of individual 
 members of the Company could have averted a catastrophe in 1666 and 
 the following years. Funds were necessarily provided by the Court 
 and Livery out of their own pockets for a lengthened interval, as the 
 corporate estate was in abeyance. 
 
 The Grocers had received from time to time, in the usual wa}-, 
 renewals or re-grants of their charter from Charles I. and II., James II., 
 William and Mary, and George I. Mere again, in the case of the 
 negotiation with the advisers of Charles II. in 1675, the Compan)- 
 suffered great anxiety, as it had been served with a writ oi quo zvarrauto, 
 and it was feared that there was a scheme on foot to seize into the 
 King's hands the estates of all the City Gilds. The Grocers deemed it 
 wise to surrender their grant, and to pray for a new one, which was 
 conceded with certain limitations. But James IL, desirous of conciliating 
 the Citj', restored the former privileges ; and in 1690 matters were placed 
 on a still more secure footing by the charter of William and Mary, the 
 King honouring the Company, as indeed Charles II. had done before, by 
 serving the office of Master in 1689, and by directing an annual present 
 of three fat bucks to be sent from Enfield Chase in perpetuity to 
 Grocers' Hall. The royal bounty did not survive the reign. 
 
 The embarrassments continued, however, down to 172 1, the Company 
 experiencing continual difficulty in meeting the most ordinary engage- 
 ments, and the greater part of its charities being suspended. In order 
 to raise money, facilities were afforded to persons desirous of joining ; 
 the ranks of the Court were enlarged from fift}--seven to eighty ; and 
 the Hall was let, first to the Lord Mayor, and then to the Bank of 
 England, on a repairing lease. In 1700 there was an unsuccessful 
 attempt to pay the Company's creditors 6s. S(/. in the pound. 
 
 From 1 72 1 an improvement in the affairs seems to have set in, and 
 in 1730 there was a cash balance of 3,000/. available for investment. It 
 was put into East India Stock. This period proved a permanent turn-
 
 192 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 ing-point in the Company's career, and the termination of the long 
 series of misfortunes, which it shared with all bodies similarly situated, 
 until the Revolution of 1688 effected a revival of tranquillity and con- 
 fidence. In 1759 affairs wore a still brighter aspect, and since that date 
 there has been no retrogression. 
 
 The Grocers appear to be legally independent of their bye-laws ; 
 but those of 171 1, founded on the preceding code of 1690, form the 
 basis of their present internal government. The provisions are of the 
 usual character ; and although there is a reference to the right of search, 
 the Company had now practically abdicated its position as a trading 
 corporation, and was becoming what we see it to-day, and what it had 
 indeed been on a humbler and narrower scale in its origin, a philanthropic 
 Gild of the first rank. 
 
 The later history of the Grocers constitutes a narrative, of which they 
 may justly be proud, since in nearly all the charitable or benevolent 
 foundations entrusted to their management their corporate estate has 
 been largely expended from year to year, in an ever-increasing ratio, in 
 enlarging the original bequests or in adapting them to modern demands 
 and views. Nor has their bounty limited itself to a conscientious main- 
 tenance and spontaneous extension of ancient trusts. For large sums 
 have been devoted to the endowment of scholarships and exhibitions, to 
 purposes of education outside their own schools, and to the support of 
 hospitals. This sort of stewardship has characterized during many 
 passed years not only the policy of the great Companies, but that of 
 several of the so-called minor ones, on which the levies for such objects 
 are naturally apt to bear a more than proportionate relationship to their 
 total incomes. 
 
 The number of members has fluctuated at different periods. In the 
 first place, when the Pepperers and the Spicers were originally amal- 
 gamated in 1428-9, only twenty-two persons seem to have been con- 
 cerned in the step. In the time of Charles I. (1640) the Court alone 
 consisted of fifty-seven, and in 1688 it was increased under urgent 
 financial pressure to eighty. In 1795, the entire Company numbered 
 between two and three hundred, and of these only forty were grocers ; 
 the influx of new members in 168S had modified the complexion of the 
 body, and the influence and tendency proved permanent and growing. 
 The present figures are about 630. In 1880 there were 397 freemen, 
 214 assistants and liverymen, and 21 honorary associates. 
 
 The Company remained nearly a century after its informal establish- 
 ment in 1345 without a Hall. The governing body first assembled, as 
 we have shown, at the Abbot of Bury's house or hotel in St. Mary Axe. 
 They subsequently seem to have used as a place of business and meet-
 
 THli GROCERS. 
 
 193 
 
 ing the house of one Fulgham, called the Ringed Hall in St. Thomas, 
 Apostle; and as a matter of evidence and authority the accepted 
 address was "the hotel of the Wardens for the time being." But in 1427, 
 as if the Fraternity then felt itself strong and rich enough to apply for 
 the charter actually obtained shortly after, the Wardens purchased for 
 320 marks the chapel with other portions of the demesne of Lord I'itz- 
 walter, in what was then known as Conyhopc Lane, and proceeded 
 thereon to erect a building, which became the permanent seat of the 
 
 T /%?,«* 
 
 r .!_ 
 
 
 then unenfranchised Society. It is supposed that No. 8, Old Jewry 
 marks the site of the entrance to the Old Hall. 
 
 The structure, with the rest of the City estate, perished, with the sole 
 exception of a tower containing the archives, in 1666; and the Grocers 
 have consequently no ancient plate or other relics of the remote past. 
 Their staff, in early days limited to a Beadle, now corresponds to the 
 magnitude of their business and the splendour of their position. 
 
 The Histories of the Company furnish lists of distinguished freemen 
 and honorary members. Among the former we have to mention 
 
 C.C. . 25
 
 194 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Andrew Bokerell, Pepperer, who held the mayoralty uninterruptedly 
 from 1231 to 1237 ; Sir John de Gisors,^ Pepperer, and Mayor in 1244-5, 
 1245-6, and 1258-9; Sir Alan de la Zouche, a member of an ancient 
 and illustrious stock; Andrew Aubery, Mayor in 1339-40 and 135 1; 
 Sir Thomas Knollis ; Sir Robert and Sir Thomas Chicheley ; Sir John 
 Crosby ; Thomas Lord Coventry ; Charles II. ; Sir Heneage Finch, first 
 Earl of Nottingham ; William III. ; and others. 
 
 The honorary Grocers comprise Sir John de Londres, parson of St. 
 Anthony, a.dmitted (evidently /io>wns caiisd)'^ in 1349 ; Sir Philip Sydney, 
 whose obsequies at St. Paul's, P^ebruary 16, 1586-7, the Company at- 
 tended ; George Monk, Duke of Albemarle ; William Pitt, George 
 Canning, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Napier of Magdala, Sir James Paget, 
 Mr. Anthony Trollope, and Sir Frederick Roberts. 
 
 grocers' company. W.\KDENs' G.^RL.'iNDS. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Case of the Company of Grocers Stated. And their Condition in their 
 present Circumstances Truly Represented, Together with a short Account of their 
 Original ; How Eminent they have been in the City, and also of some of their 
 Ancient Privileges and Usages. Designed for Information and Satisfaction of 
 the Members, and Vindication of the Company. By William Ravenhill. Folio, 
 1682. 
 
 A Short Account of the Company of Grocers, from their Original. Together 
 with their Case and Condition . . . .A.s also how their Revenue is settled. 
 By William Ravenhill, Clerk of the Grocers' Company. 4to, 1689. 
 
 A Short Discourse of the three kindes of Pepper in common use, and certaine 
 
 special medicines made of the same. By Walter Bailey, M.D. 8vo, 15SS. 
 A briefe and short discourse of the Vertue and Operation of Balsame. By the 
 
 same. 8vo, 15S5. 
 
 ' This very eminent man resided at a mansion in Basing Lane, subsequently known 
 as Gerard's Hall, and for a very long period prior to its demolition in 1852 converted 
 into an hotel. Several members of the family of Basing appear in the early records. 
 
 ^ Unless he acted as Chaplain, in which case he may have been on the Livery. The 
 Chaplain to the Drapers' Company is still a liveryman.
 
 THK GROCERS. I 95 
 
 A Discovrse of the medicine called Mithridatium. By the same. 8vo, 1585. 
 
 This was ii i-onfrction uf o|iiuMi. otinTuisc callcil 'riu-riactini. 
 
 The Metamorphosis of Tobacco. 410, 1602. 
 
 Works for Chimney Sweepers: Or, A Warning for Tobacconists. 4to, 1602. 
 
 A Defence of Tobacco. By Roger Marbeck. 410, 1602. 
 
 Perfvming of Tobacco, and the great Abvse committed in it. With many otlier 
 ancient and modern Perfumings. . . . Taken out of the new Historic or 
 Illvstration of Plants, written l)y Matth : de L' Obcl. Translated by I. N. 4to, 
 1611. 
 Di- T.'Ohi-l was keeper of I.onl Zoucli's I'liysic-Garden M H.ickney. 
 
 A Proclamation touching Tobacco. 1625. A broadside. 
 
 The same. . . . 1626. 
 
 A Proclamation for the well ordering of Tobacco. 1627. A broadside. 
 
 The Amies of the Tobacconists. 1630. A broadside with a woodcut. 
 
 Tobaeeonist originally signified not ii vendor, but a smoker, of the weed. 
 
 An Ordinance concerning the Excise of Tobacco. December 23, 1643. 410, 1643. 
 
 ^^*^^ Two editions. 
 
 An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons for the Regulating of the Rates on 
 
 tlie Ciistomes and Excise of Tobacco. 4to, 1644. 
 A Proclamation, prohibiting the Planting, .Setting, and .Sowing of Tobacco in 
 
 England and Ireland, according to an Act of Parliament therein specified. 1661. 
 
 A broadside. 
 The Venimous Qualities of Tobacco. 4to, 2 leaves. 
 The Women's Complaint against Tobacco. 4to, 1676. 
 The Touchstone or Triall of Tobacco, whether it be good for all Constitutions. 
 
 4to, 1676. 
 A Proclamation restraining the abusive Venting of Tobacco. 
 A true Report concerning the worthy accompt of Tobacco, approved in experience 
 
 by the Party and Reporter himself. By R[ichard] B[rowne], Clerk of the Green 
 
 Cloth.— J/5. Ashmole. 
 
 A Proclamation for prohibiting the Importation of AUvme, and the buying and 
 spending thereof, in any His Maiesties Dominions. 1625. A broadside. 
 
 A Relation of James Benson's Undertaking the Allum at the AUum Work, in 
 Lancashire (1660). 
 See Bright's Catalogue of books sold at Sotheby's, 1845, No. 3346. 
 
 A Curious Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate. By Anthonio 
 Colmenero, Doctor in Physic and Chirurgery. Translated by James Wads- 
 worth. 4to, 1640. 
 
 The Nature of the drink Kauhi, or Coffe, and the Berey of which it is made. 
 i2mo, Oxford, 1659. 
 
 A Cup of Coffee. 4to, 1663. 
 
 The Vertues of Coffee. Set forth in the Works of the Lord Bacon . . . 4to, 
 1663. 
 
 A Satyr against Coffee. A folio leaf. [About 1680.] 
 
 The Natural History of Coffee, Thee, Chocolate, Tobacco. 4to, 1682. 
 
 An Essay upon the Nature and Qualities of Tea. By John Ovington, ALA. i2mo, 
 1699. 
 
 Wholesome Advice against the Abuse of Hot Liquors. Particularly of Coffee, 
 Chocolate, Tea, Brandy, and Strong Waters. By Dr. Duncan, of the Faculty of 
 Montpelier. 8vo, 1706.
 
 )g6 THE GREAT COMi'ANIES. 
 
 A Description and History of the Coffee Tree. By Sir James Douglas. Folio, 
 
 An Answer to the Sugar-Bakers or Sugar-Refiners Paper. Folio, 1695. 
 
 A profitable and necessarie Discourse, for the meeting with the bad Garbling of 
 Spices, vsed in these daies. And against the combination of the workemen of 
 that office, contrarie vnto common good. Composed by diuers Grocers of London, 
 where in are handled such principall matters as followeth in the Table before the 
 booke. 4to[i59i]. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 
 The Triumphs of Honor and Industry: A Solemnity performed through the City, 
 at the Confirmation and establishment of the Right Honorable, George Bowles. 
 In the Office of his Majesties Lieutenant, the Lord Mayor of the famous City of 
 London- Taking beginning at his Lordships going, and proceeding after his 
 Return from receiving the Oath of Mayoralty at Westminster, on the morrow 
 next after Simon and Judes day, October 29, 1617. By Thomas Middleton. 410, 
 1617. 
 
 The Triumphs of Honor and Virtue : A Noble Solemnity performed through the 
 City, at the sole Cost and Charges of the Honourable Fraternity of Grocers, at 
 the Confirmation and Establishment of their most worthy Brother, the Right 
 Honorable Peter Proby, in the high office of his Majesty's Lieutenant, Lord 
 Mayor and Chancellor of the famous City of London. Taking beginning at his 
 Lordship's going, and perfecting itself after His return from receiving the Oath 
 of Mayoralty at Westminster, on the morrow after Simon and Jude's Day, being 
 the 29 of October, 1622. By Thomas Middleton. 4to, 1622. 
 
 London's Triumph, Celebrated October 29, 1659, in honour of the much honoured 
 Thomas Allen, Lord Mayor of the said City, presented and personated by an 
 European, an Egyptian, and a Persian, and done at the Costs and Charges of the 
 ever to be honoured Company of Grocers. By J. Tatham. 4to, 1659. 
 
 London's Triumphs Presented in several delightful Scoenes, both on the Water and 
 Land, and celebrated in Honour to the deservedly honored Sir John Frederick, 
 Knight and Baronet, Lord Mayor of the City of London. At the Costs and 
 Charges of the WorshipfuU Company of Grocers. By John Tatham. 4to, 1661. 
 
 London Triumphant ; or, the City in Jollity and Splendour : Expressed in various 
 Pageants, Shapes, Scenes, Speeches, and Songs : invented and performed for 
 Congratulation and Delight of the well-deserving .Sir Robert Hanson, Knight, 
 Lord Mayor of the City of London. At the Cost and Charges of the Worshipful 
 Company of Grocers : His Majesty gracing the Triuinphs with his Royal Presence. 
 Written by Thomas Jordan. 4to, 1672. 
 
 Some copies do not mention the King's presence. His M.ijesty dined after tlie proceedings at 
 Guildhall. 
 
 London in its Splendour : Consisting of triumphant Pageants, whereon are repre- 
 sented many Persons richly arrayed, properly habited, and significant to the 
 Design. With several Speeches, and a Song, suitable to the Solemnity. All 
 prepared for the Honour of the prudent Magistrate, Sir William Hooker, Knight, 
 Lord Mayor of the City of London : at the peculiar Expenses of the Worshipful 
 Company of Grocers. As also a description of his Majesties Royal Entertain- 
 ment at Guildhall, by the City, in a plentiful Feast, and a glorious Banquet. 
 Written by Thomas Jordan. 4to, 1673.
 
 1 HE UKOCKRS. 197 
 
 The Triumphs of London, I'cifoimed on Tuesday, October 29, 1678. For the 
 KntcrlainiiK'nt of the Kiglit I lonourable, and truly Noble I'attcrn of Prudence 
 and Loyalty, Sir James Edwards, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. 
 Containing a true description of the several Pageants, with the Speeches spoken 
 on each Pageant. Together with the Songs sung in this Solemnity. All set 
 forth at the Costs and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Grocers. Designed 
 and Composed by Tho. Jordan, Gent. 4to, 1678. 
 
 London's Joy; Or, The Lord IVLiyor's Show ; Triumphantly Exhibited in Various 
 Ri presentations, Scenes, and Splendid Ornaments, with divers pertinent Figures 
 and Movements. Performed on Saturday, October 29, 1681. At the Inaugura- 
 tion of the Right Honourable Sir John Moore, Knight, Lord Mayor of the Cily 
 of London. With several Speeches and .Songs which were spoUen on the 
 Pageants in Cheapside, and sung in Guildhall during Dinner. All the Charges 
 and Expenses of the industrious designs being the sole Undertaking of the 
 Worshipful Comjiany of Grocers. Devised and composed by Tho. Jordan, Gent. 
 4to. 16S1. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: IViformed on Monday, October 29, 1683. For the 
 Entertainment of the Right Honorable and truly noble Pattern of Prudence and 
 Loyalty, Sir Henry Tulse, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. Contain- 
 ing a Description of the whole Solemnity, vvith two new Songs set to Music. [By 
 Thomas Jordan.] 410, 1683. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: Performed on Saturday, October 29, 1692. For the 
 Entertainment of the Right Honourable Sir John Fleet, Kt., Lord Mayor of the 
 City of London. Containing a true Description of the several Pageants, with the 
 Speeches spoken on each Pageant. All set forth at the proper Costs and Charges 
 of the Worsliipful Company of Grocers. Together, with an Exact Relation of 
 the most Splendid Entertainments, prepared for the Reception of Their Sacred 
 Majesties. P>y Elk inah Settle. 4to, 1692. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: Performed on Tuesday, October 29, 1695. For the 
 Entertainment of the Right ffonourable Sir John Houblon, Kt., Lord Mayor of 
 the City of London. Containing A true Description of the several Pageants, 
 with the Speeches spoken on each Pageant. All prepared at the proper Costs 
 and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Grocers. To which is added, A 
 New Song upon His .M.ijesty's Return. By Elkanah Settle. Published by 
 Authority. 4to, 1695, 
 
 Hosanna ; or, A Song of Thanksgiving sung by the Children of Zion ; and set forth 
 in three notable Speeches at Grocers' Hall, on the last solemn day of Thursday, 
 June 7, 1649. The first was spoken by Alderman Atkins, the second by Alder- 
 man Isaac Pennington, the third by Hugh Peters (no Alderman, but) CUricus in 
 Ciierpo. 4to, 1649.
 
 198 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Ubc IDrapeis. 
 
 The Drapers, like many or most of the other Gilds, had a lengthened 
 existence antecedent to their formal confirmation. In or about 121 5, 
 Henry FitzAlwyn, Draper and premier Mayor of London (1189-1215), 
 bequeathed to them his estate at St. Mary Bothaw, a small parish north 
 of Oueenhithe, which modern changes have almost effaced. In 1252 
 and 1253 the Mayor was successively chosen from this Society. It is 
 perhaps to be regarded as flattering to FitzAlwyn that, he being nomi- 
 nated by the Crown, and the latter in 1208 conferring on the City the 
 future right of election, he retained the dignity till some years later. 
 The Drapers formed one of the branches of the clothing trade, of which 
 the Weavers, Tailors, Shearmen, Fullers, and Dyers were other com- 
 ponent parts ; and all these sub-divisions of industry frequently occur as 
 engaged in differences respecting the details and dividing lines of their 
 respective businesses. 
 
 The Drapers judiciously propitiated the Crown in 1363 by contri- 
 buting the liberal quota of fifty marks toward the King's French wars, 
 and in the very following year approached his grace with a prayer 
 for a charter, which infallibly cost them a further considerable amount. 
 By this, so far as we can make out, they specially and by right chiefly, 
 if not exclusively, confined themselves to the retail department ; and 
 the instrument just quoted was indeed professedly executed for the 
 purpose of enabling them to exercise a stricter and more authoritative 
 control over the retail trade, and to see the provisions of the Statute 
 of the Staple more punctually and efificiently carried out. 
 
 The preamble recites that it had been shown to the King and Council 
 that great numbers of persons belonging to divers misteries, who had 
 not properly learned the trade of drapery, according to the good, ancient 
 custom of London, meddled therewith ; and not only was the quality of
 
 TIIK nKAI'ERS. 
 
 199 
 
 cloth offered for sale consequently uncertain, but it was in the hands of 
 interlopers and forestallers who enhanced the price. 
 
 The italicized words in the foregoing paragraph may be deemed 
 sufficient to establish that the peculiar province of the Drapers was 
 one of great antiquit}- and recognised standing in 1364. The charter 
 of Edward prescribed that hereafter no one should follow or exercise the 
 calling until he had served his apprenticeship to it, and that the sale of 
 cloth should be limited to persons of this mistery, save where it was 
 purveyed to lords and other in gross and not for retail. In order to 
 enforce this and other regulations, four Wardens were to be elected, 
 subject to the approval of the Lord Mayor, and nothing in the charter 
 or in any Ordinances was to be in prejudice of those who had the right 
 
 OLD .\RMS. 
 
 of holding fairs in the suburbs of London, or of the merchant-vintners 
 of England and Gascony. 
 
 Not merely the sale, but the making, of drapery is mentioned in this 
 charter of 1364. Whence it may be deduced that the early drapers 
 were also tailors and dressmakers or milliners, the so-called merchant- 
 taylors being at the outset rather linen-armourers, and paying atten- 
 tion to a class of employment which was perhaps more lucrative, as 
 well as more technical. 
 
 The reservation of the existing privileges of the Vintners had reference 
 to the charter obtained by that Gild just before, wherein, for the sake 
 of preventing the excessive efflux of money for the purchase of wines,
 
 200 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 they were left at liberty to exchange their commodities for cloth, and 
 buy the same freely. 
 
 It may be more correct to describe the grant of 1364 as a patent, 
 for it really went little, if at all, beyond a ratification of certain remedies 
 for current abuses and grievances. The first actual charter was that 
 of November 30, 17 Henry VI., which conferred on the Drapers the 
 right of forming themselves into a Compan\', under the name of the 
 " IVIaster, Wardens, Brethren, and Sisteren of the Gild or Fraternity 
 of the blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mistery of the Drapers of the 
 City of London." 
 
 This instrument recites the several statutes of Edward III. and his 
 successors relating to the subsidy on cloth, the sealing of cloth by the 
 Alnager, the fixture of the dimensions of cloth, the farm of the alnage 
 and subsidy, and of a moiety of forfeitures of unsealed cloth, and 
 re-enforces their provisions, appointing certain persons to carry out the 
 law, with the power of search over all houses and shops in the City and 
 its suburbs. 
 
 The charter of 6 Edward IV., besides being an inspeximus of the 
 earlier one, granted a licence in mortmain to the extent of 20/. a year 
 for the professed purpose of enabling the Gild to support two chaplains, 
 to pray for the souls of the King and Queen and divers other noble 
 personages, and for the well-being of the Gild. The next instrument, 
 of the nineteenth of the same reign (1479), is so far curious, that it so 
 closely follows, and that it guarantees the Drapers against any con- 
 cession of a charter to the Shearmen, as solicited by the latter. It also 
 withdraws from the Shearmen for the future any right of search, cor- 
 rection, and authority over other trades, especially the Drapers and 
 Taylors, except in so far as such right might be conceded by the Lord 
 Mayor and Aldermen. The seizure of cloth illegally shorn by the two 
 other crafts is particularly forbidden, but the Shearmen might enforce or 
 recover the penalty attached. 
 
 The frequency of a renewal of grants is of course explained by 
 the course of political events. The accession of Richard III. almost 
 necessitated an approach to him with a view to confirmation and 
 indemnity, and the charter of May 21, 1484, is found accordingly to 
 be of a peculiar and special character. It releases the Gild from all 
 transgressions, forfeitures, etc., prior to February 21 preceding, con- 
 dones all acts done without licence to the same date, as well as all 
 fines, aids, etc. before Michaelmas, 22 Edward IV. But this grace did 
 not comprise accounts with the Staple of Calais, the Staple of the 
 Treasury of Calais, the Chamberlains of Chester, Northwell, and South- 
 well the Keepers of the Royal Wardrobe, the Clerks or Keepers of
 
 Tin; DRAPERS. 20 1 
 
 the Hanaper of the Chancery, their executors or administrators, the 
 Clerks of the Ro)'al Works, the Treasurer of Ireland, or the Receivers 
 of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. 
 
 The iiispeximits of Philip and Mary (1558) recites only those of 17 
 Henry VI. and 6 Edward IV.; and that of 1560 follows the same 
 course, adding the previous inspcximus. 
 
 The language and tenor of the charter of 1607, which is next in the 
 lather long series, shews that the Drapers had meanwhile experienced 
 a very considerable development in regard to their possessions and 
 prosperity. It may conveniently, for our present purpose, be bracketed 
 with that of 1619 of the same King, which now particularly bears on the 
 Hall of the Company and other property held by it in London and the 
 Borough. 
 
 Under the instrument of 1607 the government of the Gild was 
 appointed to consist of a Master, four Wardens, and twenty-four 
 Assistants, the Master and Wardens to be annually re-elected, but the 
 .Assistants to be for life, unless for some special reason removed. This 
 principle imparted to the constitution an unusually oligarchical cha- 
 racter, which was still further confirmed by the regulation that the 
 Master and Wardens should be chosen by a selected body of twelve of 
 the Assistants, all of whom must have been past Masters or Wardens. 
 Each past Master or Warden was ex officio an Assistant for life. The 
 charter of 1607 also bestowed the right to have a perpetual succession, 
 to use a common seal, with power to change and alter the same, to 
 hold lands, tenements, etc., to the value of 200/. a year, and to exercise 
 as heretofore the power of search. 
 
 When we come to the charter of a few years' later date, we find that 
 it is exclusively devoted to a rehearsal of the several properties then 
 held and enjoyed by the Gild with or without licence in various parts 
 of London and Southwark, and we are confronted with a marvellous 
 picture of the aggrandisement during the period intervening between 
 1364 and this transaction. The estates of the Drapers, for which they 
 now obtained the royal acknowledgment, with peaceful occupation for 
 ever, and a full indemnity for all passed acts done, on payment of a fine 
 of 206/., reserving only such rights as were already held of the Crown 
 by others ; and the whole of this splendid property was vested in 
 them in free burgage, and not by knight's service or any other feudal 
 tenure. 
 
 It may be of interest to enumerate the particulars of this confirma- 
 tion. The lands, tenements, and hereditaments consisted of (i) the 
 capital messuage with appurtenances called Drapers' Hall, with the 
 gardens, buildings, curtilages, messuages, and tenements thereto be- 
 C.C. 26
 
 202 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 longing, in the parish of St. Peter-le-Poer, in the ward of Bread Street, 
 with ten messuages adjoining the Hall and a garden ; (2) ten messuages 
 lying together in St. Margaret, Lothbury, and two others ; (3) eight 
 messuages lying together in St. Stephen, Coleman Street ; (4) four 
 messuages, nine stables, and a garden, near London Wall ; (5) a capital 
 messuage and three others, in St. Mary, Bassishaw ; (6) ten messuages 
 or tenements, formerly eight, in Beech Lane, St. Giles Without Cripple- 
 gate, and eight tenements, messuages, or almshouses adjoining ; (7) ten 
 messuages or tenements, with appurtenances, formerly one messuage 
 known as the Bull, in West Smithfield, and five other messuages, 
 formerly one, in the same parish ; (8) two messuages in St. Nicholas 
 Shambles, Christ Church ; (9) two messuages in the parish of St. 
 Michael-le-Ouerne ; (10) two contiguous messuages, a third called the 
 Goat, and another, all in the parish of All Saints, Honey Lane; (11) two 
 messuages in Bow Lane, otherwise Cordwainer Street ; (12) a corner house 
 in Watling Street and Soper Lane [Queen Street] ; (13) three messuages, 
 formerly two, in Walbrook ; (14) sixteen messuages, a capital messuage, 
 called the Herber, and an inn called the Chequer, in St. Mary, Bo- 
 thaw ; ' (15) four messuages at or near Dowgate ; (16) three messuages 
 formerly two, a corner messuage in Candlewick [Cannon] Street and 
 Abchurch Lane, and a capital messuage ^ with eight other messuages 
 adjoining, in St. Swithin's Lane; (17) two messuages or tenements in 
 Sherbourne Lane ; (18) four mes.suages adjoining to Bearbinder Lane ; 
 (19) thirteen messuages in Cornhill and the immediate neighbourhood, 
 including the advowson and patronage of St. Michael, Cornhill ; (20) 
 three messuages, including a corner one, in Birchin Lane; (21) four 
 messuages in the parish of St. Nicholas Aeon, or St. Mary Abchurch ; 
 (22) five messuages lying together in Lawrence Pountney Lane and 
 Thames Street ; (23) a messuage on New Fish Street Hill ; (24) six- 
 and-twenty messuages and a wharf in the parish of St. Olave, South- 
 wark ; (25) two messuages in Botolph Lane, Billingsgate ; (26) a 
 messuage in Petty Wales, in the parish of All Hallows, Barking ; (27) 
 four tenements lying together in Mark Lane ; (28) two messuages near 
 the end of Tower Street ; twelve messuages and a shed near Tower 
 Street, in the parish of St. Margaret Pattens ; (29) seventeen messuages 
 near Little East Cheap and Philpot Lane ; (30) a messuage in Grace- 
 
 ' Probably their most ancient possession, having been left to them by their associate, 
 Henry FitzAlwyn, first Mayor of London, about 1215. 
 
 "^ The former Hall of the Company, before they removed to Throgmorton Street in 
 1543. The site still belongs to the Drapers; it is opposite Salters' Hall, and the 
 houses, including the Surveyor's office, bear the Company's arms.
 
 Till'; DKAl'IiKS. 203 
 
 church Street ; (31) an annuity or yearly rent of 52/. ioj. from mes- 
 suages, etc., in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. 
 
 From tliis instructive schedule, forming part of the charter of 16 19, 
 and virtually its only subject-matter, we derive some conception of the 
 steady accumulation of investments, which had been made in the course 
 of about a centurj' ; and if we turn to the balance-sheets published 
 in 1884 wc perceive the enormous increase in the value of the land and 
 tenements acquired. Many buildings specified in 1619 have been long 
 removed under various improvement Acts or schemes.' A new one was 
 contemplated or proposed in 1684, but was not carried out.' 
 
 The oldest Ordinances for the government of the Brotherhood are 
 referred to 1322 ; but no text of them seems to be extant. Others were 
 made in 1405 and 141 8. Some of the articles in the former are new ; 
 those laying down that a freeman and his wife shall pay a composite 
 quarterwage of "jd., that the allowance to the Warden for rushes, min- 
 strels, pla)-ers, and other petty items shall not exceed 20s., and that when 
 the Mayor attends the dinner, being a member, 40^. shall be chargeable 
 for his mess. There is also the rule for observance in sitting at table, 
 which has not occurred before. All such as had been Masters and 
 Wardens were appointed to sit apart at the high table next the 
 cupboard, unless it were otherwise directed by the Master and Wardens 
 for the time being ; but at a table next the parlour door guests of 
 the Master and Wardens might sit. No brother of the Fraternity, 
 liveryman or freeman, was entitled to seat himself at the general board, 
 till those at the high table had washed and taken their places. 
 
 The following code of 141 8 commences with directions as to internal 
 affairs and religious or charitable observances, and concludes with a 
 series of articles of a more practical complexion relevant to the conduct 
 of trade and the protection of financial interests. The latter portion 
 includes rules for attendance at Westminster, Bartholomew, and South- 
 wark Fairs ; but first of all the most noteworthy points are the obligation 
 on the part of the Wardens to render yearly accounts, which is still 
 continued, and the settlement of the order of precedence at banquets. 
 
 More elaborate bye-laws were drawn up in 1663. 
 
 The earliest accounts of the Company are of the year 1415, when the 
 income was below 38/., and the expenditure below 24/. per annuiii. 
 The members then numbered ninety-six, of whom thirteen were in arrears 
 
 ' Philip and Marj' and Elizabeth conferred inspexiiitiis charters. We do not meet 
 with any notice of renewals or re-grants by Charles 1., James II., or William and 
 Mary. 
 
 ' How the Drapers escaped from the almost inevitable incidence of each fresh 
 monarch and dynasty, it is useless to conjecture.
 
 204 THE GREAT CO.Ml'ANIKS. 
 
 with their quarterwages. Some of the items of outlay are curious and 
 even historically interesting, comprising payments for attendance at 
 fairs, to minstrels with the charges for their hoods and entertainment, 
 for horse-hire for some of the Company to ride in the civic procession 
 to meet the King and Queen Dowager on their entry into London 
 after the Battle of Agincourt, and disbursements for table-cloths and 
 garlands, and for the Lord Mayor's mess, his lordship (Sir Nicholas 
 Wotton) this year being a Draper. 
 
 In 1397 Blackwell, or rather Bakewell Hall, — possibly so named from 
 the Bakehouse in the vicinity, — had been established in Basinghall Street, 
 as a central and general emporium for the sale of woollen cloths of all 
 kinds, the sole condition of admittance being the payment of certain 
 reasonable tolls and dues. There was a vigorous attempt to convert 
 it into a monopoly in favour of the free drapers of London ; but the 
 municipality interfered, and opened its doors to all comers. It was 
 under the first mayoralty of Sir Richard Whittington (1397-8) that the 
 Ordinances of Bakewell Hall were first drawn up by the authorities for 
 the proper control of the foreign drapers or clothiers, who resorted 
 thither for the sale of their cloth. These regulations seem certainly to 
 imply that very serious abuses had hitherto prevailed in regard to this 
 matter, and that the foreigners imposed both on the English and on 
 each other. It was now laid down that the foreign drapers should offer 
 their goods nowhere else, and only from noon on Thursday till noon on 
 Saturday, and nothing save whole cloths and half cloths. In 1405 the 
 Company obtained the right of nominating the Keeper, subject to the 
 approval of the Court of Aldermen ; and during more than two centuries 
 the London Drapers enjoyed profitable facilities here for the disposal 
 of their goods. The old-fashioned machinery gradually broke down 
 under a variety of adverse influences, particularly the gradual with- 
 drawal of the members of the Gild from an active share in business, 
 the indirect operation of the Orphan Act of 1697, and the development 
 of commerce outside the jurisdiction of the City on more modern lines. 
 
 When the City Companies finally agreed to take over, with certain 
 reservations, the Ulster estates, the Drapers paid for one full manor, and 
 admitted only one sub-sharer — the Tallow-Chandlers. 
 
 The Draper presents himself as the salesman — as the Clothier in 
 contrast to the Shearman or Clothworker — in the Little Gest of Robin 
 Hood (1508), in a passage where Much, the miller's son — as he watches 
 Little John measuring out the cloth for Sir Richard at the Lea, without 
 very nice regard to the quantities— asks what devil's-kin draper he is, 
 that he uses no better rule ? This merchant-gild, as it probably may 
 upon the whole be considered, sold the goods in the piece or by the
 
 THE UKAl'EKS. 2O5 
 
 yard, as well as in a made-up form. They purvc)'cd the new clothes 
 for both sexes, as the upholder did the second-hand. 
 
 During the twenty years and upward that Robin Hood passed in the 
 forests of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, it is once or twice casually 
 .shown that the hero kept by him a store of cloth in the piece, for the 
 use of himself and his men. It was probably bought at Nottingham, 
 if it was not by possibility acquired from some trader passing through 
 Barnsdale or Sherwood. Even in such case, Robin would have paid for 
 it, as that was not the class of men whom he plundered. 
 
 The Linen-Draper,' though it has become a familiar term, and has 
 gained by degrees a wide and vague significance, was, at the beginning, 
 an important departure and a distinct line of business. The general 
 employment of linen and the free currency of the fabric here were long 
 restrained by the failure of the foreign manufacturers to obtain the same 
 footing in our country as their brethren who dealt in wool. A pre- 
 dilection long survived among us for the older textile on sanitary and 
 other grounds ; and the Act for Burying in Woollen passed as late 
 as 1678. Even in 1730, it was noted as a remarkable circumstance, 
 that Mrs. Oldfield the actress was interred in Westminster Abbey 
 in a Holland shift trimmed with lace and a Brussels lace head-dress. 
 There is quite a little group of tracts illustrating the resentment of some 
 persons at the legal requirement, which was no doubt often evaded. 
 
 In the time of Stow's Continuator (1633) Watling Street was the 
 principal centre for drapers and retailers of woollen cloths, both broad 
 and narrow. 
 
 The Drapers virtually severed their practical connexion with the 
 industry which had given them their name and their wealth, as con- 
 stitutional changes rendered the ancient principles of commerce unten- 
 able, and the growth of their estate, as well as the modification of 
 their constituency, rendered mercantile pursuits, and even the task of 
 superintendence, foreign to their needs and views. This is the story 
 of all the leading Companies. 
 
 That under immediate consideration has prodigiously expanded its 
 resources of recent years, and is among the most opulent of the 
 Fraternities. It seems to have rallied with unusual rapidity from the 
 effects of the Fire of 1666, and to have remained uninterruptedly sol- 
 vent. It contributes out of its corporate funds very large sums, year by 
 year, to educational objects, while more than a third of its total revenue 
 is under the control of the Charity and Endowed Schools Commissions. 
 
 The original " Fraternity of the Drapers of Cornhill," as it was 
 
 ' Compare the preceding Section.
 
 206 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 termed, realized the idea pervading the institution and nonage of all 
 these organizations, when the Brethren adopted the practice at the 
 outset of assembling in council in the adjacent church of St. Mary 
 Bethlehem, Bishopsgate, with the assent of the Prior and on payment of 
 a fine and a quarterwage. The fixture of the weaving business in the 
 neighbourhood of Cannon Street led to a drift in that direction of the 
 woollen-tailors and cloth-sellers, and eventually the Drapers met at a 
 house in St. Swithin's Lane, purchased or otherwise obtained from 
 John Hend some time anterior to 1405, when we hear of the Ordinances 
 of that j'ear having been settled " at John Hend's house in Swithin's 
 Lane." This personage was Mayor in 1405, and the repairer of St. 
 Swithin's Church. 
 
 In a document of 1445-6, 24 Henry VI., the building is specified as 
 Drapers' Hall, and in 1479, after a grand hunt in Waltham Forest, 
 when the Mayor, Sir Bartholomew James, Draper, and others accom- 
 panied the King, the Lady Mayoress afterward entertained in St. 
 Swithin's Lane the Aldermen's wives and other ladies, Edward IV. 
 having sent a present of venison and wine and particularly desiring 
 that the City ladies should receive every attention. There are several 
 entries of charges for work done and other outlays incurred at this first 
 Hall of the Company. 
 
 During the remainder of the fifteenth century, and far into the reign 
 of Henry VIII., Drapers' Hall in St. Swithin's Lane was periodically 
 the scene of good cheer and generous hospitality ; and the fair sex was 
 invariably remembered at the great feasts. The entertainments in 
 1515, 1516, I52i,and other years were extraordinarily sumptuous and 
 costly, and among the guests were all the civil and ecclesiastical 
 notabilities on friendly terms with the Company, especially the Master 
 of St. Thomas of Aeon, the Prior of St. Bartholomew's, and the Prior of 
 St. Mary Overy. When exalted or highly important visitors were asked, 
 the Master and Wardens, or some of them, personally waited on the 
 individual. There is an entry under 1496 of 4^/. for boat-hire, to bid the 
 Lord Treasurer (William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester) to a feast. 
 In 1 52 1 the Midsummer celebration cost no less than 64/. 8s. 2d. But 
 the grand Election dinner of 1516, when a large number of distinguished 
 persons and many ladies (who appear to have dined in a separate 
 apartment) were present, may be judged, from the description of 
 it, to have been still more magnificent. Leland the antiquary was 
 among the guests ; and there were two players, who had their messes 
 and rewards. The account of the Company's plate shews a total of 
 98 pieces, exclusively of \6\ dozens of plain silver spoons. 
 
 The early association of the Drapers with the neighbourhood of
 
 IIIK liRAI'KRS. 207 
 
 Cornhill and the bequests of members in trust for the performance of 
 obits at the adjacent Austin Friars, may have had some share in 
 drawing their attention to tiic opportunity of securing a more com- 
 modious Hall, when the princely residence of Thomas Cromwell, 
 Earl of Essex, escheated to the Crown by his attainder in 1 540 ; 
 and in 1543, aftei a good deal of negotiation, the Company purchased 
 the whole, with its appurtenances and certain supplemental matters in 
 the shape of fixtures. 
 
 The circumstances under which it was enabled to place itself in a 
 position to treat with the Crown for this splendid property are not 
 generally known. But the fact is, that in 1 540, under the will of 
 Thomas Howell, a Monmouthshire gentleman and an English merchant 
 at Seville, 12,000 ducats of gold,— of which only 8,720 (about 4,300/.) 
 seem ever to have been paid, — were left to the Drapers, in trust to 
 
 II.VLL. THE CKOMU'ELL HUUsE. 
 
 buy 400 ducats annual rent to provide 84/. every year for four orphan 
 maidens of the testator's kindred, if they could be found, ^ or if not, of 
 four such outside his kindred, each of whom was to receive 21/. Out 
 of this money the Drapers bought for 1,200/. the Cromwell mansion 
 and its appurtenances, which, not reckoning the house, was estimated 
 at that time to produce 105/. a year. There was some delay in the 
 completion of the business ; for Howell had made his testamentary 
 dispositions at Seville, and appointed residents there his executors. 
 
 As early as 1559 the scheme adopted by the beneficiaries was 
 judged unfair and improper, and it was considerably modified by the 
 Court of Chancery after an investigation extending over six months. 
 
 The abstract of the case is, that Thomas Howell in 1540 left about 
 4,000/., more or less, in trust to the Drapers for eleemosynary and 
 secular purposes within certain defined limits ; that the Drapers, desiring 
 to invest money in a new direction, made a compact with Henry \TII., 
 under indentures dated March 31, 1543, confirmed by letters patent 
 
 See a curious entry in Burn's Star-Cluvnbcr, 1S70, p. 52.
 
 208 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 of July 4, 1543, whereby the)- became proprietors of the attainted 
 favourite's seat or inn in the City for 1,200/. + los. ^d. a year payable to 
 the Court of Augmentations ; and that, the property yielding nearly 
 enough even at that period to carry out the two conditions involved, 
 namely, the yearl}- payment of 84/. and the execution of necessary 
 repairs from time to time on the premises, the purchasers had their Hall 
 and certain appurtenances into the bargain, although the testator expressly 
 stipulated that the more his money would command in the way of land, 
 the more the trustees were to apply to the same purpose, by enlarging 
 the scope of the charity in a corresponding ratio. Therefore it followed 
 that the dedication of any part of the fund to the Hall was as foreign 
 to the mind of Howell as its submission to ecclesiastical control. 
 
 This was the place in connection with which Stow narrates the 
 familiar story of the injustice done to his father, who occupied a house 
 in the rear ; and also that to which James Howell, writing to his 
 father, September 30, 1629,' refers, where he speaks of apprenticing his 
 brother Ned to the Company, and seeing the portrait of Thomas 
 Howell over the chimney-piece in the great room. That portrait, no 
 doubt, disappeared in the fire. But the clerk, when he ascertained 
 Howell's name, told him that, if his brother could prove his descent 
 from that stem, he would have 300/. given to him on completing his 
 articles, on loan for five years without interest, and that any poor 
 maid, who was of the right blood, might claim 50/. for a portion. 
 Which indicates a favourable revision of the arrangement at that date. 
 The new owners had held their first meeting in the Hall on the 7th 
 August, 1541, and their first Court on the loth, although they were not 
 in legal occupation, and had not paid the stipulated amount. 
 
 Herbert^ furnishes from the Company's archives the following 
 schedule of the contents of Cromwell's late residence : — 
 
 ^^ Imprimis, a fair great gate ; a fair yard, paved ; a fair low gallery on the north side 
 of the yard ; a great winding stair with bay glass windows leading into the hall ; Item, 
 over that stair fair leads ; Item, a fair hall with two bay windows and clerestories, with 
 a buttery, a pantry, a cellar for wine, ale, and beer ; Item, a dark chamber with lattice 
 over the said buttery and pantry to look down into the hall ; Item, a fair great parlour 
 with bay glass windows and a fair chimney ; Item, a buttery with a clerestorj', and 
 within the same buttery a jewel-house ; ^ Item, a fair kitchen, with two great chimnies, 
 dressing boards, a great cistern of lead, with conduit-water coming thereinto and two 
 clerestories ; Item, a pastry-house with three fair ovens, moulding boards and shelves, 
 and a clerestory ; Item, a scullery-house with a chimney and a clerestory ; Item, two 
 
 ' Letters, ed. 1754, p. 212. 
 ^ Twelve Great Livery Companies, 1S36, i. 471. 
 
 " In the Founders' Books, under 1647, there is an entry shewing that the treasure 
 chest or trunk was kept in the inner buttery.
 
 THE UKAl'EKS. 
 
 209 
 
 larder-houses, with clerestories ; Item, a coal-lioiisc ; //<•///, a windin<j stair from the 
 kitchen into the hall, and over the same fair leads ; Item, on the east side of the great 
 gate two low chambers, the one with a chimney and an office to wait in, and three 
 clerestories, the other with a clerestory under the pantry ; Item, in the second storey, 
 a fair chamber for the ladies, ceiled and matted, with a chimney ; Item, in the third 
 storey, three little chambers with bay windows and one chimney ; Item, a garret over 
 ihem ; Item, under the great stair a little dark room ; //,•///, under the great parlour a 
 fair cellar paved, for wine or ale ; Item, the great garden and an entry thereto." 
 
 PLAN or 
 DRAPERS HALL 
 
 GROUND-PLAN OF THE CROMWELL PREMISES. 
 
 The Great Fire laid waste all this proud domain, whose garden and 
 orchard were open in those days to the north as far as Hampstead. 
 Rut the muniments were saved by lying in one of the out-buildings, 
 and the plate by being deposited in the sewer. The Hall was rebuilt in 
 1667, by Jarman, and again partly destroyed in 1774. It subsequently 
 underwent great alterations, and in 1846, under the 9 & 10 Vict. cap. 19, 
 when the same Court, which in 1559 disposed of the question in six 
 months, had occupied about six years in coming to a conclusion, the 
 Hall and grounds were sold in pursuance of a decree in Chancer}-, 
 which, without imputing fraud to the Company, charged it with mis- 
 appropriation of the Howell trust, and directed an entirely new principle 
 
 C.C. 27
 
 2IO THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 of management. The Drapers virtually remained owners as before ; 
 but a large portion of the open space was let on a building lease, and 
 forms the block known as Drapers' Gardens. ^ There was further 
 legislation on the subject in the Act 15 & i6 Vict. cap. 14. The 
 charity is now so framed as to befriend the general cause of female 
 education in Wales. 
 
 The Hall was entirely rebuilt in 1870. The existing garden and 
 the old mulberry orchard are shown on the plans at the Hall. The 
 former is a small oblong plot ; but the orchard was a square piece of 
 considerable area, stretching down to London Wall. 
 
 The Plan-books comprise ground-sections on parchment of the 
 premises and of all the Company's estates at successive dates, and form 
 two large folio volumes. The eai'liest appear to belong to a period not 
 more remote than 1609, two years after the first charter of James I. 
 
 The Company is elsewhere said to have consisted in 141 5 of 96 
 members. In 1557 the "Freemen Householders " are set down at 77. 
 During the eighteenth century the Livery varied from 150 to 180; in 
 1835 it reached 344, the fine being then 35/. ; but in 1879, including 
 the Court, it counted only 302. Between 1820 and 1879, 1,583 were 
 admitted to the freedom, the major part by patrimony, three only by 
 gift. 
 
 Herbert prints from the original records a series of extracts in 
 chronological order, illustrative of current historical events and the 
 share taken by the Drapers in them. It has been stated that this Gild, 
 in the person of Sir John Norman, Mayor in 1453, took the initiative 
 in acquiring a barge for its use ; but the Grocers had possessed one 
 many years before. It may be the case, however, that Norman, who 
 built the first Drapers' barge at his own expense, was the earliest Mayor 
 who went by water to Westminster to be admitted. But the ancient 
 usage of proceeding on horseback was not finally discontinued till 1710. 
 
 This ancient and honourable Society has contributed to our nobility 
 several distinguished families ; the Pulteneys, Earls of Bath, the Capels, 
 Earis of Essex, the Brydges, Dukes of Chandos, the cadets of which 
 have intermarried with the Berkeleys and the Lords Wotton. But 
 perhaps the brightest ornaments on the roll are the numerous bene- 
 factors to municipal objects from the beginning of the fourteenth to 
 the end of the seventeenth century. Among these were John Hend, 
 Mayor in 1405, restorer of Sl Swithin's Church, whose house, in the 
 
 ' A detailed account of the Howell charity would occupy too large a space in such 
 a volume as the present. It belongs rather to the Annals of the Drapers, when they 
 are written.
 
 TIIK DRAl'I'.KS. 2 I I 
 
 cognominal lane, was the first Hall of the Gild, and is still its property ; 
 Sir Simon Eyre (1446), founder. of Leadenhall Market, and donor of 
 8,000 marks for the relief of the poor ; Sir George Monnox (i 5 i 5), wlio 
 expended large sums in good works at Walthamstovv ; Thomas Howell, 
 whose bequest to the Company was immediately instrumental in 
 enabling it to secure the Cromwell premises in 1543 ; Alderman 
 William Lambert, who instituted and endowed Queen Elizabeth's 
 College at East Greenwich ; Sir Robert CUiyton (1680), Lord Mayor, 
 originally a Scrivener, who built a portion of Christ's Hospital ; and 
 others. 
 
 Nor arc we to forget that Anthony Munda)% son of Christopher 
 Munday, Citizen and Draper, was by patrimony of this Company. 
 He was the celebrated Elizabethan dramatist, prose-writer, and pam- 
 phleteer, a composer of many of the City Pageants from 1605 to 1623, 
 Editor of Stow's Survey in 161 8, and the coatljutor of Humphrey 
 Dyson, notary, antiquary and book-collector, in the second posthumous 
 edition in 1633.^ 
 
 The members of the Eraternity, possibly to some extent from the 
 nature of the industry with which they were connected, varied their 
 livery or vesture with remarkable frequency, and prescribed with 
 great strictness the mode in which it was to be bought, valued, and 
 worn. Beginning with 1405, there is a curious sequence of regulations 
 on this subject. 
 
 The colour and fashion were originally changed every year ; and then, 
 as that practice may have been found too troublesome or expensive, 
 every second year. In the colour the whole Fellowship was to be con- 
 sulted ; and the purchase devolved on the Wardens. But eight valuers, 
 chosen by the whole Council, were to appraise the cloth, when selected, 
 to price and to seal it. If the livery was of one colour, the hood was to 
 be such as the Fellowship at large might approve ; but if the dress was 
 party-coloured, there was to be no hood. Should any one prefer to 
 supply his own cloth, the Wardens claimed eight shillings from him for 
 every yard, grained or cut. In 1483, the dress was violet and the hood 
 crimson ; in 1495, both gown and hood were half murry and half 
 violet ; in 149S, the gowns were murry and the hoods blue and crimson ; 
 and in 1503 violet and scarlet were the hues. In 15 16 we hear of sad 
 blue and crimson, in 1520 of violet gowns and violet and scarlet hoods ; 
 and from time to time, until a uniform pattern was fixed, of other 
 
 ' A copious account of iMiinday's publications will be found in \ny Collections and 
 Notes, 1876-92, and the pageants which he wrote for the Companies are described 
 under their several heads.
 
 2 I 2 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 colours, such as puce and scarlet, and brown, blue, and scarlet. The 
 liood, which was almost universal among these Fraternities, was a symbol 
 of their affinity to the Church, just as the differences in the patterns and 
 tint of their dress formed distinguishing marks of the respective Arts 
 or Trades quite as unmistakeably as those denoting the various monastic 
 orders. 
 
 The painted glass windows at Merchant Ta\'lors' Hall remind us 
 that the Skinners and Taylors also had a taste for brilliant and striking 
 costumes of a distinctive character ; and it was an article of faith with all 
 these good folks ; but we do not meet with such minute notices of 
 these particulars where the question had not, as it were, a professional 
 significance and bearing. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 An Epitaph of the Vertuous Life and Death of Dame Helen Branch, of London, 
 widow, late the wife of -Sir John Brancli, Knight, sometime the Right Honourable 
 Loid Maior of London, and daughter to Mr. William Nicolson, sometime of 
 London, Draper. 4to, 1594. 
 
 A true Copie of a Writing Testimonial, by aucthority devised and commanded, to 
 satisrte the woilde,. and to cleerc Zechary Dow, of London, Draper, and his 
 children, from the reproach of a hand wryting, falsely compacted and maliciously 
 published in Blackwell Hall and elsewhere against him [Nov. 28, 1610]. A 
 broadside. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 
 Himatia-Poleos : The Triumphs of Old Drapery, or the Rich Clothing of England. 
 Performed in affection, and at the charges of the right worthy and first honoured 
 Company of Drapers, at the instalinent of Sir Thomas Hayes on Saturday, being 
 the 29 of October, 1614. Devised and written by A[nthony] M[unday], Citizen 
 and Draper of London. 410, 1614. 
 
 Metropolis Coronata, The Triumphs of Ancient Drapery : Or, Rich Clothing of 
 England : in a Second Year's Performance. In Honour of the Advancement of 
 Sir John Jolles, Knight, to the high Office of Lord Mayor of London, and taking 
 his Oath for the same Authority, on Monday, being the 30 Day of October, 1615. 
 Performed in hearty affection to him, and at the bountiful charges of his worthy 
 Brethren the truly Honourable Society of Drapers, the first that received such 
 Dignity in this City. Devised and written by Anthony Munday, Citizen and 
 Draper of London. 4to, 1615. 
 This pageant concludes with the Speech spoken by Earl Robert de la Hude, commonly called 
 
 Robin Hood, and the song of Robin Hood and his Huntsmen. 
 
 The Sun in Aries : A Noble Solemnity Performed through the Cittie, at the sole 
 cost and charges of the Honourable and ancient Fraternity of Drapers, At the 
 confirmation and establishment of their tmost Worthy Brother the Right Honour- 
 able Edward Barkham, in the high Office of his Maiesties Lieutenant, the lord 
 Maior of the famous Citie of London. Taking beginning at his Lordships going,
 
 Tin: liKAI'KKS. 
 
 nnil peifecling it sclfc after liis returne (Vom leceiuiiig the Oath of Maioialty at 
 Westminster, on the moiTow after Simon [and] J\dcs day, being tlic 29. of 
 October, 1621. liy Tho. Miildleton, Oent. 410,1621. 
 
 KupriiUccl in Xicluils's Frux'y.ucs, and in tliu wlilions nf Mkklk'lon. 
 
 The Triumphs of Integrity : A Noble .Solemnity, performed through tlie City, at the 
 sole Cost and Cliaryes of tlie Ilonorabic l''raternity of Drapers, at the Conlirma- 
 tion and Establishment of their most wortliy Brother, the Right Honorable 
 Martin Limiley, in the high Office of his Majesty's Lieutenant, Lord Mayor and 
 Chancellor of the famous City of London. 'I'akmg beginning at his Lordship's 
 going, and perfecting itself after His Return from rcceiv'ing the Oath of Mayoralty 
 at Westminster, on tlie Morrow alter .Simon and Jude's Hay, being the 29 of 
 October, 1623. I>y Tho. Middlclon, Gent. 4to, 1623. 
 
 The Triumphs of the Golden Fleece: rerfnnncd at the Cost and Charges of the 
 Ancient and Honourable Society of the • Diapers : For the instalment of their 
 worthy Brother, Mr. Martin Laniley, in the Mayoralty of London. On Wednes- 
 day, being tlie nine and twentieth day of OiUober, 1623. Written by A. Mimday, 
 Citizen and Draper of London. 4to, 1623. 
 Mimday, as a citizen of London and a member of the Drapers' Company, may have recollGctcd 
 some of the older pageants prepared by that Society for its Midsummer and other Feasts, wlien 
 minstrels and players were usually engaged as part of the proceedings. In 1521, it was resolved by 
 the Court of the Company 10 renew all the old pageants for the house, including the new pageant 
 of the Golden Fleece for the Mayor against Midsummer ; also the giant, Lord Morrispike, and a 
 man's dance, as was used the last year. In that year a sum of 13s. is charged in the account for 
 " tJlco and his company, for two plays for Monday and Tuesday." 
 
 The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity : \ noble Solemnity performed through the 
 Cily, .It the sole Cost and Charges of the Honourable Fraternity of Drapers, at 
 the Inauguration of their most Worthy Brother, the Right Honourable Cuthbert 
 Hassket, Lord Mayor of the Famous City of London. By Thomas Middleton. 
 4to, 1626. 
 
 Porta pietatis ; Or, the Port or Harbour of Piety: expressed in sundry Triumphs, 
 Pageants, and Shous, at the Initiation of the Right Honomable Sir Maurice 
 Abbot, Knight, into the Mayoralty of the famous and far-renowned City London. 
 All the Charge and Expense of the laborious Projects, both by Water and Land, 
 being the sole Undertaking of the Right Worshipful Coinpany of the Drapers. ]3y 
 Thomas Hey wood. 410, 1638. 
 
 Londini Status Pacatus; or, London's Peaceable Estate. Exprest in sundry 
 Triumphs, Pageants, and .Shews, at tlie Initi.ition of the Right Honourable 
 Henry Garway into the ^L^joralty of the f.uiious and far renowned City London. 
 All the Charge and E.xpence of the laborious Projects, both by Water and Land, 
 being the sole Undertakings of the Right Worshipful Society of Drapers. Writ- 
 ten by Thomas Heywood. 4to, 1639. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: Performed on Friday, October 29, 1675, for the f'ntcr- 
 tainment of the Right Honourable and truly noble Pattern of Prudence and 
 Loyalty, Sir Joseph Sheldon, Knt., Lord Mayor of the City of London. Contain- 
 ing a true Description of the several Pageants, with the Speeches spoken on each 
 Pageant. Together with the several Songs sung at this Solemnity. All set forth 
 at the proper Costs and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Drapers. De- 
 signed and Composed by T. Jordan. 410, 1675. 
 
 London's Triumphs: Express'd in sundry Representations, Pageants, and Shows. 
 I'erlormed on Monday, October 30, 1676, at the Inauguration and Instalment of 
 the Right Hon. Sir Thos. Davies, Lord Mayor of the City of London. Contain- 
 ing a true description of the several scenes and habits of the Representors
 
 2 14 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 wiih the Speeches spoken on each Pageant. All the Charge and Expenses of the 
 Industrious Designs being the sole undertaking of the Ancient and right Worship, 
 ful Society of Drapers. Being the Second year without Interruption. Devised 
 and Composed by Tho. Jordan. 4to, 1676. 
 
 London in Lustre: Projecting Many Bright Beams of Triumph: disposed into 
 several Representations of Scenes and Pageants. Performed with great Splen- 
 dor on Wednesday, October 29, 1679. At the Initiation and Instalment of the 
 Right Honourable Sir Robert Clayton, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of Lon- 
 don. Dignified with divers delightful Varieties of Presentors, with Speeches, 
 Songs, and Actions, properly and punctually described. All set forth at the pro- 
 per Cost and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Drapers. Devised and 
 composed by Tho. Jordan, Gent. 4to, 1679. 
 
 London's Royal Triumph for the City's Loyal Magistrate : In an Exact Descrip- 
 tion of several Scenes and Pagearits, Adorned with many Magnificent Represen- 
 tations. Performed on Wednesday, October 29, 1684. At the Instalment and 
 Inauguration of the Right Honourable Sir James Smith, Knight, Lord Mayor of 
 London. Illustrated with divers delightful objects of Gallantry and Jollity, 
 Speeches and Songs, Single and in Parts. Set forth at the proper Costs and 
 Charges of the Worshipful Company of Drapers, liy Thos. Jordan. 4to, 1684. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: Performed on Thursday, Octob. 29. 1691. For the 
 Entertainment of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Stamp, Kt.; Lord Mayor of 
 the City of London. Containing A true description of the several Pageants, with 
 the Speeches spoken on each Pageant. All set forth at the proper Costs and 
 Charges of the Worshipful Company of Drapers. By E. S. 4to, 1691. 
 
 A Speech made to his Excellency the Lord General Monck, and the Councell of 
 State, at Drapers' Hall in London : the 28th of March, 1660. At which time they 
 were entertained by that honourable Company. Spoken by Walter Yeokney. 
 1660. A broadside written by T. Jordan. 
 
 A Dialogue betwixt Tom and Dick : The former being a Countryman, the other a 
 Citizen, Presented to his Excellency and the Council of State, at Drapers'-Hall in 
 London, March 28, 1660. (To the Tune of/'// 7iever love thee more.) [1660.] 
 A broadside. Written by T. Jordan. 
 
 Apparently a spurious impression or text of the former.
 
 TIIF, FISHMONGERS. 
 
 U\K jfisbmoiuicrs. 
 
 THK PRESENT ARMS. 
 
 Po/. — Do you know nie, my lord .' 
 
 Ham. — Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger — 
 
 Pol. — Not I, my lord. 
 
 Ham. — Then I would you were so honest a man. — Haiulct, iii. 2. 
 
 This Company originated in the same manner and imder the same 
 circumstances as the other Fraternities of London, appointed and 
 
 THE OLD ARMS. 
 
 authorized, first by common usage, then by licence of the l<ing, and 
 finally by a succession of charters, to exercise a monopoly as regarded 
 the conduct of the trade in salt fish within the City and its Liberties.
 
 2l6 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Rut in one respect the Gild presented an important variation from 
 nearly all the more ancient bodies of the kind which we are describing, 
 inasmuch as, in the extant grants at all events, there is no reference to 
 any religious or charitable motives ostensibly influencing the formation 
 of such an union of members of the trade ; and the sole object put 
 forward is the protection of the interests of those concerned from a 
 commercial point of view. 
 
 The Fishmongers, in common with others, were amerced in the time 
 of Henry II. (1154), for carrying on trade as a community without the 
 royal licence. This is apparently the earliest specific mention of them ; 
 but it involves a piece of circumstantial testimony, which justifies the 
 persuasion that they were then of more or less lengthened customary 
 prescription, which is in the highest degree likely ; and in fact, from the 
 immense comparative demand for fish of all kinds, but especially for 
 those which were chiefly preferred for use during Lent and on fast- 
 days,' we ma\' securely refer the genesis of a system of supervision and 
 restraint to a time immemorial, as the Patent of 1364 actually puts it. 
 The Company lost nearly the whole of its muniments in the Great Fire; 
 but it is generally understood that it received a confirmation of its 
 rights, as recognised in 1 1 54 on payment of a fine, from Edward I. 
 in 1272, from Edward II. in 1307, and from Edward III., concurrently 
 with so many others, in 1327. 
 
 Long prior to the grants of 1364-5, legislation had intervened to 
 prevent what were then considered abuses and irregularities in this 
 industry. The i Edward I. prohibited the partnership of denizens with 
 foreigners bringing fish in their ships to London, and the storage of it 
 in cellars, or beyond the second day, save salt-fish. The Act further 
 reserved a right of pre-emption to the King's purveyors. The clauses 
 in respect to storage aimed at the forestallers and regraters, and had 
 perhaps a more direct bearing on the dealers in stock-fish. The Assise 
 of a Fisher, published in consequence of this law, limited the profit of 
 dealers to a penny in the shilling, forbad forestalling and regrating 
 
 ' The origin of fasting, which formerly divided the week into two dietetic sections, 
 as Wednesday was also observed as a day of abstinence from flesh, must be sought in 
 those regions where, on sanitary grounds, too large and continuous a consumption of 
 animal food was apt to be prejudicial ; but, as in other matters, neither the Mosaic nor 
 any other code established for communities e.\isting under totally different conditions 
 from ourselves ought to have the least binding force on Western Europe. As for the 
 reasons which were assigned for the practice by the old theologians, they are neither 
 more nor less foolish than such pleas are usually found to be ; but the main argument 
 that the use of flesh without intermission was productive of religious laxity, may just 
 as well be employed to support the physical source of the custom, before it was 
 clothed with a ritualistic attribute, to suit the diplomatic objects of the Church.
 
 THE FISHMONGERS. 21/ 
 
 in enhancement of prices, and obliged vendors to expose their goods 
 for sale openly in the markets. , No fishmonger might water his fish 
 more than twice. 
 
 The same reign witnessed an evident proof that the Fraternity had 
 made considerable progress in wealth and importance, and discerned 
 the wisdom of propitiating the Crown ; for in 1298, when Edward I. 
 returned from Scotland, the Fishmongers were foremost among the 
 civic bodies which celebrated the auspicious occasion on St. Magnus'.s 
 Day. Stow tells us that they passed in solemn procession through 
 the City, having, amongst other pageants and shows, four sturgeons 
 gilt carried on four horses, followed by four salmon of silver on four 
 horses, and after these eight-and-forty knights on horses resembling 
 salt-water luces, and then another knight habited like St. Magnus, and 
 these were succeeded bj' more horsemen. It was, no doubt, an im- 
 posing spectacle, as it was the earliest of which there is a definite 
 account. 
 
 The fish trade seems to have been not less open to fraud and to dis- 
 regard of municipal regulations than the rest of those with which we 
 deal ; but the caterers for the daily necessaries of life and perishable 
 commodities were unusually prone to dishonest practices. There was 
 a periodical necessity for revising, enlarging, and renewing the ordi- 
 nances governing the craft, within as well as without. The Liber Horn, 
 written in or about 1290, by Andrew Horn, a member of the Gild, 
 who died in 1328, furnishes some additional precepts which then had 
 force ; they declared, among other points, that no fishmonger should 
 buy fish beyond the bounds, namely, the Chapel on London Bridge, 
 Baynard's Castle, and Jordan's Quay, lest they, or some of them, should 
 forestall by meeting the boats, before they reached the landing-stages, 
 to which all the fish was to be brought, before it could be sold. The 
 limits within which the Fishmongers of London were at liberty to sell, 
 varied under different reigns and circumstances. The grant of all 
 import-dues at that point by Henry HI. led to a concentration of 
 the industry near Queenhithe in order to increase the Queen- gold 
 from taillage ; but the spot was afterward allotted to other uses. But 
 during the reign of Edward IV., while London Bridge was under repair, 
 the unlading of cargoes was permitted at Queenhithe. Sprats, eels, 
 whiting, plaice, cod, and mackerel are particularized in this temporar)' 
 ordinance. 
 
 The trade, however, from the most ancient times, has localized itself 
 in the neighbourhood of Billingsgate ; the old fish-market extended 
 cast and west from Bread Street to Old Change, and north and south 
 from the northern extremities of those streets to Old Fish Street ; 
 
 c.c. 28
 
 2l8 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 and before the two Companies or Associations of Fishmongers were 
 united by Henry VIII., the vendors of salt and fresh fish had their 
 distinct quarters. There was Salt Fish Wharf and Fresh Fish 
 Wharf. 
 
 Knightrider Street, in the immediate vicinity, was celebrated for fish 
 dinners ; and Friday Street, just by, is reputed to have owed its name 
 to its site having been occupied by the Friday market. 
 
 Salt fish was to be sold only after prime. But it appears that in 
 1320 certain dealers on Fish Wharf successfully maintained their title 
 to dispose of herrings and other fish to any that would buy, even to 
 hawkers. 
 
 In the early catalogues of fish, with which wc meet in tables of fare 
 at great feasts, in the household books, and in the statutes, occur nearly 
 all the species which are now used as food, and several, including the 
 whale and the sturgeon,' which have fallen into disuse. Salmon, herring, 
 eels, haddock, mackerel, soles, turbot, oysters, were common and gener- 
 ally cheap. The tariff fixed in the time of Edward I. limited the best 
 soles to T,d. a dozen, turbot to 6J., the best mackerel, in Lent, to id. 
 each, the best pickled herrings to twenty the penny, fresh oysters to 
 2d. per gallon, a quarter of a long hundred (30), of the best eels to 2d. 
 At this time we hear of lampreys being fetched from Gloucester for 
 the royal table ; at a far earlier period an inordinate partiality for 
 them had proved fatal to one of our kings. 
 
 In 131 1, Hugh Matfrey, a fishmonger of London, having bought 
 lampreys of Nantes of Thomas Lespicer of Portsmouth, and stored 
 them, in lieu of exposing them for sale publicly under the wall of St. 
 Margaret's, Bridge Street, according to the ordinances of the City, was 
 prosecuted, but escaped without punishment on entering into a bond 
 not to offend again in the like manner. 
 
 Salted haddock, mackerel, and sturgeon are mentioned in the days 
 of Edward I. as paying pontage, when carried over London Bridge. 
 Herrings were reckoned by the last of 10,000, and there was a brisk 
 trade in them, both fresh and cured, between Hull, Yarmouth, and 
 London; and there is special provision for them in the 31 Edward III., 
 called the StatKte of Herrings. Besides cloth, the Merchant Vintners 
 trading with Gascony, in order to save the currency, were allowed to 
 purchase herrings for export on favoured terms. Eels of various sorts 
 
 ' By 17 Edward II. whales and great sturgeons, taken in the sea, save in privileged 
 places, were to be reserved to the King's use. Salted whale seems to have been 
 occasionally served at the King's table. In 1515, porpoises (which are not, however, 
 strictly fish) were sold at Newcastle-on-Tyne for food.
 
 TIIK I'lSIIMONGEHS. 219 
 
 were larcjcly used during Lent in the monasteries; and preserves for 
 them, called Angiiillouia, were placed on our rivers. Herbert acquaints 
 us that carp was also extensively propagated in ponds, and that in the 
 King's Pike Ponds on the Bankside, Southwark, were long kept the 
 pike for the royal table. 
 
 Under 1247, mackerel are cited as allowed for diet to certain religious 
 bodies on the third day of Rogation Week. 
 
 The statute 13 Edward II. prescribed strict regulations for preserving 
 salmon in those rivers which it then frequented. 
 
 The Norfolk coast is shown to have been at all times a rich field 
 for the fisherman ; and the ports of Blakeney, Clay, Cromer, and of 
 course Yarmouth, possessed many doggers, lodeships, and other craft 
 for carrying on the commerce. There seems to have been a general 
 provision, that the fish taken and offered for sale should be " good and 
 covenable " ; and a later statute (23 Edward IV.) expressly refers to 
 the package of small fish. 
 
 Unlawful nets were frequently seized and destroyed. In 13 13, one 
 belonging to the Abbot of Lesnes, near Erith, suffered this fate. These 
 nets were called kidcls, and were too close in the meshes. In 1344, 
 at length, to prevent or check this nuisance, Inspectors of Nets were 
 appointed. 
 
 Dorsers of defective measurement were also liable to seizure, and in 
 131 5 certain conger, plaice, and gurnard, trussed in these false dorsers, 
 were brought into Guildhall, and their owners summoned. Curiously 
 enough, one was Andrew Horn, above-mentioned, afterward Chamberlain 
 of London, and then a fishmonger in Bridge Street or New Fish Street ; 
 but he was one of two acquitted. 
 
 The Company adroitly ingratiated itself with the Crown, when 
 Edward III. stood in need of money for the support of his wars in 
 France, and in 1363 contributed 40/. to that object, being, with one 
 exception, the highest amount given, the Mercers heading the list with 
 41/. In the verj- year following, the Fishmongers obtained their new 
 charter from the King. 
 
 This Patent set forth that it was a custom in London beyond the 
 memory of man, that no fish should be sold except by fishmongers, and 
 that these fishmongers had had leave given to them by the King's 
 progenitors, to elect yearly certain members of the mistery to rule 
 the same for the general commodity of the people. Two further in- 
 struments, both dated in the succeeding year, dealt with points, over- 
 looked perhaps in the previous one, fixing the number of Wardens of 
 the mistery at four, and specifying a Lay Hall-moot, where we under- 
 stand that these officers were chosen half-yearly, approved, and sworn
 
 2 20 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 in the presence of the Mayor or Sheriff, or their deputies, and where 
 likewise questions affecting the trade were to be discussed and arranged. 
 The latter was a very unusual prerogative, and we shall see that it was 
 productive of some inconvenience. 
 
 In 1377, the Fishmongers returned six members to the Common 
 Council, and occupied the fourth place among the Gilds of London, 
 a rank which was confirmed in 151S) 3-"^ which they have since uninter- 
 ruptedly enjoyed. 
 
 But it happened only three years later, 3 Richard II., that an Act 
 of Parliament passed, opening the trade in fish to all persons in amity 
 with the King, and that the Mayor, John de Northampton, exacted 
 from the Fishmongers an admission that their trade was no craft, and 
 consequently not entitled to rank as a mistery. In 1380, Parliament 
 went still further, and, on the plea of fraudulent practices by certain 
 of the Company, enacted that in future no Fishmonger should be 
 admitted to the mayoralty. This severe and injurious disability was 
 soon rescinded, and the Company was invited to state its case in the 
 House of Peers. The particulars are chiefly curious as illustrating the 
 primitive manners of the time, the delegates of the Company present- 
 ing themselves in Parliament, and holding a free altercation with their 
 opponents. The difficulty was overcome by a fresh Patent, 7 Richard 
 II., which restored their commercial privileges, but compelled them 
 hereafter to refer all cases of dispute to the Mayor's Court 
 
 It appears that the charges against the Company related to the fore- 
 stalling and retailing of fish ; and it was alleged by the defendants that 
 their accusers acted through malice, some of them having been formerly 
 imprisoned at the instance of members of the Gild. 
 
 In 1418, the Corporation called on the Masters of the Fishmongers 
 ■on Fish Street Hill and in Old Fish Street to see well that the lowest 
 price was set on fish for the easement of the people, and that the whiting 
 taken in the Thames should be sold in gross at the quay where the 
 vessel bringing it in was moored, and then carried to Fish Street for 
 sale by retail. 
 
 At the same time, it was ordered by the Mayor that o\'sters and 
 mussels should be sold at 4^/. per bushel, 2d. the half-bushel, one penny 
 the peck, a halfpenny the half-peck, according to the assize. 
 
 The Fishmongers seem to have exercised or claimed the sole right 
 of exporting salt to foreign parts. In 1632, the PZastland merchants 
 ■of Newcastle-on-Tyne are found petitioning against this monopoly with- 
 out success, the civic authorities siding with the Fishmongers for 
 reasons shown in their certificate forwarded to the Government. 
 
 The extent of the business of the Company at the end of the four-
 
 THE FISHMONGERS. 22 1 
 
 tecnth century, when the above-mentioned troubles arose, is proved by 
 the existence of no fewer than six of the Hall-moots, where matters 
 were settled among members of the craft for a considerable period ; 
 and when the Fishmongers were ultimately required to resort to the 
 Mayor's Court in the usual way, these buildings naturally fell into dis- 
 use. It is to this that the following extract has reference : — 
 
 "On the east side of Old Fish Street Hill," says Stow's Continuator 
 (1633), "is one great house, now lettcn out for rent, which house some- 
 time was one of the Hals pertaining to the Company of Fishmongers 
 at such time as they had sixe Hal-motes, or meeting-places ; namely, 
 twaine in Bridge Street, or New Fish Street, twainc in Old Fish Street, 
 whereof this was one, and twaine in Stockfishermonger Row, or Thames 
 Street, as appeareth by a record, the 22 of Richard the second." 
 
 It was in that same year, that the Company are shown by an iii- 
 speximiis of 6 Henry VI. (July 10, 1427), to have received a further 
 charter from Richard II. (May 9, 1399), in which six Wardens (the 
 existing number), in place of four, are allowed, and the right of holding 
 the old lay Hall-moot is restored. " Our well-beloved liegemen of 
 the mi.stcry of Fishmongers " procured, however, a regular Patent from 
 the former prince (11 Henry VI., Feb. 8, 1433), in which they are 
 recognised as one body perpetual, with a common seal for the 
 errands and business of the said mistery and commonalty ; a licence 
 in mortmain, and the other usual powers ; and this was confirmed 
 by the Patent of 23 Henry VII., July 3, 1508. 
 
 As we have elsewhere stated, the Stock-fish Mongers were incorpo- 
 rated by the same sovereign, Sept. 20, in the year just cited ; and in 1 536, 
 27 Henry VIII., the two Companies were united by a royal charter 
 and by Articles of Agreement, which contain some points of interest. 
 Among them were stipulations : i. That the Stock-fish Mongers shall 
 convey to the other Gild for the joint benefit of the two. 2. That 
 such arms as Garter and Clarencieux, kings of arms, have appointed 
 and granted to the crafts, shall be for ever continually kept, and never 
 be extinguished, altered, or defaced, otherwise than in manner and 
 form as is in their letters patents declared. 3. That all assemblies 
 of. Courts, as well for the good politic guiding and order of the same 
 craft, and for the amendment and reformation of misdemeaned persons 
 of the same craft, to the good orders and rules of the same, as for any 
 other cause concerning the mistery, shall be holden, kept, and used 
 in the place commonly called the Fishmongers' Hall in the parish of 
 St. Michael, Crooked Lane, London, and not in any other place ; and, 
 4. That the chapel of St. Peter and St. Sebastian, standing in the parish 
 church of St. Michael in Crooked Lane, shall be made, built, and
 
 2 22 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 finished in all things by the said Fellowship of Fishmongers and Stock- 
 fish Mongers, at their cost and charge, in length to the church-porch 
 of the churchyard there, and shall be considered the joint endowment 
 and property of the united Company. 
 
 The charter of 1536 was confirmed by Edward VI., July 2, 1548, and 
 in his fourth year he gave liberty to the Companies, the Fishmongers' 
 inclusive, to redeem for a sum of money (18,744/. H-''- 2(/.) the pos- 
 sessions which had been ceded by them at the dissolution of religious 
 establishments. 
 
 This act of repurchase formed a very valuable and a permanent 
 piece of evidence in behalf of the City Gilds, as it virtually purged all 
 antecedent irregularities, if any, in the acquisition of their corporate 
 estates. 
 
 We may embrace the present opportunity of remarking that the 
 Crown displayed some tact in divesting itself of the distasteful and 
 troublesome duty of negotiating with all the individuals and bodies 
 involved in the suppression of religious foundations of various classes, 
 and in farming the business for a stated amount to a syndicate, which 
 undertook all the labour and bore some of the odium. 
 
 The committee of assignees held their meetings at Skinners' Hall, 
 where they made the best bargains in their power with the owners of 
 the property, who were practically the victims of a rather shallow trick 
 for raising money under colour of Protestant zeal and purism. 
 
 The levy of money by indirect means yet remains one of the amiable 
 characteristics and stratagems of the Church, where it is a question of 
 raising tribute from the laity under the name of tithe, or tithe rent- 
 charge. In these and a few other matters, we have not shaken off our 
 mediaeval predilections. 
 
 The Fishmongers hold further charters of i Mary (May 18, 1553J, 
 I Elizabeth (October 6, 1559), and 11 Elizabeth (November 20, 1569), 
 reciting and confirming the prior grants. But in 2 James I., August 
 30, 1604, the Company was re-incorporated with a governing body of 
 six Wardens and twenty-eight Assistants, on which the power was 
 conferred of making ordinances for the guidance and control of the 
 members of the mistery, and the management of its affairs in London, 
 Southwark, and the suburbs and liberties thereof, with the right of 
 search over all fresh and salted fish, and seizing such as was unwhole- 
 some or illegally taken.' 
 
 ' In a test-case, which was heard at the M.msioii House, October i, iSgr, and in 
 which the Company prosecuted, Mr. Alderman Phillips ruled that oysters taken from 
 the waters of a foreign State and placed for a time in English waters could not be 
 sold during the close season in England. He held that the saving words, " taken
 
 Tin: ITSIIMONGERS. 2 2 T, 
 
 This and a second grant of 4 James I. also dealt with the question of 
 indemnification for all acts previously committed or done, and acknow- 
 ledged the title of the Company to all its lands, tenements, etc., as 
 secured by the instrument of 4 Edward VI. 
 
 The Qt/o ]Varr(Vt/i> issued against the City Gilds by the Govern- 
 ment of Charles II. in 1684 of course touched this Company, which, 
 however, succeeded in obtaining a second re-incorporation (January 14, 
 1685). All the proceedings under the writ of 1684 were annulled by 
 the Act 2 William and Mary, c. 8 (1690), and the Company suffered no 
 further molestation. Yet in 1815, 55 George III., it thought fit to apj)ly 
 for an inspexhnus, which was conceded under writ of privy seal. 
 
 The Fishmongers shared with a limited number of the Gilds the 
 dubious honour of being requested by James I. to assist him in settling 
 the Ulster Plantation. The matter occupied some years before it was 
 6nal!y arranged, in 1617-18, when the present Company took over 
 from the Irish Societ}', to which the whole territory had been assigned 
 by the Crown, a Fishmongers' manor, which was productive of the same 
 kind of unfavourable experience as those forced on the other Companies, 
 generally held by them at great loss and small profit, and eventually, 
 whenever the fortunate opportunity offered, sold. The Fishmongers 
 admitted five other Gilds as sub-sharers. 
 
 The returns made in 1S82 to the Royal Commission of 1880 are in 
 this case remarkably copious and exhaustive, and present a view of the 
 Fishmongers' extensive charities and educational endowments. It is 
 understood that the current figures (1891) are approximately similar. 
 
 Herbert supplies a good deal of information respecting the successive 
 Ordinances framed by the government of the Company for observance, 
 agreeably to the powers conferred in the charters. But it may be neces- 
 sary to repeat that the Fishmongers have a Prime Warden and five 
 others, who, with the Assistants, constitute the Court. As regards 
 the statement of the writer quoted, that they have never had a Master, 
 the fact is, that the officer so called is no more in any instance than 
 the Master or Prime Warden. 
 
 A still more interesting point is quoted by Herbert, where he, in rela- 
 tion to the loss of the Fishmongers' earlier records in the Fire of 1666, 
 derives from the Goldsmiths' archives the singular piece of information 
 that that Fraternity and the Fishmongers, in token of the amity between 
 them, yearly exchanged with each other at one time eight newly-made 
 suits and hoods, and wore the same respectively. 
 
 within the waters of some foreign State," applied only to oysters intended for imme- 
 diate consumption, and that a "term of residence" made the oyster British. He 
 therefore imposed a nominal penalty.
 
 224 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 It appears that they formerly had their livery renewed, in part or 
 wholly, every year, on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, and kept it two 
 years, but in no case were at liberty to part with the old suits, either to 
 their apprentices or to strangers. 
 
 Old Fishmongers' Hall, before the Fire, occupied an oblong plot of 
 ground in Thames Street, which had been the site of four or five tene- 
 ments, and on which was subsequently erected the mansion of Sir John 
 Cornwall, Lord Fanhope. This building was given by him to the 
 Company in the reign of Henry VI., when, long prior to the ultimate 
 
 PLAN OF OLD FISHMONGERS H.^iLL AND ITS ENVIKONS. 
 
 union with the other Fraternity in 1536, the two for general purposes 
 already acted in harmony. In 19 Henry VII., five years before the rati- 
 fication by the Crown, the two bodies were practically united, and used 
 one Hall. 
 
 The area of Lord Fanhope's premises was 120 feet frontage toThames 
 Street by 200 feet of depth toward the river. At the period when John, 
 afterward Sir John, Lovekyn removed thither, in the reign of Edward 
 III., the place was little more than an open strand on the river bank. 
 Lovekyn, who was a Stock-fish Monger, held this land in free burgage ; 
 and throusfh failure of issue it descended after his death to one of his
 
 THK l-ISHMONGKRS. 
 
 executors, the famous Sir William W'alworlh, ami was subsccjucntly 
 purchased by Lord Faiihopc, from whom it was conveyed through 
 trustees in 1435 to the Fishmongers, who about this time acquired 
 some of the adjoining properties. But it was not till several }-cars later 
 that Fanhope's house was adopted as a Hall. The premises were 
 subject to an annual rent of 40 marks, equal to about 45J., presumably 
 for the support of a chantry, since, on the suppression of these estab- 
 lishments, the Company commuted the payment, and made the place 
 freehold. 
 
 The Compan)', then, in 1502, eventually agreed to settle at Fish- 
 mongers' Hall, Fanhope's former dwelling, and the other Halls were let 
 out to several tenants, though subsequently taken back from time to 
 time, and added to the original structure. All the arrangements were 
 not finished, it is supposed, till 15 13, when the pile assumed the as- 
 pect of a large square block of masonr)', with turrets at the angles and 
 
 fishmongers' hall ."iBOUT 1650. 
 
 a central gateway facing the river. It must have gradually absorbed 
 several of the minor tenements which once abutted on it at different 
 points. 
 
 But alterations seem to have been introduced when Hollar engraved 
 his view of the Hall about 1647, unless it is that the earlier plans by 
 Agas and Hogenberg are inaccurate in detail. For here we perceive a 
 partition of the court-yard by a refectory running across the quadrangle. 
 The river front, which probably lay back some forty feet from the 
 bank, is plain, and consists of two projecting wings, and a centre with a 
 balconied first-floor, two rows of windows and a lofty octagonal domed 
 tower rising above the roof There is a terrace between the building 
 and the river, reached by an arched doorway. 
 
 Jarman's Hall stood more forward than the present one, and was on 
 the site of the northern foot of the bridge. In the interior, the various 
 
 C.C. 29
 
 TUK HSIIMONGKKS. 22/ 
 
 portions of the structure enclosed a square paved court ; the dining 
 apartment, which, as we are to see, was ordered to exceed that in the 
 orif^ina! room in dimensions, lay on the south side ; the court and 
 withdrawing rooms on the east, antl the business premises on the west. 
 The dining-hall had a Grecian screen, a gallery, and a statue of Sir 
 V\'illiam Walworth by Pierce. The walls of the reception chambers 
 were decorated with emblematical representations of fish, and other 
 paintings. 
 
 The present Hall is a modern erection, and, like that of the Gold- 
 smiths, is chielly remarkable for its splendour. It has of course no 
 historical interest. 
 
 A long roll of excellent and philanthropic personages, including many 
 Mayors, especially Sir John Lovekyn and Sir William Walworth, can 
 be shown by this Gild, which played its part in the series of pageants 
 by land and water which usually signalized the installation of each chief 
 magistrate. These commenced centuries before any separate description 
 of them was or could be published. The earliest with which the Fish- 
 mongers were directly identified, was the ceremony at the admission of 
 John Allot in 1590 as Mayor of London and of the Staple ; and in the 
 printed account bj' Thomas Nelson there is a curious reference to the 
 scarcity and dearness of fish at that point of time. The Company did 
 not return its second Mayor till 16 16. 
 
 The Gilds, as we know, participated in other festivities and inaugural 
 occasions besides the Lord Mayor's initiation ; and Cheapside witnessed 
 a constant succession of spectacles, which, from the habit of going on 
 horseback, gained the name of Ridings. Chaucer depicts the appren- 
 tices neglecting their employers' affairs, and running to the doors to gape 
 at these cavalcades. 
 
 There is nothing particular to record under this head till the Great 
 Fire came, and in a neighbourhood which abounded in combustibles, 
 oil, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, cordage, wines, spirits, reduced everything 
 speedily to a wreck. The Hall was not very far westward from Pudding 
 Lane, and the flames crossed the bridge-end by St. Magnus, and 
 enveloped the whole precincts. The Hall itself, with its high roof and 
 turret, was left a shell. Only the stone part of the Oyster or Water 
 Gate escaped. 
 
 The governing body met, under these circumstances, at Bethlehem 
 Hospital, and Jarman was employed to construct a new Hall. On the 
 30th July, 1667, 200,000 bricks, 4,000 deals, 40 standards, and 100 putlogs 
 were ordered as a commencement. It was decided to enlarge the pro- 
 portions of the refectory to thirty-three feet wide by sixty-six feet deep. 
 On April 8, 1668-9 the ground-plan was deposited at Guildhall. On
 
 2 28 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 November 1 1 it was resolved by the Court that the Clerk's office should 
 be finished first of all. Between December, 1669, and June, i67i,the 
 work \vas completed ; but in the former month the Court began to sit in 
 the new quarters, perhaps in the Clerk's room. 
 
 The government of the Company has been already stated to consist 
 of a Prime or Master Warden, five other Wardens, and twenty-eight 
 Assistants, who form the Court. But there is a practice of referring 
 matters of special business or inquiry to a series of standing com- 
 mittees, viz. : — 
 
 The Committee of Wardens. 
 
 „ for General Purposes. 
 
 „ „ Accounts. 
 
 „ „ Audits. 
 
 „ „ Irish Estate. 
 
 „ Wine. 
 
 In addition to which there is a sub-Irish Committee. The Committee 
 •of Wardens is composed of the whole body of six. That for General 
 Purposes includes the Wardens and the six senior Assistants. The 
 Account Committee has seven members, one of which is the Prime 
 Warden. The Audit Committee consists of the Prime and Renter 
 Wardens, the past Prime and Renter Wardens, and one Assistant, who 
 has served or fined as Prime Warden. Twelve members, of whom five 
 must have visited the estate, constitute the Irish Committee, namely, 
 the Prime and second Wardens, and ten others. Wardens or Assistants ; 
 and the sub-committee is a selection of those persons from the larger 
 body. The Wine Committee is formed of the Renter Warden and 
 four others. Wardens or Assistants. 
 
 The bye-laws of the Company at present in force appear to be those 
 of 1843 and i860, founded on those of 1668. The most ancient code is 
 that of 35 Edward III. 
 
 Of the pageant for 1616 the Company possesses the original drawings 
 made for the order of procession and the costumes, and reproduced them 
 in a folio volume several years ago with a descriptive text. In one of 
 the apartments at the Hall are two excellent paintings in oil by Scott, 
 of London and Westminster Bridges, as they appeared about the middle 
 of the last century. The statue of Walworth in wood, which stood in 
 Jarman's Hall, is still preserved on the staircase : there is also an ancient 
 pall, reputed to have once covered his bier, and the identical dagger 
 with which he stabbed Wat the Tyler. The last-named relic has 
 ieen in the possession of the P^ishmongers ever since that time, and
 
 Tin; I ISIIMONGKRS. 
 
 229 
 
 is probably another small salvage from the flames in 1666. It is of 
 plain ami coarse fabric, without a sheath, and with only a portion of the 
 ancient wire ctn'cring to the wootlcn hamllc remaining.' 
 
 A very curious account of the Wat Tyler 
 episode, differing from that usually received, 
 may be found in A Chronicle of London, 1089- 
 1483, 4"", 1827, p. ~l, and the text of Sir 
 William Walworth's will, dated 20 Decemlver, 
 1385, is given in cxlcnso in Excerpta Ilistorica, 
 1833, p. 134 et seqq. The instrument breathes 
 ii spirit of piety and benevolence, and no one 
 is forgotten. The spiritual welfare of Sir 
 John Lovckyn, once master of the testator 
 is particularly safeguarded by provision of 
 masses and pra_\-ers for his soul. There are 
 large bequests of money, plate, and MS. 
 books. His widow, his chaplain, the Bishop 
 of Winchester, and another, are appointed his 
 ■executors. He left the bishop 40/. for his 
 trouble. 
 
 .Among the MSS. bequeathed occur Vitce 
 Pntniin, Rationale Divinoi'iim Officioniui, 
 Legenda Sanctvrnvi, a Psalter, the Epistles 
 of St. Paul, with a gloss, and others of a 
 similar character. 
 
 With the Bishop of Winchester Walworth 
 had been brought into relationship as the farmer of the Stews in South- 
 wark, which formed part of his lordship's estate. 
 
 This Company, in its present state of disconnection from the branch 
 •of commerce which it at first and long pursued and controlled, and in 
 its substituted function and rank as a benevolent and charitable com- 
 munity, tells the common story of these unions, composed of men who 
 grew wealthy according to the prevailing standard, and by the fortunate 
 purchase of town and other sites, of which they could not have foreseen 
 the prodigious advance in pecuniary value, laid the basis of noble estates, 
 and made possible a complete revolution on the part of their beneficiaries 
 in character and policy. At the same time, a certain representative pro- 
 portion of the Fishmongers yet belongs to the trade ; while, as we have 
 
 U'ALWUKTH S D.\GGEK. 
 
 ' The inscription round the glass case in which the dagger lies runs as follows : 
 "With this dagger Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, Citizen and Fish- 
 monger, slew the rebel, Watt Tyler, in Smithfield. Anno Domini 1381.
 
 230 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 remarked, the governing body occasionally intervenes for the public 
 protection in regard to irregularities committed. 
 
 Herbert has collected peculiarly ample notices of the eleemosynary 
 trusts and other charitable foundations of the Company, and these are, 
 again, very fully set forth, with all the statistics at large, in the Returns 
 made to the Royal Commission of 1880. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A Dietarie. Writtes published after the ordinance of Earles and Baions. Anno 
 Domini 1315. A broadside. [Mary.] 
 *»* E.xtracts from Laws and Ordin.inces, from 1315 to 1555, respecting the flesh and fish ilit-t 
 allowable to certain classes. 
 
 A Proclamation set forth by the Kynges Maiestie with the aduise of his hi},'hnes moste 
 
 honorable counsaill, the ix. day of Marche, in the fifth yere of his highnes most 
 
 prosperous reigne, forbidding the eating of flesh in the time of Lent. A liro.idside. 
 
 [>552.] 
 A Briefe Note of the benefits that growe to this Realme by tlie Obseru.iiion of Fisli- 
 
 daies. By Edward Jennings. 4to, 1593. 
 A True Narrative of the Royall Fishings of Great Britaine and Irehmd. Instituted 
 
 Anno 1632. By Simon Smith, Agent. 410, 1641. 
 The Herring-Bvsse Trade : Expressed in Svndry Particulars, both for the Building 
 
 of Busses, . . . By the same. 410, 1641. 
 London's Blame, if not its Shame : Manifested by the great neglect of tlie Fishery. 
 
 4to, 1651. 
 
 A Proclamation for restraint of Killing, Dressing, and Eating of Flesh in Lent, or 
 on Fish-days, appointed by the Law to be observed. l65o. A broadside. 
 
 Icthyothera, or, The Royal Trade of Fishing. Discovering the inestimable profit 
 the Hollanders have made thereof, with the vast Emolument and Advantages 
 that will redound to his Sacred Majesty, and his three Kingdomes by the im- 
 provement of it. 4tOi 1662. 
 
 The Trade and Fishing of Great Britain Displayed. By Captain lohn Smith. 410, 
 1662. 
 
 The Royal Fishing Revived. By the saine. 410, 1670. 
 
 A Plea for the bringing in of Irish cattel . . . Together with an Humble Address 
 to the Honourable Members of Parliament of the Counties of Cornvval and 
 Devon, about the advancement of Tin, Fishery, and divers Manufactures. By 
 John Collins, Accomptant to the Royal F'ishery Company. 410, 1680. 
 
 Salt and Fishery. A Discourse thereof, Insisting on the following Heads : i. The 
 several ways of making Salt in England and Foreign Parts. . . . By John 
 Collins. 4to, 1862. 
 
 The only Design of the Company of Fishermen. By the Bill depending in the 
 Honourable House of Commons, as far as relates to themselves. A broadside. 
 [About 1690.] 
 
 A Collection of Advertisements, Advices, and Directions, Relating to the Royal 
 Fishery within the liritish Seas. 4to, 1695. 
 
 Reasons Humbly Offered for passing the Bill for preventing the Importation of Fresh 
 Fish caught by Foreigners, and the Preservation of the Brood and Fry of Fish. 
 A broadside.
 
 THE FISHMONC.ERS. 23 1 
 
 Reasons of several Owners of Fishing-Vessels, Humbly Offer'd against a Clause 
 
 proposed by some Fishmongers, to repeal the Law now in Force, prohibiting 
 
 Lobsters being Imported Ijy Foreigners. A broadside. 
 An Answer to the Allegations of the Fishmongers, in their Paper, intitled. Reasons 
 
 humljly Offered for passing the Bill for preventing the Importation of Fresh Fish 
 
 caiiglit by P'oreigners. A broadside. [About 1700.] 
 Remarks Humbly Offer'd by some of the Fishmongers in Answer to the other part 
 
 of tlie Fishnidiigers' Reasons for repealing that part of the Billingsgate Act which 
 
 relates 10 the |)roliibiting Lobsters being caught by Foreigners. A broadside. 
 Farther Reasons Htirably Offer'd for passing the Fish Bill. A broadside. 
 The Case of the Coasting Fishermen of the Kingdom of Great Britain. A 
 
 liro.idside. 
 An Answer to the same. A broadside. 
 A Brief Detail of the Home Fishery from early time ; particularly as relates to the 
 
 Markets of London and Westminster. In Three Letters. 8vo, 1763. 
 
 The Booke called The Mirrour of Justices : Made by Andrew Home. With the 
 Hook called, The Diversity of Courts. . . . 8vo, 1646. 
 *^* .Andrew Home w.-is City Chamberlain and Fishmonger. Ob. 1328. This work by him was 
 written in Frencli, of which the present was an English translation. He was also the compiler of the 
 /,ifii:r Horn, edited by Mr. Riley. 
 
 New England's Trials. Declaring the Successe of twenty-six Ships employed thither 
 within these si.\e yeares. By Captain John Smith. 4to, 1620. Dedicated to the 
 Master, Wardens, and Company of the Fishmongers. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 
 The Device of the Pageant : set forth by the Worshipful Company of the Fish- 
 mongers for the right honorable John Allot, established Lord Mayor of London, 
 and Mayor of the Staple . . ., 1590 : By T. Nelson. 4to, 1590. 
 Reprinted entire in the Antiquary, xiii. 54-56. 
 
 Chrysanaleia : The Golden Fishing : Or, Honour of Fishmongers. Applauding the 
 .•\dvancement of Mr. John Leman, Alderman, to the Dignity of Lord Mayor of 
 London. Taking his Oath in the same Authority at Westminster on Monday, 
 being the 29 Day of October, 1616. Performed in hearty love to him, and at the 
 Charges of his worthy Brethren, the ancient and Right- worshipful Company of 
 Fishmongers. Devised and written by A[nthony] M[unday], Citizen and Draper 
 of London. 4to, 1616. 
 
 A Speech Made to His Excellency the Lord General Monck, and the Council of 
 St.ite at Fishmongers' Hall in London the Thirteenth of April, 1660. Written 
 by Iho. Jordan . . . Spoken by Master Yeokney. 1660. A broadside. 
 
 The Triumphs of London, for the Inauguration of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas 
 Abney, Knt., Lord Mayor of the City of London ; containing a Description of the 
 Pageants, together with the Publick Speeches, and the whole Solemnity of the 
 Day. Performed on Tuesday, the 30th day of October, Anno 1700. All set 
 forth at the proper cost of the Honourable Company of Fishmongers. By 
 Elkanah Settle. Folio, 1700.
 
 232 
 
 THE GREAT COMTANIES. 
 
 Ube (Bol&9mttb5. 
 
 This ancient, important, and wealthy body first comes under notice in 
 I i8o, as one of the so-called "adulterine" Associations, ^\•hich had been 
 founded, and had assumed certain rights, without the royal licence ; it 
 was amerced 45 marks, a comparatively high assessment ; but there is 
 room to suspect that the fine in this and other similar cases, amounting 
 in the aggregate to about 120/., was never paid, as the above-named sum 
 is entered in the records as a debt so late as the loth year of John. The 
 Alderman of the Goldsmiths in 1180 was Radulph or Ralph Flael. 
 
 The next appearance of the Gilda Anrifabronnn is under even less 
 satisfactory circumstances, as it connects them in March 1267-8,^ with 
 the Merchant-Taylors in an armed affray at night between the two 
 Fraternities in the open street. The rioters were not parted or pacified 
 without the forcible interference of the Sheriffs at the head of a posse 
 comitatus, when many arrests took place, and thirteen of the delin- 
 quents were executed. In 1 299-1 300 (28 Edward I.) the Wardens of 
 the Goldsmiths are mentioned. 
 
 But since all leading members of a mistery were in former days con- 
 stituent parts of a Brotherhood, we have only to conclude from the 
 almost immemorial citation of the industry and manufacture and of 
 eminent followers of the business from Anglo-Saxon times, whatever 
 may be the origin of some of the specimens of antique work in our col- 
 lections, that the present Company existed long before any record of it 
 in its corporate capacity. 
 
 Two points combine in testifying to its rank and resources in 1180 : 
 the heavy amount of the fine imposed for unlawful acts, and the lofty 
 position of its Alderman, Ralph Flael, who, like the Alderman of the 
 
 * Herbert says, in 1226.
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 
 
 Hurillcrs elsewhere cited and (to some extent) the Alderman of Faring- 
 don Ward, under the primitive civic regime, was practicall}' the lord in 
 demesne ex ojficio of the Ward of Aldcrsgatc, in which the members of 
 the Goldsmiths' craft concentrated themselves. Their quarter, except 
 so far as the retailer was concerned, was then, as their Mall is at the 
 present moment, in the precincts of Foster Lane, and they principally 
 inhabited the eastern side of that narrow thoroughfare, which derived 
 from them the name of Goldsmiths' Row. The district is, in proceed- 
 ings under the \car 1339, called the Goldsmithcr)' or Atirifabria, as 
 \vc shall observe hereafter that the Saddlers' contiguous quarters were 
 named t/ie Saddlery ; and a man was hanged there in that )-car for steal- 
 ing a cup, apparently of glass, value 8^-. 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 Returning to the case of Farringdon Ward, this division or soke was 
 bought in 1279 by William Farringdon, Goldsmith, was held by him 
 and his heirs by the presentation of a gilliflower at Easter, and remained 
 in that family eighty years. This strikes one as being a somewhat 
 different matter from the assumption of independent authority within 
 the precincts of the soke or ward by Ralph Flael and by the Alderman 
 of the Burillers, which arose from the quasi-feudal localization of their 
 trades and their command of paramount influence over the respective 
 Fraternities. It was a life-tenure, whereas that of Faringdon was of a 
 more directly seigniorial complexion, being unconnected with his own 
 Gild, and surviving him. 
 
 C.C. 30
 
 234 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 We shall not be far in error, if we assume from a comparison of 
 authorities and notices, that the Goldsmiths, like the Weavers, continued 
 to be an unincorporated community during several centuries, and were 
 unexceptionally members of the trade ; saving perhaps the official staff, 
 although we find even the Chaplain in some instances admitted to the 
 Freedom. 
 
 In 12/5, Gregory de Rokesley, Goldsmith, was chief Assay-master of 
 the king's Mint and keeper of the Exchange "^ at London ; and it was 
 only three years posterior to this date that the relationship to these 
 institutions proved fatal to many members of the craft ; for in the 
 Chronicle of London, 4to, 1827, under 1278, we read that "all the Gold- 
 smiths of London, and all those that kept the Change, and many other 
 men of the City, were arrested and taken for buying of plates of silver 
 and of change of great money for small, and were indicted therefor, and 
 that on the Monday next after the Epiphany a large number of the 
 offenders, principally Jews, were condemned at Guildhall to death by 
 drowning and hanging." 
 
 The Goldsmiths in the reign of Edward I. (1272- 1307) had clearly 
 attained great consequence and extensive custom, and reckoned among 
 their patrons royalty itself In 1303, Thomas de Frowick, afterward 
 a Warden of the Gild, received an order under the Great Seal to make 
 a new crown for Edward's second Queen, having previously supplied the 
 King with divers silver cups and vases. It was perhaps no unusual 
 circumstance, that the merchant met with serious delay in getting his 
 bill satisfied ; and the character of the transactions which the.se traders 
 had with exalted personages, may be judged from the fact that Frowick, 
 in praying the King, for God's sake and for the soul of his father Henry, 
 to settle the demand, proposed to accept 440/. on account, if necessary. 
 
 The statute 28 Edward I. originally vested the right of assay in the 
 Company, and directed that no vessels of gold or silver should leave the 
 maker's hands, till they had been tested by the Wardens, and stamped 
 with the leopard's head; and in consequence of this law, an Office of 
 Assay was established in the beginning of the fourteenth century. But 
 it may be supposed that it was not universally operative or effectual ; 
 and as late as 1505 it required heavier penalties to enforce the law. 
 
 The taste or need of the Crown for costly articles of goldsmith's work, 
 and the, no doubt, chronic incidence of procrastination in honouring 
 accounts delivered, placed the Gild at all events in an unusually favour- 
 able position for seeking a more distinct acknowledgment of its rights. 
 The earliest of a series of fifteen charters was granted to it in 1327, a 
 
 ' The present Old Change marks the site.
 
 Tllfc; GOLDSMITHS. 235 
 
 year marked b}- the number of similar concessions made to these civic 
 cdmnuinitics, but still more so by the matjnilicent display wliich Richard 
 de Ik-ttoyne, Goldsmith, made as Mayor of London at the coronation 
 of I'".d\vard. In liis official capacity he claimed and was allowed to 
 serve the office of Butler, and appeared with 360 valets all clothed in 
 the same livery, and each carryinij in his hand a silver cup ; and at the 
 conclusion of the ceremony, as his fee, he received a gold cup and cover 
 and an enamelled gold ewer. There was a dispute, it seems, about the 
 title to these articles, and ten years later an estreat for 89/. 12s. 6d. in 
 respect of them issued from the Exchequer on the late Mayor's goods. 
 He was evidently a wealthy man, as he offered to satisfy the claim if 
 enforced. 
 
 This person was perhaps related to William de Bettoyne, to whom 
 the Court of Aldermen in 1291 granted the lease of the Small Beam for 
 weighing silk and spices, and declined to cancel the decision on re- 
 ceiving the King's writ, recommending some one else. But in 13 10, on 
 a fresh vacancy, the City elected the royal candidate, who was supported 
 by letters both from the King and the Queen. 
 
 The patent of 1327 empowered the Gild to elect a properly qualified 
 governing body to superintend its affairs, and reform subjects of just 
 complaint ; and prescribed, as a safeguard against a prevailing fraud and 
 abuse, that all members of the trade should have their standings in 
 Cheapside or in the King's Exchange, and that no gold or silver should 
 be manufactured for export, save such as had been bought either in the 
 Exchange or of the trade openly. For it transpires that it had been 
 a common practice to purchase gold and silver in the bye-streets and 
 other obscure places without inquiry, and forthwith to melt the whole 
 down, and convert the metal into falsely-wrought objects of sale for the 
 foreign market. 
 
 Two other patents of the same reign are confirmatory, but add a 
 licence in mortmain to the value of 20/. a year for the relief of poor or 
 infirm brethren. In 16 Richard II. (1393) a fourth instrument sanctions 
 a Chaplain to perform daily mass for the faithful departed, confirms 
 the Gild as a perpetual Society, and fixes the number of Wardens at 
 four. The charters of Henry IV. and Henry VI. are inspexiiims. But 
 Edward IV. in his second year (1462-3), besides allowing the acts of his 
 predecessors, conferred on the Goldsmiths a common seal, with the 
 power of pleading and being impleaded under the name of the Wardens 
 and Commonalty of the Mistery of Goldsmiths of the City of 
 London, of making bye-laws, and of exercising search and oversight 
 of goldsmiths' work throughout the kingdom. 
 
 A corroboration of their privileges and power was obtained 20
 
 236 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Henry VII. (1504-5), when the Company, having represented the in- 
 sufficiency of the present right of search, the King vested in them the 
 faculty of fining and imprisoning at their discretion all defaulters in 
 the trade, of seizing, condemning and breaking unlawful work without 
 rendering account to the Crown, and of compelling makers to bring 
 all articles to the common Hall to be assayed and stamped, before they 
 could be sold, which last requirement had been nominally in force since 
 the 28 Edward I. 
 
 This charter was, from a commercial point of view, the most valuable 
 yet accorded to the Goldsmiths, as it placed them on the footing which 
 they till recently continued to enjoy. Its terms were ratified by inspexi- 
 iniis patents of all the sovereigns down to William and Mary. James II. 
 reserved to himself the nomination of the Wardens and Clerk ; but this 
 claim was annulled by his immediate successors. 
 
 There was a peculiar circumstance associated with the renewal of the 
 •charter by Henry VIII., which was accomplished to a large e.xtent 
 through the instrumentality of a member of the Court, Sir Martin 
 Bowes, who had pointed out to his brethren that the then existing 
 charters incorporated them merely as the Four Wardens and Common- 
 alty of the Mistery, and an additional inducement was perhaps to 
 endeavour to assure to themselves their chantry funds and other fiduciary 
 property. Bowes seems to have shown great zeal in the matter, and 
 frequently saw the Lord Chancellor upon it, before it was finally settled. 
 For it appears that while the negotiation was pending, Henry conceived 
 the idea of using the proposal as a leverage for obtaining money ; and on 
 the plea that the applicants had been guilty of misdemeanours in regard 
 to the Assay, refused to grant their prayer, unless they paid a fine of 3000 
 marks and defrayed the expenses of the Assay Office. 
 
 The Company not only submitted, but consented to regard their 
 governing body as acting on behalf of the King, and to admit two 
 Assayers, a Haberdasher and a Grocer, nominated by the Crown. 
 
 The expenses of confirming their charter on this occasion seem to 
 have amounted to 9/. \2s. Sd, of which 2/. was a fine to the King, 
 2/. the cost of the writing and confirmation, and i/. 6s. Sd. of the 
 enrolment. The green wax and silken lace are entered in the account 
 at 2s. 
 
 In common with several of the Companies, the Goldsmiths regained 
 4 Edward VI. by purchase all the bequests made to them, prior to the 
 Dissolution, of properties to be held to superstitious uses, and forfeited 
 to the Crown, which through intermediary grantees reconveyed them 
 to their owners. In the present case, twenty-four separate benefactions 
 -of great present value were involved ; and by the process of recovery in
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 2 T,J 
 
 the ordinary way of purchase the property naturally changed its nature 
 from fiduciary to corporate or private estate. 
 
 But the Company had had the mortification some time previously, — 
 under the inquisition for destroying or defacing all superstitious and 
 idolatrous objects, — of melting down two of their principal pieces of 
 plate, adorned with images of St. Dunstan. Of these one appears to 
 have been a sort of statuette, which was kept in one of the rooms of 
 the Hall. 
 
 These proceedings were followed by a declaratory (private) Act of 
 James I., by which certain doubts were set at rest as to whether the 
 properties just referred to, or only the rents therefrom, belonged to the 
 Company ; nor did this entirely dispose of the difficulty ; for it was 
 subsequently discovered that the Goldsmiths were entitled to more than 
 they had claimed, namely, 379 houses and tenements in the City of 
 London ; and after a negotiation with the agents of the Crown the whole 
 was finally confirmed to the Company by an exemplification under the 
 Great Seal in 1619. 
 
 The Company exercised its former rights under a succession of Acts 
 of Parliament from the reign of Henry VI. to that of Victoria, but 
 chiefly under 12 George II. (1739), cap. 26, and 7 & 8 Victoria, cap. 22 
 
 The Ordinances passed in the fifth \-ear of Henry VIII. seem to be 
 the earliest regular code extant. At that period the Company was in 
 full working order and in the plenitude of its power and prosperity. 
 
 They provided for the election of the Prime and three other Wardens 
 a month before St. Dunstan's Day ^ and for the winding-up of the 
 accounts by the retiring officers ; for the yearly reading of the said 
 Ordinances on St. Dunstan's Day and for the keeping of that day ; for 
 due respect to the Wardens and to each other ; for the exercise of the 
 right of search by the Wardens in divers cities, boroughs, and fairs ; for 
 the use of Troy weight and the prohibition of the employment of bad 
 gold and silver ; for the assay and stamping of goods ; for the regula- 
 tion of apprentices ; for the exaction of testimonials or sureties from 
 stranger workmen and shop-keepers. 
 
 There were also clauses to guard against the use of laten except for 
 tools, against the gold-beater beating fine gold, and to enforce an 
 uniformity of assize in all moulds of gold and silver. 
 
 The necessity for the right of search and the presentation of delin- 
 quents is exemplified by the occurrence of cases of fraud of every 
 description, even embracing the manufacture of counterfeit jewellery 
 within the precincts of St. Bartholomew's Priory. The particulars of 
 
 ' Formerly the day of election ; but in 1550 it was changed to Holy Trinity Monday.
 
 238 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 the visit of the Goldsmiths' Wardens on the 20th April, 20 Henry VI., to 
 the Prior, and of their seizure in his presence, on the premises of John 
 Tompkins in the Close, of copper plated with silver and of pieces of 
 laten, one of which was in the bed-straw, intended for conversion into 
 goblets, are still preserved ; and the account concludes with narrating 
 how at last " the false harlot stole away out of the place, or else he had 
 been set in the stocks." 
 
 The extension of the industr}' and those engaged in it beyond the 
 original narrow limits of Foster Lane and its immediate neighbourhood 
 was bound to afford facilities for deception and roguery, even in the 
 presence of increased vigilance and more stringent regulations ; and as 
 the Wardens probably had fi.xed periods for making their rounds of in- 
 spection, nothing but an accidental discovery or special intelligence was, 
 as a rule, likely to be effectual in bringing fraudulent practices to light 
 and punishment. 
 
 This point is abundantly illustrated by the usage which seems to have 
 prevailed of attending Bartholomew and Sturbridge fairs in solemn 
 state, so that the " mis-worker " had an ample opportunity of preparing 
 for his visitors. The Wardens, we perceive, went to these fairs in the 
 daytime or the evening in their livery gowns and hoods, accompanied by 
 two of the Clothing or Livery, the Renters, the Clerk and the Beadle. 
 The only detective machinery was the clue furnished by an informer or 
 by some chance. It was a period when greater stress was laid on oaths 
 and sureties than at present. In 1468-9 a suit in Chancery was insti- 
 tuted for the recovery of a false diamond set in gold ; and considerable 
 trouble and expense were incurred in the matter. The individual 
 charges were moderate enough ; a petition or " bill " to the Lord 
 Chancellor is set down at 2s. But a good deal in this and other cases 
 went in boat-hire and refreshments. 
 
 So far as the foreign members of the Craft were concerned, the 
 Company could of course do nothing beyond the requisition for a 
 testimonial from the authorities of the locality whence they came, unless 
 they had been sufficiently long in residence in London to gain a footing 
 and a character. 
 
 We have mentioned the power of Assay and the early institution of an 
 Assay Office, which was eventually established within the Hall. There 
 was at first one Assayer ; but subsequently three were employed. By 
 the 7 & 8 Victoria, the Company was debarred from making any profit 
 on the operation or on the stamping process, and were entitled to charge 
 only the actual cost ; and the system has since fallen altogether into 
 disuse as a compulsory observance. 
 
 Connected with the Assay was the ceremony known as the Trial of
 
 THE GOMJSMnUS, 239 
 
 the Pix-, wliich was, in point of fact, the assay of a new coinage. The 
 practice is, and has been from time out of mind, for the Lord Chancellor 
 to issue a precept to the Company to form a jury of the Assay-master 
 and eleven other persons. These assemble in the court-room of the 
 Duchy of Lancaster, where the coins to be tested are delivered to them 
 by officers of the Mint in the pix, a small box so denominated. The 
 indenture, under which the Master of the Mint acts, is first read ; 
 the pi.x is then opened, and the coins are taken out and enclosed in 
 paper parcels, each under the seal of the Wardens, Master, and 
 Comptrollers. From each 15 lbs. of silver, or jotirnies, two pieces at 
 least are taken at random for the trial ; and each parcel having then 
 been opened, and the contents found to answer to the endorsement, 
 the coins are mixed together in wooden bowls, and afterward weighed. 
 From the whole collection the jury takes a certain number of each kind 
 of coin, to the aggregate weight of i lb., for the assay by fire ; and, 
 the indented trial-pieces of gold and silver of the specified dates 
 having been produced by the officer appointed, a sufficient quantity is 
 cut from each of them to enable a comparison with the pound weight 
 of either metal. The result is certified by the jury in a written verdict 
 to the Lord Chancellor for preservation among the archives of the 
 Privy Council. If the weights are found good, the Master of the Mint 
 receives his Quietus, or discharge. 
 
 The trial by fire is carried out by the deposit of a small quantity 
 of the silver in the fire by the Assayer, who at the end of a fixed time 
 takes it out again, and with his scales, which are adjusted to the 
 hundredth part of a grain, computes and reports the quality of the 
 metal. 
 
 The Company appears to have incurred considerable loss by the 
 obligation incurred by it under statutes of conducting the Assay and 
 maintaining an office and staff for the purpose, as all the functionaries 
 were necessarily skilled and confidential. 
 
 The business of finance and exchange was always one in which the 
 foreign element made itself more than usually conspicuous and influen- 
 tial. We know at how remote a date the so-called Lombards settled 
 in London ; but not merely Italian merchants, bankers, brokers, money- 
 lenders, became numerous and found a profitable market in a city 
 which from the outset was essentially cosmopolitan, but Germans, 
 Venetians, Netherlanders, Spaniards, Frenchmen, naturally and instinc- 
 tively gravitated to a centre where money was realizable in such a 
 multiplicity of ways. The Goldsmiths, v/ho to some extent succeeded 
 the Pepperers as financial agents, were peculiarly apt to experience an 
 •early and increasing intermixture of blood in the composition of their
 
 24° THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 ranks ; and the foreigners, who were generally willing, or at least were 
 required, to pay rather liberally for tlieir freedom, largely contributed 
 to improve our taste and the style of the work produced in England. 
 
 One passage in the accounts relative to the custom of taking security 
 for pecuniary advances, notices the appropriation of certain plate left 
 in pawn, where it had remained with the Wardens a certain space of time 
 and no one claimed it. 
 
 The extension of the employment of goldsmiths to plating or harness- 
 ing the inferior metal is recorded as early as 1376. It was an art of 
 great antiquity ; but it involved this craft in great and constant trouble, 
 as the plating process was frequently made a vehicle for the fraudulent 
 sale of copper-gilt and other false wares for the real article, and the work- 
 men even fabricated the mark. It was also not an unknown device to 
 gild silver and set the gold stamp upon it. 
 
 In connection with the composite character gradually assumed by 
 the Company, and the large influx of foreign goldsmiths or crafts- 
 men into London, we have to take cognisance of a singular trial of skill 
 or competition in 4 Edward IV. between the goldsmiths of London 
 on the one part and the alien workmen of the same City, of Westminster 
 and of Southwark on the other. The contest arose from a contention 
 by one Whit Johnson, a foreigner, with Oliver Davy, a London goldsmith, 
 that the English were less proficient in the art than the strangers ; and 
 the wager was laid between the parties before a mixed jury at the 
 Pope's Head tavern in Cornhill, on the 21st November in the aforesaid 
 year. The task assigned was the making, working, and graving by an 
 English operative or apprentice, and by an alien operative or apprentice 
 (the latter to be of any foreign nationality), of a cat's face and a naked 
 man, both inward and outward, with four puncheons on two plates of 
 steel of the size of a penny sterling ; and the native work was adjudged, 
 by great deliberation, good avisement, and sad oversight of the said 
 puncheons on the part of the jurors, to be the better and more cunningly 
 wrought. The puncheons were ordered to remain at Goldsmiths' Hall 
 in perpetuity, as a record and for reference, in case any such debate 
 should again arise. 
 
 For retail purposes, the goldsmiths of London spread themselves at 
 an early period over the whole area between St. Paul's, or even further 
 westward, and Lombard Street or Cornhill. But the manufacturers 
 probably remained in the old quarter near St. Vedast Foster Church, 
 where, in the neighbourhood of the modern Hall, Goldsmiths' Alley 
 and Silver Street still indicate the ancient industrial site. It is curious 
 that, in his Relation of England, about 1500, an Italian of rank speaks 
 of the numerous goldsmiths' shops in the Strand ; he specifies 52 ; and
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 24 I 
 
 he tells us that tlicy were so rich and full of silver vessels, great and 
 small, that in all the shops of Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence 
 put together, there were not so many. 
 
 But from a remote date we meet with other trades in this immediate 
 locality, namely the printing establishments of John Scot and John 
 W'aley, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and his successors; and in 1622 
 and later, the shop of John Bartlet, at the Gilt Cup, bookseller, whose 
 sign, however, implies a recollection of the vicinity or of the abandoned 
 premises of a member of the goldsmiths' craft. Tlie Three Gilt Cups 
 was another stationer's sign. During many years, Charles Hoole, a 
 well-known teacher and writer of educational works, kept a private 
 grammar school in Goldsmith's Alley. We find him there in 1649. 
 
 In 1629 a movement first arose for making Cheapside, Lombard 
 Street, and the immediate vicinity the exclusive seat of the goldsmiths' 
 and other sumptuous shops. His Majesty had noticed certain mean 
 houses interspersed among the rest, and an Order in Council directed 
 the attention of the City to the matter. His Majesty's eye was offended 
 by the spectacle. Yet some time elapsed before the reform took effect ; 
 and even then the authorities had to reckon with those who had been 
 dispossessed and were aggrieved by the increasing difificulty of securing 
 accommodation at a reasonable rent. The Government of Charles I. 
 acted in a characteristically arbitrary manner by threatening the Cor- 
 poration with penal consequences if all the shops in the quarter were not 
 let to goldsmiths and the like, or closed till suitable tenants presented 
 themselves. 
 
 The Goldsmiths participated in the characteristics common to all these 
 Fraternities dependent on internal resources and action for the support 
 of their poor and the maintenance of religious observances. They had a 
 chapel dedicated to St. Dunstan, their patron saint, in St. Paul's Cathedral 
 near at hand. It was at St. Dunstan's in the East that the brethren and 
 sisters, with their wax lights in their hands, attended the obits of those 
 whom they had lost, and who had left funds for the purpose ; and on 
 St. Dunstan's Day the general yearly feast was long held. Even in 
 1367 it cost over 21/., when the corporate revenue must have been 
 very inconsiderable. 
 
 The accounts and other records of the Company extend from 5 
 Edward III. to the present time, and include plans of the estates and of 
 the old Hall. 
 
 In 1335, when the Wardens' accounts open, the body and its revenue 
 were equally insignificant, although it counted among its members 
 individuals who were prosperous and wealthy. There were then only 
 14 apprentices, whose fees were 28j. ; and the corporate income mainly 
 
 c.c. :, I
 
 242 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 depended on subscriptions and fines. The beginning of the following 
 century witnessed a marked progression, and we see the Gild taking a 
 part in public affairs, receiving special attention from Royalty, and con- 
 tributing a liberal quota to current emergencies. It found 34/. igs. od. 
 in 145 1 for two spearmen and 12 archers fully equipped for the army 
 sent over to the siege of Calais. 
 
 In 1477 the members of the Company had greatly increased, and 
 amounted to 198, including 41 foreigners, who are returned as residing 
 in Westminster and Southwark as well as in St. Clement's Lane, 
 Abchui'ch Lane, Brick Lane, and Bearbinder Lane, in the City itself. 
 But in 1483 the total had shrunk to 149. 
 
 The Goldsmiths, like the Mercers, have always remained a relatively 
 small Company. The Livery is now limited to 150, exclusive of the 
 Court of Assistants of 21 members, and the Prime and other Wardens, 
 making a total of 175 only. 
 
 In 1537, the numbers are given as 52 in a paper printed by Her- 
 bert from the original then in the Chapter House. But in 1540, when 
 Anne of Cleves entered London, the Company took a prominent 
 part in the procession appointed to meet her ; and the delegates are 
 described as riding in black velvet coats, with gold chains round their 
 necks, and velvet caps with gold brooches, attended by their servants 
 clad in coats of good russet cloth. 
 
 The entries in the accounts are too numerous to cite in a work of the 
 present scope, and more properly belong to a monograph. But they 
 form an index to the progress, development, and fluctuations of the 
 Company under a succession of dynasties and domestic events, as well 
 as a picture of opinions, prejudices, and manners ever changing with 
 the times. We there discern the strange combination of financial 
 frugality and humble religious fei-vour with splendid hospitality, sump- 
 tous display, and loyal offerings in aid of public objects. There are par- 
 ticulars of intestine disagreement as to the jurisdiction of the Executive, 
 of transactions between distinguished brethren and clients desirous of 
 raising money on pledges, and even passages between priests and the 
 Gild, respecting the application of Chantry funds. 
 
 At one period scarcely any one belonged to the Company who was 
 not of the Craft. Now it is the case that the connection with the trade 
 is purely nominal, and that the aims with which it was founded have 
 completely determined. But, on the other hand, the Company has of 
 late years heartily responded to the always increasing demand for 
 money, either in the form of payments or annuities, in aid of technical 
 and general education, and has proved itself a good friend to a wide 
 circle of public institutions and objects, as well as a generous contri-
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 243 
 
 butor to the incessant appeals for the relief of sudden or unforeseen 
 contingencies. 
 
 The fortunes of Goldsmiths' Hall have been fairly diversified and 
 historically curious. In the days of luhvard II. the site belonged to 
 Sir Nicholas de Segravc, brother of Gilbert de Segrave, Bishop of 
 London in 13 16, both of whom were of the Segraves of Leicester- 
 shire. On the death of this personage the Company bought the 
 premises, and a copy of the deed of sale, dated May 19, 1323, is 
 preserved among the archives. No clue appears to exist to the date 
 of the erection of the first Hall ; but since in 1366 we find the Company 
 assembling in their " common place " in the parish of St. John Zachary, 
 and in 1380 a new parlour and cellar were built, we judge it to be 
 most probable that at the outset the Goldsmiths used the old house of 
 Sir Nicholas de Segrave, and made certain additions to it. In 140 1 
 the Hall in Foster Lane is explicitly cited. The conclusion that the 
 original structure occupied b)' the Fraternity was the Segrave house 
 is strengthened by the circumstance that in 1407 Sir Drue Barentyn 
 began to carry out his scheme for refounding the Hall, or, in other 
 words, for replacing the first building by another more suited to the 
 requirements of a public body. It is tolerably clear, however, that 
 Barentyn did not complete the project, as notices occur periodically, and 
 till long afterward, of works in hand for the structure. It was evidently 
 a place of some pretensions and extent, as we hear of the Chamber, 
 probably a Court Room, the Hall, the Armoury, the Granary, the 
 Assay-Office, the Vaults, the Chapel, and the Court-yard or garden, 
 with the entrance-gate. The Hall had bay windows, that toward 
 Huggin Lane being adorned with the armorial bearings of the Gild, 
 and having a roof surmounted by a lantern and a vane. The process of 
 furnishing this establishment proceeded gradually and slowly, and was 
 mainly accomplished by donations ; but the arras, made expressly in 
 Flanders for the Hall, and illustrating the history of St. Dunstan, was 
 no doubt a corporate item, and cost no less than 263/. 6s. id. 
 
 Stow, writing in 1 598, speaks of the Hall as " a proper house, but 
 not large," and discredits accordingly the received tradition of Sir 
 Bartholomew Read having entertained here in 1502 more than one 
 hundred persons of great estate. For he says : " I'or the messes and 
 dishes of meates in them serued, the paled parke in the same hall, 
 furnished with fruitfull trees, beastes of venery, and other circumstances 
 of that pretended feast well weighed, Westminster Hall would hardly 
 have sufficed . . . ." 
 
 During the Civil War, the Parliamentary party made the Hall their 
 head-quarters for meetings and their treasury. Numerous entries in
 
 244 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 the books refer to these transactions, more particularly to an unsuccess- 
 ful attempt on the part of the Upper Chamber in 1647 to obtain the 
 premises as part security for a sum of money then being raised for public 
 purposes. 
 
 The building erected in and after 1407 was seriously damaged by the 
 Great Fire ; but the Company's archives and plate escaped, and were 
 temporarily deposited in a house at Edmonton. The plate was sub- 
 sequently lent to Sir Robert Vyner for his use during his Shrievalty. 
 Until the Hall was restored by Jarman, a house in Grub Street, formerly 
 the residence of Sir Thomas Allen, Grocer, and Lord Mayor in 1659, 
 was leased for twenty-one years at 60/. a year, and 100/. fine. 
 
 Jarman laid his ground- plan for the repairs and other works before 
 the Court on the 17th March, \666-y ; but difficulties presented them- 
 selves in the shape of periodical falls of parts of the building months 
 subsequently to the date of the disaster ; and the whole summer passed 
 away without seeing more than the erection of a new Assay House, 
 which was an urgent need, and therefore specially expedited. 
 
 The Hall was not ready for occupation till 1669. The Company had 
 been impoverished by the Fire, and was obliged to part with a portion 
 of its plate to defray expenses, thoughtfully registering in its books the 
 inscriptions on such pieces as had been presented by brethren in the 
 hope of their perpetual preservation. One standing cup and cover, the 
 gift of Robert Sherley the Elder in 161 2, weighed 93^ ounces. 
 
 The structure, as it stood about this time, with Jarman's alterations 
 and repairs, was a red brick building, encompassing a small paved 
 quadrangle, with a broad arched doorway and a space above for the 
 Company's Arms. The Livery Hall, on the east side of the yard, was 
 paved with black and white marbles, finely wainscoted and stuccoed, 
 and elegantly furnished. The Court-room was also very handsome 
 and sumptuous, and the balustrade of the staircase was beautifully 
 carved. It was, no doubt, in some respects less imposing than the 
 present block of building, which is a product of the last quarter of 
 a century ; but it was infinitely more in keeping with the old-time 
 associations and traditions of its owners. 
 
 The Accounts enter with much minuteness into the question of the 
 Livery or Clothing, or rather, perhaps, into the rule to be observed in 
 respect to the Livery of the Clothing. The colour and pattern varied 
 from time to time, as in the case of the other Fraternities. In 13 Edward 
 IV. violet and scarlet are named, and payments are sanctioned for the 
 cloth of these colours given to the Fishmongers, of whom, on solemn 
 occasions, a certain number wore the Goldsmiths' Livery, and vice versa, 
 as a token of good fellowship and ancient amity. In 3 Henry VII.
 
 2J\.6 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 the gowns remained of violet and scarlet ; but the hoods were changed 
 to blue and murre}-. In 8 Henry VII. puce and fine violet in grain 
 for the gowns went with black hoods. But in lo Henry VIII. the 
 gowns were violet, the hoods violet and scarlet. The members were 
 at liberty to buy their vesture where they pleased. 
 
 Among the constant ordinances of the Gild was the yearly visit in 
 procession on St. Dunstan's Eve to that saint's chapel in St. Paul's ; 
 and on this occasion and on the morrow the Goldsmiths and Fish- 
 mongers exchanged complimentary visits, and entertained each other 
 with a great deal of formality and cordiality combined. 
 
 GOI.DSMrrHs' H.\LL. THE PKESENT STAIRCASE. 
 
 Of the distinguished members of the Gild we may enumerate William 
 Fitzwilliam, founder in the beginning of the 13th century of the House 
 of Black Nuns, at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate ; Gregory de Rokesley, 
 perhaps the most illustrious person associated with it ; Sir Nicholas 
 Faryngdon, whose name is familiar as at one time feudal proprietor 
 of the agnomina! Ward ; Sir Alartin Bowers, who performed good 
 service at the period when the difficulty arose as to the charter in the 
 reign of Henry VIII. ; and Sir Francis Child, the member of a family 
 identified with the early annals of banking and the currency. Jasper 
 Fisher, one of the Clerks in Chancery, and a justice of the peace, who
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 
 
 247 
 
 built what was known &s Fis/ier's Folly, in Bishopsgatc, was a Goldsmith 
 b}- freedom. 
 
 GOLDSMITHS' HALL. EWEK OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The valuacyo of golde and syluer, made i y yere M.CCCC.bcxxix., hokle t the 
 marke unce englice quart troye^devves and aes .... 8vo (about 1520). Printed 
 at Antwerp. With engravings. 
 
 An Advice touching the ctirrancie in payment of our English Golde. 8vo, 1627. 
 
 To the Right Honourable the Lords and others of His Maiesties most Honour- 
 able Privie Counsell, the Humble Petition of Thomas Crosse, Goldsmith, on the 
 behalfe, not onely of himselfe, but of the whole body of Goldsmiths within the 
 Realme of England. A broadside, about 1630. 
 
 i^^ Relating to interlopers. 
 
 Perfet Directions for all English Gold now currant in this Kingdome. 
 
 Svo, 1632. 
 
 By the King. A Proclamation concerning Gold-weights. 1632. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation for the restraint of the consumption of the Coyne and Bullion of this 
 Realme. 1635. A broadside.
 
 248 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 A Brief and Easie way by Tables, To cast up Silver . . . and Gold. . . . 
 liy John Reynolds of the Myiit in the Tower. Hvo, 1651. 
 
 A True Discovery to the Commons of England, How they have been cheated of 
 almost all the Gold and Silver Coyn of this Nation. By Thomas Violet 
 [Goldsmith]. i2mo, 1650. 
 
 The Advancement of Merchandize. By the same. [With a reprint of the above.] 
 
 P'olio, 165 1. 
 
 Narrative of Some Remarkable Proceedings, Concerning the Ships Stu/iso/i 
 
 Siil7;i,-/o>\ and Ct'0)-i;i\ Folio, 1653. 
 
 Mysteries and Secrets of Trade and Mint-affairs. Folio, 1653. 
 
 A most humble Remotistrance of Peter Blondeau, concerning the offers made by 
 
 him to this Commonwealth for the coyning of the monie by a new invention not 
 
 yet practised in any State. i2mo, September 9, 1653. 
 .\n accounl of Blondeau's trial of his scheme at Goldsmiths' Hall is here given. 
 
 A Proclamation declaring the Rates at which Gold shall be current in Payments, 
 
 and to prohibit the transportation of the same. 1 661. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation for the Calling in of all Moneys of Gold and Silver, Coyn'd or 
 
 Stamped with the Cross and Harp, and the circumscription, T/ie Coinmoiiwealtlt 
 
 of England. 166 1. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation against Exportation, and Buying and Selling of Gold and Silver at 
 
 higher rates than in our Mint. . . . 1661. A broadside. 
 His Majesties Gracious Patent to the Goldsmiths, for Payment and Satisfaction of 
 
 their Debt. Published by His Majesties command, For the Information of their 
 
 several Creditors. Folio, 1677. 
 A Touchstone for Gold and Silver Wares, Or, A Manual for Goldsmiths. By W. 
 
 B. of London, Goldsmith. 8vo. 1677. Second Edition, Svo, 1678. 
 The second edition includes J ohn Reynolds of the Tower Mint's Tables of Gold and Siher. 
 
 The Tryal of William Stayley, Goldsmith; for speaking Treasonable Words against 
 
 His Most Sacred Majesty. . . . Folio, 1678. 
 The Tryal and Condemnation of Mr. William Staley, a Papist, 4to, 1678. 
 The Behaviour of Mr. William Stayley in Newgate. . . . 4to, 1678. 
 The Execution of William Staley. 4to, 1678. 
 An Account of the Digging up of the Quarters of William Stayley. 1678. A 
 
 broadside. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 Chryso-Thriambos : The Triumphs of Gold. At the Inauguration of Sir James 
 Pemberton, Knight, in the Dignity of Lord Mayor of London, on Tuesday the 29 
 of October, 161 1. Performed in the hearty Love, and at the Charges of the Right 
 Worshipful, worthy, and ancient Company of Goldsmiths. Devised and written 
 by A. M., Cittizen and Draper of London. 4to [161 1]. 
 
 The Triumphs of Truth: A Solemnity unparalleled for Cost, Art, and Magnificence, 
 at the Confirmation and Establishment of that worthy and true Nobly-minded 
 Gentleman, Sir Thomas Middleton, Knight ; in the Honourable Office of his 
 Majesty's Lieutenant the Lord Maior of the thrice famous City of London. 
 Taking Beginning at his Lordships going, and proceeding after his Return from 
 receiving the Oath of Mayoralty at Westminster, on the Morrow next after Simon 
 and J iides Day, October 29, 1613. All the Showes, Pageants, Chariots; Morning, 
 Noone, and Night-Triumphs. Directed, written, and redeemed into Form, from 
 the Ignorance of some former Times, and their common Writer, by Thomas
 
 THE GOLDSMITHS. 249 
 
 Middleton. Shewing also his Lordships Entertainment upon Micliaelmas Day 
 last, being the Day of his Election, at that most famous and admired Work of the 
 Running Stream from Amwell Head into the Cestern at Islington ; being the sole 
 Cost, Industry, and Invention of the worthy Mr. Hugh Middleton, of London, 
 (ioldsmith, 4to, 161 3. 
 There are two editions of this pageant in 161 3, one wantini; the Kntertaininent at tlie N'ew River 
 
 Head. Reprinted in Middleton's Worlis. 
 
 A Speech made to his E.xcellency the Lord General Monk and tlie Council of State, 
 at Goldsmiths' Hall in London, the loth day of April, 1660. At which lime they 
 were entertained by tliat honourable Company. After a Song, in four parts, at 
 the concUision of a Chorus, Enter a Sea-Captain. [By T. Jordan.] 1660. A 
 broadside. 
 Two editions. Tlie other gives the name of Yeokney, or Young, as tlie spokesman, and lias a 
 
 sliorter title. 
 
 The Goldsmith's Jubilee; Or, London's Triumphs. Containing a Description of the 
 several Pageants : On which are Represented Emblematical Figures, Artful 
 Pieces of Architecture, and Rural Dancing : With the Speeches spoken on each 
 Pageant. Performed October 29, 1674, for the Entertainment of the Right 
 Honourable and truly Noble Pattern of Prudence and Loyalty, Sir Robert Vyner, 
 K' and Bart., Lord Mayor of the City of London : At the Proper Costs and 
 Charges of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. The King's Most Sacred 
 Majesty and his Royal Consort, their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess 
 of York, Prince Rupert, the Duke of Monmouth, several Foreign Embassadors, 
 Chief Nobility, and Secretaries of State, honouring the City with their Presence. 
 Composed by Thomas Jordan. 4to, 1674. 
 
 London's Triumph, Or the Goldsmith's Jubilee ; Performed on Saturday, October xxix., 
 1687. For the Contirmation and Entertainment of the Right Honourable Sir 
 John Shorter, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. Containing a Descrip- 
 tion of the several Pageants and Speeches . . . together with a Song for the 
 Entertainment of His Majesty. . . . All set forth at the proper Costs and 
 Charges of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. By M. Taubman. Folio, 
 1687. With four etchings illustrative of the ceremony. 
 
 Glory's Resurrection; Being the Triumphs of London Revived, For the Inauguration 
 of the Right Honourable Sir Francis Child, K , Lord Mayor of the City of 
 London. Containing the Description (and also the Sculptures) of the Pageant, 
 and the whole Solemnity of the Day. All set forth at the proper Cost and Charge 
 of the Honourable Company of Goldsmiths. Published by Authority. Folio, 
 1698. With four copperplate engravings. 
 
 CO. 32
 
 250 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 T1\K Slunncrs. 
 
 The passage in Hamlet, where the virtues of tanning are mentioned, is ahiiost too 
 well known to call for repetition :— 
 
 " Ham. — How long will a man lie i' the earth, ere he rot ? 
 
 I Clown. — Faith, if he be not rotten before he die ... he will last you some 
 ei^ht year, or nine year ; a tanner will last you nine year. 
 
 Ham — Why he more than another .•" 
 
 1 Clo-ivn. — Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with liis trade, that he will keep out 
 water a great while ; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body." 
 
 This Craft-Gild ministered to a taste which, in its origin, was a 
 natural resource in colder climates, and a necessity of life, but became, 
 as the variety of choice extended, and more beautiful and costlier furs 
 were introduced from other countries, an article of lu.xury and an object 
 of legislation. 
 
 We receive rather imposing accounts of the richer furs, which were 
 used by Anglo-Saxon men and women of rank as personal ornaments ; 
 but the habit was of course in those days of extremely narrow observ- 
 ance ; and the recorded cases ma}' perhaps chiefly serve to prove the 
 contrary rule. Even in the time of Edward I., when we begin to 
 acquire a better knowledge of our history, the use of furs was limited, 
 both in extent and character ; and it was only as our relations with 
 foreign regions, through the development of commercial enterprise at 
 home and abroad, grew more habitual and general, that our merchants 
 enjoyed facilities for obtaining the commodities of this class, which 
 rendered their business at once more varied and more lucrative. During 
 a lengthened period, the skins of conej-s and other indigenous fur- 
 bearing animals were exclusively employed and worn by all but indi- 
 viduals of high rank and great wealth. 
 
 Supervisors of hides were appointed to make search for those that 
 were false and badly tanned, and on conviction, the offenders forfeited 
 them to the Sheriffs. A case is noticed in 1320, where hides of this 
 sort had been brought to the City to be made into boots and shoe.s, and
 
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 "W
 
 TIIK SKIXNKKS. 
 
 were seized, and, after the in([iiisition of a jury of thirteen, condemned. 
 Such frauds were common. 
 
 Anciently the tanners, not freemen of the City, were required to offer 
 their hides for sale in a slied erected for the purpose in I'Viday Street, 
 and to pay a penny by the dicker of ten ; and it was a subject of com- 
 plaint and redress, that in 1370 these dealers did not comply with the 
 law, but .sold hides in their own dwellings or in the public thoroughfares. 
 
 The .several descriptions of fur or peltry recited in the Tables of 
 E.xcise at the end of the Abridgement of tite City Charter, 1680, are 
 badger, beaver,-cat, calf, coney (black and grey), elk, fo.x, genet, kid, 
 lamb, mosker, otter, rabbit (distinguished from coney), sheep, and 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 squirrel. In the same work occur the package duties payable on beaver- 
 skins, namely eighteen-pence per cwt. of five score. Beaver was already 
 probably beginning to supersede felt as a material for hats among 
 richer persons. 
 
 The Skinners received their first charter in the first year of Edward 
 III. (March i, 1327-8), concurrently with several other associations. It 
 is addressed to " Our beloved men of our city of London, called 
 Skinners," and was partly an outcome from the more general use of 
 furs in this reign, and the consequent growth of abuses in connection 
 with the trade. The instrument is declared to be executed by reason of a 
 petition laid before the Crown with the advice and assent of all the men 
 of the mister)', "for the common utility of the commonalt}' of the realm 
 to the said city resorting." It rehearses the ordinances which had lately 
 been made for the regulation of the fashion of furs, and for the prevention
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 of the fraudulent sale of old furs as new by hawkers ; and the Company 
 is empowered to elect overseers to make search for deceitful and spurious 
 wares, and to present delinquents to the Lord Mayor. The right is also 
 accorded of attending the fairs at St. Botolph's, Winchester, St. Ives, 
 Stamford, St. Edmund's Bury, and elsewhere within the realm, and 
 making search for false goods in like manner. 
 
 Tiie two most ancient books in the hands of the Company are the 
 original records of the two Fraternities of Corpus Christi and the Virgin 
 respectively, prior to their incorporation as one Gild. In the former 
 appear the Ordinances which were drawn up for the guidance of the 
 members and the executive in 39 Edward III., and approved by the 
 Court of Aldermen. 
 
 The articles related to the separation of old and new peltry, so that 
 no man should work both, lest he should mix them ; to the view of all 
 goods by the Wardens prior to sale or removal out of the City bounds, 
 furs brought from abroad inclusive ; to the attendance at religious rites ; 
 to fines for refusal to serve offices ; to observance of hours by workmen ; 
 to apprentices ; to oaths ; and to pleas of Court, which were not to be 
 made by freemen without the leave of the governing body. 
 
 These bye-laws shew that the necessity was felt for an unusual degree 
 of stringency and vigilance in preventing fraud or abuses. The grey 
 furs of Flanders are stated to have been often stuffed with chalk. The 
 freemen of the Craft were limited at this period in their abode to Wal- 
 brook, Cornhill, and Budge Row ; but this restriction can scarcely be 
 taken to affect their mart at Leadenhall. 
 
 The Company has a later code of Ordinances, dated 1676, partaking 
 of the usual character, and substantially following the lines of that of 
 1365-6. 
 
 The second charter of the Company, 16 Richard II., April 20, is partly 
 an inspeximiis, and recites that, " We, for the devotion of the said 
 Skinners in this behalf, which seems good and holy, having consideration 
 of our special grace and for sixty pounds, which the same Skinners to 
 us had paid into the hanaper, the said letters of him our grandfather 
 . . . approve and ratify." Here the Gild is described as, " The 
 Skinners and the men of the Mistery ; " and the grant proceeds to state 
 as one of its objects the increase of the fraternity of Skinners, and other 
 persons, w/wiii to the same they ivill receive, to authorize the yearly election 
 for ever of a Master Warden and four others from the body for the 
 government thereof, to enact that the brethren and sisteren shall receive 
 a new livery annually of one and the same pattern, and shall make 
 procession at the feast of Corpus Christi, and afterward celebrate an 
 entertainment in any competent place within the City of London for
 
 THK SKINNKRS. 253 
 
 the same assigned. Finally, the Gild had licence in mortmain to the 
 value of twenty marks by the year, both within and without the City, 
 for the support of two chaplains to perform all necessary acts of piety. 
 
 It had been between 1327 and 1392 that the two branches of the 
 Fraternity, that first settled on Dowgate Mill, in Walbrook parish, and 
 then at St. Mary Bethlehem, and the other belonging to St. .Mary 
 Spital, consolidated themselves into one body, and therefore the charter 
 of Richard comprehended the whole Craft for the first time. 
 
 There seems to be some basis for the supposition that between the 
 charter just cited and that of Henry VII., one of 16 Henry VI. ought 
 to find a place in the series. Herbert states that such an one is specified 
 in the calendars of the Patent Rolls, and that it prescribed ordinances. 
 But there is some confusion between it and that of Henry VII., which 
 immediately succeeds in order ; and it is worthy of notice that in her 
 inspexiimts Elizabeth names nothing between 1392 and 1500, the re- 
 puted grant of Henry VI. of course belonging to 1438. 
 
 The charter of the 16 Henry VII. (Feb. 22, 1500-1) recites that of 
 1392, and emphasizes the recognition of the Gild as one united brother- 
 hood, that is to say, as the amalgamated Fraternities of Corpus Christi 
 at St. John in Walbrook, and that of the \'irgin at St. Mary Spital, 
 between Moorfields and Bishopsgatc. It specifies the governing body as 
 the Master and Wardens of the Gild or Fraternity of Corpus Christi of 
 the Skinners of London, confers the power of pleading and being im- 
 pleaded, and renews the rights connected with the .supervision of the 
 trade in the Cit}- and at fairs, subject to the Master and Wardens being 
 sworn at Guildhall, on election, to execute faithfully the trust reposed 
 in them. 
 
 This grant enters with particular nicety into the regulations concerning 
 the treatment of furs and the prevention of frauds commonly perpetrated 
 by members of the mistery and others. The details prove that at this 
 time a vast advance had been made in the variety and choice of these 
 articles, and that a very extensive trade existed in them between this 
 country and the Continent or even more distant regions. 
 
 This was succeeded by inspcxiinus instruments of June 8, 1358,4-5 
 Philip and Mary, and March 22, 1560-1,2 Elizabeth, in the latter of 
 which still more elaborate details are given of the modes for importing 
 and dressing furs ; and it is stated that it had been shown how it would 
 be to the general advantage, if furs were brought into the country in a 
 way suitable to their several kinds. Hence it appears that there was a 
 principle of calculating by "beasts, tiers, and bellies"; and we hear of 
 fur of minever of seven tiers or 100 bellies, and of 8 tiers or 120 
 bellies ; fur of biso of eight tiers or ]2 beasts, fur of popell or squirrel
 
 2 54 THE CIREAT COMPAXIES. 
 
 of 7 tiers or 60 beasts, hoods of minever pure of forty bellies, and of 
 super-pure of 32 bellies, and so on. 
 
 The charter of 2 Elizabeth was confirmed and enlarged by that of 
 4 James I. (Dec. 2, 1606), which is the Company's acting one. It recites 
 that of the late Queen Elizabeth and the Act of Parliament 3 James I., 
 November 5, entitled, " An Act for the relief of such as lawfully use 
 the trade and handicraft of Skinners," and proceeds to lay restrictions 
 on the exportation of coney-skins and such matters, but is principally 
 occupied by the formulation of a new governing scheme for the 
 Company, necessitated, it may be concluded, by a certain amount of 
 unfairness and illegality in tlie election of persons not belonging to the 
 craft to responsible offices. The King therefore prescribes, that where the 
 Master is not a professional skinner, the Wardens shall be so, and that the 
 mastership cannot be held b\' any not a skinner in two years successively ; 
 while, where the Master was a skinner, the Wardens, or two of them, 
 might be unprofessional members of the Gild. The King approves of 
 the appointment of Assistants, but directs that one half of them should 
 be skinners by calling, and nominates certain persons, citizens and 
 skinners of London, to be added to the existing body during life. The 
 instrument likewise creates two Deputy-Searchers, to serve under the 
 Master and Wardens in exercising the powers of the Gild in that behalf 
 
 This grant ought to be read with the knowledge that during the latter 
 part of the reign of Elizabeth, and down to 1606, serious discontent and 
 complaint had prevailed among the working men of the Gild through 
 an insufficient recognition of their rights and interests ; and the present 
 attempt on the part of James to popularize the constitution by the 
 admittance of supplementary members to the Court from the body 
 of freemen, and the restraint laid on the future preponderance of 
 members of other crafts or private individuals in the administration, was 
 naturally viewed by the oligarchy in power as a dangerous blow to its 
 influence and prospects. 
 
 The charter of 1606 has been characterized as clandestine and ex- parte ; 
 but from the tenor, of the Act of November 5 just previous, it is almost 
 obvious that the renewal had been sought by the Company itself in 
 the usual manner, and that the democratic features in it were inserted 
 in compliance with representations addressed to the King and with 
 notorious facts. 
 
 The Company, however, when the truth transpired, and the royal 
 nominees presented themselves for acceptance, refused to acknowledge 
 the instrument and its operation, and laid a case before the Privy 
 Council, in which it was set forth that the proposed innovations in the 
 electoral and executive systems were entireh- contrar\' to its wishes and
 
 THE SICINNliUS. 255 
 
 welfare, ami had been conceded without its pi-i\it>' ; antl by two orders 
 of Council, February 8 and March 22, 1606-7, the obnoxious clauses of 
 the charter were revoked. 
 
 After the accession of Charles I. in 1625, the Skinners, who, by reason 
 of the miscarriage of the Artisans' Charter in the previous reign and 
 its withdrawal, had had no confirmation of their grant since 2 Elizabeth, 
 found themselves involved in the despotic Scire Facias writ of Charles 
 I., directed to the Cor[)oration itself and all the privileged bodies in the 
 City. The Skinners accordingly surrendered their charter and title- 
 deeds, and the matter remained in abeyance till 1641, when, the Long 
 Parliament having reversed the writ of 1625, the King assented to the 
 restitution of the forfeited ]iossessions and securities, but failed, in con- 
 sequence of the perturbed condition of affairs, to proceed farther. The 
 Skinners therefore continued as before to act on their charter of 2 
 Elizabeth, which substantially upheld all their pretensions, and indeed 
 on the valid portions of that of James I., which constituted, outside those 
 conditions ultimately withdrawn, little more than an inspexiuuis of that 
 of 1 560- 1. 
 
 After the Restoration, the Skinners waited several years before thc\- 
 approached the Crown with a pra\-er for a new charter. But in 19 
 Charles II. (June 28, 1667) they obtained one, which rehearses some of 
 the familiar points, but which is curious and exceptional, inasmuch as it 
 states that the trade was then in a fairly flourishing condition, and that 
 not only certain technical phrases had become obsolete and unintelligible 
 by process of time, but the methods pursued in the manufacture were 
 different. The charter recites the Act 3 James I. for the relief of 
 Artisan Skinners, and lays stress on the encouragement of the trade in 
 those skins which could be procured in England, especially those of 
 rabbits of various colours. It deals with the lax observance of certain 
 statutes made for its control, particularly the practice on the part of 
 persons not out of their apprenticeship of making muffs, furring gar- 
 ments, gloves and other articles, with the questions of dividing the 
 wools from the skins of rabbits and others, and of hiring journeymen 
 to work for them, all these matters being in contravention of the charters. 
 It was now accordingly declared that the power vested in the Master and 
 Wardens of the Skinners and their successors, in the nature of privileges, 
 exemptions, and jurisdiction was continued to them ; that their title to 
 all their acquired possessions was confirmed, to be held by such tenures 
 as they had been accustomed ; and that the Master and Wardens were 
 at liberty to frame ordinances for the good government of the Gild. 
 
 The writ of Quo Warranto, issued in 1684 against all the Cit\' 
 franchises, applied of course to the Skinners, who again surrendered
 
 256 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 their charter; and in i James II. (April 4, 1685) received a fresh one, 
 following the lines of that of 1667 in some respects, but embracing 
 some very arbitrary and unconstitutional provisions, while it gave liberty 
 for the use of a common seal, the erection of a Court of Assistants, and 
 the appointment of a Clerk. The King, in fact, reserved to himself and 
 his heirs the nomination of the Court, the approval of the Clerk, and 
 the right of removing any or all of the governing body at pleasure, 
 prescribed that the Master, Wardens, and Assistants should be under 
 the jurisdiction of the Court of Aldermen, and that no Catholic or 
 Dissenter should be admitted to the Company. 
 
 But the whole of the extraneous matter introduced into this grant 
 was, as usual, rescinded and annulled in the first year of the following 
 reign by an Act of Parliament passed, " for Reversing the Judgment in 
 a 0/ifl Warranto against the City of London, and for restoring the City 
 of London to its ancient Rights and Privileges." 
 
 Leadenhall Market, where the Skinners formerly possessed a con- 
 siderable amount of house property, known as Skinners' Row, was the 
 ancient centre of their trade, and had probably owed its connection 
 with the Gild to the neighbourhood of the separate Fraternity of St. 
 Mary Spital to that emporium, previously to the union of the two 
 bodies in the fourteenth century. 
 
 The Skinners, as originally constituted, were, of course, a Craft Gild ; 
 even in the charter of 1667, only " such as use the trade, mistery, and 
 occupation of handicraft Skinners" are recognised; and the operative 
 element was bound to be more or less influential, and to prove a chronic 
 source of friction and trouble, when the executive body and the leading 
 members of the Company gradually obeyed a tendency to detach 
 themselves from practical relations with trade, as the trust and corporate 
 estates grew in importance, and alone formed an amply sufficient 
 employment and dependence. 
 
 We do not find in the charter the customary terms of description 
 applied to the Gild. Its members are at first addressed as the " Men 
 called Skinners" (1327), or the "Skinners and Men of the Mistery" 
 (1392), or the "Mistery of Skinners" (1558). In 1501, in the charter of 
 Henry VII., and in 16S5, in that of James II., they occur as the "Master 
 and Wardens of the Gild or Fraternity of Skinners." But the phrase 
 "commonalty" is never employed. 
 
 This apparent anomaly may have something to do with the tendency 
 of the journeymen to alienation, which we detect as early as 1606, when 
 they tried without success to gain a footing on the Court. 
 
 The Artisans or Freemen always maintained a certain share of 
 authoritj' and consideration ; and in 1733 they were joined and sup-
 
 THE SKINNERS. 257 
 
 ported by the Master and Wardens in a petition to I'arliamcnt against 
 the duty on rabbits' skins. It was a common cause. Yet by tiiat time 
 the Company must liave arrived at a stage wlicn the details of com- 
 merce were a matter of indifference. 
 
 The dissatisfaction of the Artisans with their standing in the Gild 
 manifested itself once more in 1744, in a remonstrance to the Court 
 in which the complainants represented their grievances and the con- 
 cession made to them by James I. in the cancelled charter of 1606. 
 But the Court, while expressing its willingness to afford the Artisan 
 Skinners all reasonable aid in the redress of their hardships, adhered 
 to the view that the charter of 1606 was clandestinely obtained, and 
 constitutionally and properly revoked. 
 
 The aggrieved body, however, persisted in their contentions, and 
 in Fcbruar)-, (744-5, served the Court with a copy of a rule for a 
 mandamus to choose a certain number of their class for seats on the 
 Court. A return was ultimately made to the writ, and the plaintiffs 
 lost the day. The proceedings did not end there ; and in 1748 a trial 
 in respect of an alleged false return to the writ of 1744 took place 
 in the King's Bench, and terminated in the acquittal of the defen- 
 dants. 
 
 This verdict brought the contest, if not the quarrel, to a close ; the 
 issue was so far not very material, since the Company was at this time, 
 as we know, emerging from its pristine condition and structure into an 
 organically new life as an uncommercial, fiduciary and benevolent cor- 
 poration. 
 
 The earliest home of the Skinners appears to have been in the 
 parishes of St. John upon Walbrook and St. Martin Orgar, and is 
 perhaps to be identified with the spot on Dowgate Hill in the former 
 parish where the premises of the Company now stand. But a second 
 community belonging to the same craft, and eventually incorporated 
 with those at Dowgate Hill, is found in St. Mary Axe and at St. Mary 
 Spital, in the latter of which quarters they contracted a liability to 
 contribute to the restoration of London Wall between Aldgate and 
 Bevis Marks. 
 
 The site on Dowgate Hill purports to have been purchased by the 
 Skinners in the time of Henry HI., who granted them licence in 
 mortmain for the power to hold the same, with buildings thereon, namely, 
 four tenements in the former, and two in the latter, parish, five being 
 apparently shops. The value by the year was 12/. 6s. Sd., which argues 
 a somewhat important area. In the 19 Edward 11.(1326), however, 
 this property had left the hands of the Gild, which seems to have
 
 258 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 removed to St. Mary Bethlehem, between Bishopsgate and Moorfields, 
 and belonged to the celebrated soldier, Ralph de Cobham ; and owing 
 to the circumstance that he demised his estate to the Crown, the place 
 reverted in the reign of Edward III., as it is supposed, to the former 
 owners, who thus returned to their old Walbrook seat. Yet in 1392 no 
 progress seems to have been made toward the erection of any suitable 
 place of assembly, as the yearly feast of Corpus Christi was then to 
 be held in any competent spot within the City for it appointed. Very 
 little is to be learned about the origin of a Hall and its customary 
 appurtenances, — except that the Fraternity of Corpus Christi and the 
 Virgin, which had a chapel annexed to St. Mildred's in the Poultry 
 down to the Reformation, was probably this united Gild, — from 1392 
 down to the period when it is described by Stow as " a fair house 
 sometime called Copped Hall," a name which reminds us of the old 
 Conyers' seat in Essex ; nor do we know whether the premises were the 
 old tenements altered or a new building, beyond the statement in Stow 
 (1633), that during the occupation of Ralph Cobham or De Cobham 
 the property consisted of his house and five shops. But possibly some 
 of the ancient tenements had been converted into places of business 
 since Cobham's time. 
 
 After the fall of the Commonwealth, General Monk was entertained 
 at several of the Halls of the Companies ; and he attended at the 
 Skinners' on the loth April, 1660, when Pepys, under date of the i ith, 
 notes that the General found the Parliament arms already supplanted 
 by the Royal. Whatever stood on the ground evidently perished in the 
 fire of 1666; and of the structure erected after that calamity there are 
 several accounts. Strype speaks of it as situated in Dowgate, fairly 
 built since the fire of London, at an expense of above 1,800/., and adds 
 that the Lord Mayor sometimes kept his official residence there, on 
 account of its good accommodation, and that the New East India 
 Company held their general courts there, while it remained a separate 
 body, paying 300/. a year rent. It had a large quadrangle, says Strype, 
 paved with freestone. The Neiu Vieiv of London, 1708, terms it "a 
 noble structure built with fine bricks and richly finished, the hall with 
 right wainscot, and the great parlour with odoriferous cedar." It was 
 subsequently much altered, both within and without, by Jupp, who 
 destroyed some of the original characteristic features of the place, 
 including the cedar wainscot. 
 
 We do not meet with many notices of the effect of the P""ire on this 
 Company ; yet it must have wrought terrible damage to the City pro- 
 perty, and we are aware how it reduced the strongest of these bodies 
 to the brink of ruin. But we perceive that not many months later the
 
 TIIK SKINNERS. 259 
 
 Skinners ai^plied for a fresh charter, in wliich it seems tf) be shown tliat 
 their affairs were then tolerably prosperous. 
 
 The Skinners boast an unusu.iiiy proud hst of royal personages who 
 have been honorary members of their fellowship. It opens with 
 Edward III. and his queen, and comprises the Black Prince, Richard 
 II. and his queen, Henry IV. and his queen. King Henry V. and 
 his queen, Henry VI., Edward IV. and his queen, and a long scries of 
 noble and distinguished men and women. 
 
 The principal figure in their early history, however, is Sir Andrew 
 Judd, the founder of Tonbridge School, whose endowment was after- 
 wards augmented by other members of the Company. Judd was four 
 times Master, and Mayor in 1550. He was a native of Tonbridge 
 and a distant relative of Archbishop Chichele. He died September 4, 
 1558, and was buried at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, with great splendour. 
 
 The .Skinners came into possession of the management and control 
 of Tonbridge School under the provisions of his will in 1558, in 
 connection with the general scheme of the Government of Edward VI. 
 for establishing grammar schools throughout England. The school 
 at Tonbridge was originally limited to instruction in the rudiments 
 under one master and one usher. The estate supporting the charity 
 consists of property in the City of London, and of the Sandhills 
 estate on the south side of the New Road in the parish of St. Pancras. 
 This is described in the devise of 1558 as "a close of pasture, with the 
 appurtenances called the Sandhills, situate, lying, and being on the 
 back side of Holborn . . . being of the yearly value of 13/. 6s. 8V." 
 This land at present comprises the area extending from Tonbridge 
 Street on the east to Burton Street on the w^est, and Leigh Street on 
 the south. 
 
 In consequence of some litigation in and about 1825, a varied scheme 
 was settled, and the Company made certain exchanges of property, 
 including premises in Leadenhall Market. These arrangements were 
 completed in 1841. 
 
 The St. Pancras estate above mentioned was let on building leases for 
 ninety-nine years in 1807 to James Burton, Esq., at 2,500/. a year ; and 
 the Company has since that period largely profited by the constantly 
 rising value of land and demand for railway and other public purposes, 
 the Midland line having paid 32,000/. for a portion of the St. Pancras 
 estate. But, on the other hand, the Skinners have expended large 
 sums on their school and for other beneficial objects, as appears in the 
 elaborate accounts presented to Parliament in 1882. 
 
 The order of precedence among the Livery Companies is at present 
 settled beyond the likelihood of any fresh disturbance or controversy.
 
 26o THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 The mode in which civic processions, of which they formed part, were 
 to be regulated, was insensibly fix'ed and recognised by custom ; but 
 in cases where the priority was doubtful or close, questions were apt to 
 arise, and twice in the annals of these Associations serious commotions 
 arose on this point. In 1339 there was a dispute between the Skinners 
 and the Fishmongers, which assumed the proportions of a riot in the 
 streets, and resulted in the ringleaders being executed ; and in 14S3 a 
 second altercation, which was amicably arranged, occurred with the 
 Taylors. 
 
 Stow graphically describes the Skinners' Corpus Christi procession. 
 He observes : " This Fraternity had also once every yeare on Corpus 
 Christi day, after noone a Procession which passed through the 
 principall streets of the City, wherein are borne more than one hundred 
 torches of Waxe (costly garnished) burning light, and above two 
 hundred Clerkes and Priests in Surplesses and Coapes, singing. After 
 the which were the Sheriffes' servants, the Clerkes of the Compters, 
 Chaplaines for the Sheriffes, the Major's Serjeants, the Councell of the 
 City, the Maior and Aldermen in Scarlet, and then the Skinners in their 
 best Liveries." 
 
 The same authority furnishes a list of twenty mayors between 1348 
 and 1698, who were of this Fraternity. Below will be found a list of the 
 printed pageants, commencing with that of 1585, which is, next to that 
 of the Ironmongers, 1566, the most ancient of the published series. 
 
 It has been seen that by the charter of 16 Richard II. it is reserved 
 to the Gild to admit other than followers of the vocation, with a view 
 to the fuller and more speedy development of it. But it was probably 
 in contemplation that the outsiders should at any rate belong to other 
 branches of the same industry. In 23 Henry VI., of the entire 
 Fraternity, which was doubtless not large, nineteen are described in the 
 Company's books as : doctors (i), gentlemen (3), of no trade or descrip- 
 tion (9), butchers (2), dyers (i), joiners (i), grocers (i), and silk-wives (i). 
 
 The numbers in 1537 of the "Freemen Householders" were 141. In 
 1699 the Livery counted 180; in 1724, 192. At a poll in 1722, only 
 124 voted. In 1742, the figures were 137 ; in 1796, 150 ; in 1834, 200 ; 
 and in 1892, 150. 
 
 In 1738, the calls to the Livery, 27 in number, exhibited a continu- 
 ance of the hybrid character of the Company. They included six skin- 
 ners, one gentleman, one grocer, two linen-drapers, two upholsterers or 
 upholders, one glover, one tallow-chandler, one butcher, one plaisterer, 
 one victualler or innholder, one mum-merchant, one watchmaker, one 
 feltmaker, one haberdasher, one wharfinger, one taylor, one timber-mer- 
 chant, and three not described.
 
 THE SKINNliKS. 261 
 
 In the ten years 1870-9 both the income and expenditure of the 
 Skinners considerably increased, the former, partly owing to a rise in 
 the value of the Irish property, and partly to improvements in the 
 London estate ; the latter, chiefly by reason of an enlargement of grants 
 and donations for charitable and other allied purposes. 
 
 The Skinners eventually bought the shares held in the Irish plan- 
 tation by the Stationers and Bakers, and assumed the management 
 of that of the Girdlers ; and the)' seem to have succeeded of late years 
 in raising the income from this source very considerably. In 1879 
 the aggregate revenue of the three subshares was upward of 2,500/. 
 The new owners borrowed 60,000/. to enable them to carry out these 
 arrangements. The Girdlers receive the nctt rent of their portion, 
 the other Company undertaking the administration and agency. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 The Generall Greeuance of all England, Man, Woman, and Child : To the Higli 
 and Honourable Court of Parliament. [In relation to the transportation or 
 export of raw hides. About 1625.] A broadside. 
 This documenl more especially refers to the injury sustained by curriers, shoemakers, and cobblers. 
 
 Schola Tunhridgiensis. By John Stockwood. gvo, 1619. 
 
 The Case and Condition of E. Tichbourn, Late Alderman, and now Prisoner in 
 
 the Tower of London. Presented to the Consideration and Compassion of his 
 
 Fellow-Citizens. 410. 1661. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 The Device of the Pageant borne before Sir Wolstone Dixie, Lord Mayor of 
 London, October 29, 1585. By George Peele. 4to, 1585. 
 Reprinted in Strype's edition of Stowe's .Survey, folio, 1720, book v., pp. 136, 137; in Nichols' 
 Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 221, and in the editions of Peele's Works. This pageant is curious 
 and valuable ; not only for the poetry, but because it describes the flourishing state of the metropolis 
 in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The liramaiis personts, represented by the children of the pageant, 
 are. London. Magnanimity, Loyalty, the Country, the Thames, the Soldier, the Sailor, Science, and 
 first, second, third, and fourth Nymphs, who have all appropriate speeches assigned to them. 
 
 The Device of the Pageant borne before the Right Hon. Martyn Colthorpe, Lord 
 Mayor of the City of London, 29 October, 158S ; Licensed for the press this year, 
 but not at present known. 
 
 Sec my Handbook, 1867, p. 450. 
 
 The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity: An Honourable Solemnity performed 
 through the City, at the Confirmation and Establishment of the Right Honour- 
 able Sir William Cockayn, Knight, in the Office of his Majesty's Lieutenant the 
 Lord Mayor of the Famous City of London : Taking beginning in the morning 
 at his Lordship's going, and perfecting itself after his return from receiving the 
 oath of Mayoralty at Westminster, on the morrow after Simon and Jude's Day, 
 October 29, 16 19. By Thomas Middleton. 4to, 1619. 
 
 Britannia's Honor: Brightly Shining in seuerall iMagnificent Shewes or Pageants, 
 to Celebrate the Solemnity of the Right Honorable Richard Deane. At his 
 Inauguration into the Majoralty of the Honourable City of London, on Wednes- 
 day, October tlie 29th, 1628. At the Particular Cost, and Charges of the Right 
 Worshipfull, Worthy, and Ancient Society ot Skynners. By Tho. Dekker. 410, 
 162S.
 
 262 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 London's Triumph ; Or, The Solemn and Magnificent Reception of that Honourable 
 Gentleman, Robert Tichborn, Lord Mayor : After his return from taking the 
 Oath at Westminster, the morrow after Simon and Jude day, being October 29, 
 
 1656. With the Speeches spoken at Fosterlane-end and Soperlane-end. By 
 J[ohn] B[iilteel]. 4to, 1656. 
 
 London's Triumphs : Celebrated the 29th day of this present month of October, 
 
 1657, In Honour of the truly Deserving Richard Chiverton, Lord Mayor of the 
 City of London, at the Costs and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Skin- 
 ners. By J. Tatham. 4to, 1657. 
 
 A Speech made to his Excellency, Lord General Monck, and the Council of State, 
 at Skinners' Hall, on Wednesday, being the fourth of April, 1660, at which time 
 he was nobly entertained by that honourable Company. [1660.] A broadside 
 by T. Jordan. 
 A Speech made to his E.\cellency, the Lord General Monck, at Skinners' Hall, on 
 Wednesday, being the 4th of April, 1660. . . . [Another edition purporting 
 to have been spoken by Walter Yeokners.] 1660. A broadside. 
 A Song to his Excellency the Lord General Monck, at Skinners Hall on Wednes- 
 day, Aprill 4, 1660. At which time he was entertained by that Honourable Com- 
 pany. 1660. A broadside. 
 Londinum Triumphans ; or, London's Triumph : Celebrated in Honour of the truly- 
 deserving Sir Anthony Bateman, Knight, Lord Mayor of London, and done at 
 the Costs and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, on the 29th of 
 October, 1663. By John Tatham. 4to, 1663. 
 London's Resurrection to Joy and Triumph : E.xpressed in sundry Shewes, Shapes, 
 Scenes, Speeches, and Songs in Parts. Celebrious to the much-meriting Magis- 
 trate, Sir George Waterman, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. At 
 the peculiar and proper Expenses of the Worshipful Company of the Skinners. 
 The King, Queen, and Duke of York, and most of the Nobility being present. 
 Written by Thomas Jordan. 4to, 1671. 
 »*„ Some copies were printed without a mention of the Court being present, and without the con- 
 cluding leaf on which the account is given. 
 
 London's Great Jubilee, Restored and Performed on Tuesday, October the 29th, 
 1689, for the Entertainment of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Pilkington, 
 Kt., Lord Mayor of the City of London. Containing a Description of the several 
 Pageants and Speeches, together with a Song, for the Entertainment of Their 
 Majesties, who, with their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Den- 
 mark, the whole Court, and both Houses of Parliament, honoured his Lordship 
 this Year with their Presence. All set forth at the proper Costs and Charges 
 of the Right Worshipful Company of Skinners. By Matthew Taubman. 4to, 
 1689. 
 ^*^ This pageant was revived in 1761 on the occasion of the visit of George III. to the City, when 
 
 Sir T. Fludyer entered on office, and it was printed the same year in 8vo. 
 
 Accompanying the Drapers' Pageant for 1679 by Thomas Jordan, is an Address to 
 the Skinners' Company by John Tatham. 
 
 Sir Humphrey Edwin, Citizen and Barber-Surgeon, was elected Mayor in 1698, and 
 thereupon, agreeably to custom, translated himself to this Company. But owing to his 
 opinions as a non-juror there was no show, although in Halliwell's Dictionary of Old 
 EnglisJi Plays, i860, it is stated that a descriptive account — perhaps of what was in- 
 tended — was written by Elkanah Settle, and printed, folio, 1698.
 
 THli MERCHANT TAYLORS. 
 
 263 
 
 ■Jibe /FDcicbant Cavilors. 
 
 The annals. of the Taylors before their elevation into a Fraternity are 
 principally remarkable for the legend of the devil making his way, 
 accompanied by Pride, into their haunts in Birchin Lane, where he had 
 hoped to have received a friendly welcome, but was so sharply set upon 
 by the linen-armourers and their very prentices with their Spanish 
 needles, that he wished himself well out of their reach. The locality 
 named afterward became the quarter of the second-hand clothes' 
 dealers. 
 
 The Compan\''s books commence with the year 1 299-1 300, the date 
 of their licence from Edward I., and give the names of the Masters and 
 Wardens thenceforward ; but some are missing. The Gild of Pilgrims, 
 of which Warner le Tournour was then Alderman, is enumerated, how- 
 ever, among the eighteen unlicensed bodies in 1180, and was required to 
 pay Aps., which was apparently never done ; and we can have no hesita- 
 tion in concluding that this was the present Company. 
 
 It has been already shown, under the account of the GOLDSMITHS, 
 that the present Gild was engaged in 1267-8 in a dispute with them ; 
 and this is, in fact, the next earliest clue which seems to survive. It is 
 even doubtful whether the date of the affray has been correctly given : 
 Stow, in his Chronicle, 161 5, assigns it to 1268 ; but Herbert places the 
 incident under 1226. In 1304 another very serious disturbance arose, 
 and also at night, on the same spot, in which the Taylors were again 
 implicated. The occasion or cause is not stated in either case.
 
 264 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 The licence accorded by Edward I. in 1299 to the Gild to assume the 
 name and title of Taylors and Linen Ariiiourers, is not only one of the 
 earliest references extant, but importantly and decisively indicates the 
 operative functions of this Society, in connection with the lining and 
 quilting of armour, as well as with the more ordinary forms of industry 
 with which we associate the calling. The Merchant-Taylor of the Plan- 
 tagenet era was naturally a product of contemporary fashions and re- 
 quirements ; the use of armour was universal among a very large section 
 of the community in all parts of the kingdom ; the warlike policy 
 pursued by Edward I. and III. at home and abroad made the call and 
 market for military appliances and outfits immeasurably more active 
 than it had ever been before ; and the linen-armourer of that time must, 
 as a privileged monopolist, have found his vocation busy and lucrative. 
 
 THE COMMO.N 6E.\L. 
 
 We rely on the voucher of Stow for the statement that on St. John 
 the Baptist's day, 1300, the Taylors and Linen- Armourers chose a 
 Master and four Wardens, the former entitled the Pilgrim, as being the 
 traveller for the whole Company, and the latter " the purveyors of alms 
 or quarterages." Hence, as well as in the far more ancient record above 
 cited, we perceive that here there was a strong desire from the outset to 
 communicate to the movement a distinctly religious tone and side. 
 
 The Gild, a few years later, addressed a petition to the Crown, repre- 
 senting the wish for incorporation, whereas " from the time whereof 
 there is no memory " they had held their assemblies once a year to 
 govern the mistery and settle its affairs ; and in March, 1326-7, the first 
 charter, an instrument of limited scope, was received from Edward III., 
 enacting that only freemen should follow the craft within the City, and 
 that none should have the freedom, unless he were vouched by honest
 
 THK MERCHANT TAYLORS. 265 
 
 and lawful men of the mistcry to be honest, faithful, and fit for the 
 same. 
 
 The succecdin;^ tyrant of Richanl 11. in 1390 conferred the power of 
 creating a Master and four Wardens at their pleasure, and entitled this 
 body to draw u]) ordinances for the management of the whole Fellowship. 
 
 In the course of the reign of Heiny IV'. the Company obtained no 
 fewer than three grants ; the first and second confirmatory in the second 
 and sixth years (14CXD-1 and 1404-5), and a third, in 1407-8, addressed 
 to the Wardens, who are named, whereby the privileges were am- 
 plified, and the use of a common seal sanctioned. Here the Gild is 
 successively addressed as The Taylors and Fraternity of St. John the 
 Baptist in London, the Taylors of London, Wardens of the Fraternity 
 of St. John the Baptist, \vhcre the religious attribute and function are 
 strikingly prominent, and as the Fraternity of Taylors and Linen- 
 Armourers of St. John the Baptist. 
 
 The broad distinction between those two great manufacturing and 
 trading bodies, the Drapers and Taylors, was, that the former dealt in 
 the woollen goods, and the latter in linen, either for apparel or the 
 garniture of armour. Our Government resisted the effort made to 
 place the foreign dealers and workers in linen on the same footing as 
 those of alien blood or origin carrying on business in the more ancient 
 and more widely-employed material, who were exonerated by Edward 
 III. from tribute to the native Gild of Weavers ; and when the question 
 was carried into the Court of Exchequer, the claim of the strangers was 
 formally disallowed. All branches of this industry were then beginning 
 to assume a new and freer phase ; we were growing independent of our 
 continental instructors ; and the native Taylor and Linen Armourer was 
 already a busy and profitable employment, in the presence of an inex- 
 haustible call for the w-arlike appointments which we suppose to have 
 been their principal source of labour and profit, and which occupy a 
 proportionately conspicuous position in the earliest and at the same time 
 most characteristic grant of arms to the Gild. 
 
 In addition to the interior garniture of the armour, of which each 
 several component portion was separate with its technical name, as set 
 out in the dictionaries, the Taylor- Armourer made the doublets and other 
 articles of apparel belonging to civil life ; the quilting and padding of 
 which sometimes rendered them almost weapon-proof, especially when 
 leather was introduced to strengthen the joints or seams. The care, 
 skill, and art involved in making these accoutrements, either prepara- 
 torily to the addition of the metal-work or otherwise, and the extensive 
 demand for such articles of apparel or protection by soldiers of all 
 grades and by the wealthier citizens of London and other leading 
 
 C.C. 34
 
 266 THE GREAT COMPANIES, 
 
 places, may elucidate the growth of the craft and its eventual recogni- 
 tion by the Crown as a corporate Fraternity. 
 
 Very probably, before the rise of the Draper as a separate craft or 
 industry, the Taylor, the more ancient institution, provided for the wants 
 of both sexes ; and those attached to royal and noble establishments 
 undoubtedly attended to the whole department, and employed labour to 
 carry out orders. 
 
 The Linen-Armourer of an age when the horse, as well as his rider, 
 was protected by iron or steel work, the precursor of the merely orna- 
 mental caparison, found a further channel for his enterprise in that 
 direction ; and it was the more artistic skill, if not the more advantageous 
 conditions, involved in this class of commerce during some centuries, 
 which may have relaxed the interest of the Linen-Armourer in the 
 other branch of his business, and have opened the way to the Draper, 
 who confined himself to the details of every-day civil apparel. 
 
 Some slight difficulty has been made by Herbert and others in re- 
 spect to the question, whether the Taylor of old days was a salesman as 
 well as a manufacturer. But there seems to be barely any ground for 
 doubting that he filled both parts, so far as his own craft was concerned, 
 as the Draper was a dealer in woollen cloths, and also retailed them in 
 the shape of apparel. But, at the same time, the unique distinction 
 conferred on them by Henry VII., and maintained through subsequent 
 reigns, may tend to shew that the Company, at the close of the fifteenth 
 century, was already segregating itself from petty trade, and in the 
 course of less than a hundred years had relinquished to the }-eomanry 
 all active interest in the craft, unless it was in the way of wholesale 
 merchandise. 
 
 In 1 35 1, the Company admitted their first honorary member, and 
 about two years after came into possession of a chapel at the north 
 door of St. Paul's, where prayers and obits might be offered daily for 
 the spiritual welfare of those of the Fraternity present and to come. In 
 1455, Pope Calixtus HI. granted leave for the celebration of masses on 
 the altars in this edifice, which probably superseded the ancient one in 
 Threadneedle Street. 
 
 The Saracen's Head, in Friday Street, is believed to have been the 
 first purchase of real property made ; it was bought in 1401 out of the 
 common bo.x. Houses in Bread Street were devised to the Company 
 in 1404; and in 1406, John Churchman, Merchant Taylor, gave his 
 brethren others in Bishopsgate and Threadneedle Streets with the ad- 
 vowson of St. Martin Outwich. The foundation of its trusts was a 
 bequest by Peter Mason of property in the Poultry for eleemosynary 
 objects.
 
 THE MERCHANT TAYLORS. 267 
 
 Successive renewals and enlarf^emcnts of the privileges and powers 
 were made b\' Henry \']. in his eighteenth and thirty-first years, 
 by Edward IV. in 1465, and by Henry VII. in 1502; which last is 
 the present acting charter. The charter of Henry VI. accorded the 
 right of search ; but by writ of Privy Seal directed from " The King's 
 Parlour' at Sheen," August 21, this faculty is revoked; it was restored in 
 the following reign. In the charter of Henry VII. the Company is first 
 described as that of the Merchant Taylors ; a concession due (it is said) 
 to the personal interest of Sir William Fit/.william, a member, but not 
 until a proclamation had been issued, inviting the Corporation or others 
 to shew cause against the change within a fi.ved date;- and the governing 
 body is authorized to admit any person to the Freedom or otherwise 
 without the let or hindcrance of any other mistery. This grant is also 
 remarkable inasmuch as it not merely reinstates the right of search, but 
 contains a clause, vesting in the Merchant Taylors the monopoly of 
 working, cutting, or making men's apparel within the bounds. But no 
 reference occurs to female dress. 
 
 Our Sovereigns from Henry VIII. to James I. renewed the grants by 
 inspcximus, and by two licences of the last prince the faculty of the Com- 
 pany of holding in mortmain was extended. The liberty to frame and 
 enforce ordinances at an earlier date notwithstanding, there appears to 
 be no record of any code anterior to 1322, which more directly affects 
 the Armourers, as it interdicts their interference with the lining of 
 armour. 
 
 The first series of Articles for the internal regulation of the body, 
 consequent on incorporation, and periodically revised and renewed, 
 was drawn up and approved by the City shortly after 1327, and is 
 termed, "Articles of the Armourers." In 45 Edward III., a second 
 edition of these is described as " Articles of the Taylors." There was 
 nothing fresh till g Henry VII., July 10, when new "Ordinances of the 
 Taylors " were presumably prepared and submitted to the Court of 
 Aldermen by reason of the recent amplification of privileges and the 
 apparent settlement of the Crown under a new dynasty. 
 
 These Ordinances of 1487-8 remained, like the charter of the same 
 
 ' The discontinuance of this genuine old English term for a conference-chamber at 
 most of the Gild Halls, and in its secondary sense in private houses, is to be regretted. 
 The Directors of the Bank of England still retain the good old-fashioned phrase. 
 Nor can we help thinking, when we read about the parlour of Henry VI. at Sheen, 
 of the famous nursery tale of the four-and-twenty blackbirds, and of the queen, irk 
 that delightful fiction, sitting in her parlour eating bread and honey. 
 
 - The Haberdashers were similarly honoured during a brief period ; but the privi- 
 lege was withdrawn, although in official lists of 1509, 1515, and 1531-2, the Company 
 still bears the ampler and more dignified title.
 
 268 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 king, the standard text ; but they were confirmed in May, 1613, and 
 in May, 1661. They chiefly relate to commonplace internal details. 
 There is also a series of mere forms of adjuration for various purposes. 
 
 But a curious precept, reciting a former one, had been made in I 3 10 
 by the common authority of the City and Crown, that the tailors who 
 had the furs — probably the fur collars and cuffs — of good folks to scour, 
 should only perform the work in Cheap by night or just before day- 
 break, so that great lords or other passing by might not be hindered or 
 annoyed ; and if they were so busy as not to be able to do this at the 
 prescribed times, they were to scour in some dead lane behind St. 
 Martin's le Grand or, London Wall. 
 
 The Ordinances of 1661, however, comprise several clauses relative 
 to those members of the Company who were not also members of the 
 trade ; and we are permitted to conclude that they formed at this period 
 a numerous section, having been admitted, perhaps, rather more freely 
 by reason of the straitened circumstances of the Merchant Taylors at 
 this juncture. For it includes nearly every industry then followed in 
 London, and even discloses several not elsewhere specified ; namely, a 
 butter-seller, a cruet-seller, a milliner, a mealman, an oilman, a sempster, 
 a Bailsman, a retail tobacconist, a feather- maker, a perfumer, and a 
 gilder. 
 
 One of these items refers to the payment of a fee of thirty shillings 
 to the Company's chest for the binding and registration of any one as 
 apprentice to a freeman of the Merchant Taylors, who is also a Mer- 
 chant Adventurer, a Turkey Merchant, a Spanish Merchant, a French 
 Merchant, or the member of any other Association trading beyond the 
 seas. 
 
 This Gild does not appear to have solicited a charter from Charles II. 
 or James II. ; but it shared the inconvenience of the writ of Quo Warranto 
 in 1684, the operation of which, however, was short-lived, as it suited 
 the interest of James to rescind his brother's obnoxious and unreason- 
 able proceedings. 
 
 Of the 24,731/. due to the Merchant Taylors at the close of the 
 troubles, not more than 2,250/. ever returned to their hands. This 
 occurred in 1668. The reduction of rental was very prolonged, since 
 it was necessary to re-grant the lands on which the tenements had 
 perished in 1666, at very low ground-rents, to tempt and enable old 
 or new tenants to rebuild. 
 
 In connection with the advances of the Merchant Taylors to the 
 Government on the Public Faith, we find, under date of 1650, a reference 
 to the purchase by them of certain Dean and Chapter's lands, which had 
 formerly belonged to the prebend of Finsbury Moor. This property.
 
 TIIK MERCHANT TAYLORS. 269 
 
 which is frequently cited in the earlier records as a source of trouble 
 to the City, was for some time laid out in gardens and tenter-grounds 
 for the tailors, drapers, and other workers and vendors of cloth ; and it 
 anciently extended to the very walls of London toward the north. 
 
 The Reformation obliged the Merchant Taylors to surrender their 
 trusts and other property applicable to superstitious uses ; the rental 
 amounting to 102/. ox. \od. a year, besides an assortment of apparel 
 and other chattels connected with their chapel at the north door of 
 St. Paul's. They redeemed only a portion for 2,Oo6/. 2s. 6d. Very 
 ample particulars of this branch of the estate are published by Herbert, 
 who adds that the Company, in order to secure part of the forfeiture 
 worth 98/. a year, as an investment, was obliged to sell lands and 
 tenements of the annual value of 124/. 
 
 Some estimate may be formed of the comparatively slender avail- 
 able corporate resources of the Merchant Taylors in 1549-50, when 
 we thus see that they were unable to raise about 2,000/. to redeem a 
 portion of their Chantry estate, after its forfeiture to the Crown, with- 
 out sacrificing other property, with which they were less reluctant to 
 part ; yet at this point of time the Company seems from inventories 
 to have been in possession of a very large and valuable collection of 
 silver plate. 
 
 But in some extracts from the books ranging from the fifteenth to 
 the eighteenth century, as given by Herbert, we readily perceive that, 
 while the revenue of the Company was incomparably smaller than at 
 present, the demands upon it for public objects, legitimate or otherwise, 
 were incessant and heav)', and that long subsequently to the Great 
 P"ire, the corporate finances were still in a very depressed state. A more 
 constitutional Government had succeeded to that of the Stuarts ; but 
 immense damage was inflicted by the Fire ; the connection of the Gild 
 with trade was of little or no value ; and the rental from City property 
 still remained stationary or very slowly progressive. The great stride 
 forward was reserved for the present century, and was due to agencies 
 almost wholly external. 
 
 The Merchant Taylors, in providing the gross total of 5,000/. for 
 the purchase of a twelfth share in the Irish Venture pressed upon 
 the City by James I., arranged with the Clothworkers to take over a 
 certain proportion, as the Grocers did with the Vintners. We hear 
 very little of the mode in w hich the Company conducted the manage- 
 ment of the estate, or of the measure of success which attended their 
 stewardship; but in 1727 the property was sold to William Richard- 
 son, Esq., for 20,000/ 6s. 6d., with a reserved rent of 150/. 
 
 Both Herbert and Mr. Clode supply very copious and adequate
 
 2/0 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 extracts and illustrations of the unceasing part borne by the Merchant 
 Taylors in all descriptions of public occurrences, with the inevitable 
 feature of a call for pecuniary outlay, differing in amount from a few 
 pounds to a few hundreds. Some of these items of expenditure were 
 compulsory, in the shape of requisitions from the Crown for subsidies 
 and loans, or from the City for participation in some royal ceremony ; 
 others were optional and voluntary. In 1469 the Company ranked 
 
 %sry%^ 
 
 THE ORIGINAL Al;MS. 
 
 second or third in the muster of men-at-arms for the City Watch, sup- 
 plying 200 men, while the Mercers found the same number, and the 
 Brewers 210. 
 
 The earliest entry of much significance is in reference to the steps 
 taken by two of the Court in 1480 to arrange with the Heralds' College 
 for the grant of arms, of which we furnish an illustration. The records 
 under 14S3 of course mention the difference with the Skinners on the
 
 THE MERCHANT TAYLORS. 27 I 
 
 question of precedence, sent for trial to the King's Bench, and referred 
 back for settlement to the Lord Mayor, who seems to have proved the 
 difficulty and doubt existing on the subject by his suggestion of a 
 friendly compromise. 
 
 15ut the order in which tlic Companies placed themselves was, as a 
 matter of fact, quite uncertain and irregular till 8 Henry VIII., when 
 the Court of Aldermen formulated what was intended to be a definitive 
 rule for observance. In this List the Taylors are sixth and the Skinners 
 seventh, and the succession is in short the same as at present, except 
 that the Clothworkers are described as S/icniieii, and the cataltJgue 
 embraces no more than forty-eight bodies, concluding with the 
 I'ruiterers. 
 
 In the settlement of precedence at the coronation of Henry VIII. 
 and Catherine of Arragon the Merchant Tajdors stood even before the 
 Mercers. 
 
 In 1563 it deserves notice that William Fleetwood, steward of the 
 Taylors' manor of Rushed, being chosen Recorder of London, a hogs- 
 head of wine was voted to him by the Merchant Taylors. In the 
 fallowing year the Company was approached with respect to some of 
 its property in Lombard Street and Cornhill, in view of the erection of 
 an Exchange. Under 1571 the Lord Mayor is.sues his precept that ten 
 men of this Gild, and as many of the Vintners', shall watch each of the 
 City gates every tenth day. In 1579-80 there is a requisition from the 
 Crown for the supply and training of 200 men at the Company's charge. 
 In 1586 soldiers are provided to attend the obsequies of Sir Philip 
 Sydney. Thirty-five men-at-arms have to be found to assist in repelling 
 the Spanish invasion. A precept regarding plays and playhouses is 
 received, March 22, 1 591-2. 
 
 On July 5, 1597, John Stow presents a copy of his Annals to the 
 Company, and the Court grants him thereupon an annuity of4/., suc- 
 cessively increased to 6/. and 10/.' On October 21, 1600, curtains are 
 ordered for the Queen's arms and for the maps given by Mr. John Speed. 
 In 1594, 60/. are demanded as a second contribution to the pest-house, 
 and 296/. \os. toward the equipment of si.x ships for her Majesty's 
 service. In 1602-3 and 1603-4 the Company takes the lead with 936 
 quarters and a sum of ^yl. Sj. gd., in contributing to the storage 
 of corn for the use of the poor, and to the expense for receiving 
 James I. on his entry into London. A Merchant Taylors' boy reads an 
 address to the King at his coronation. In 1607 the visit of James to 
 
 ' The Company also restored .Stow's monument in the chmch of .St. Andrev 
 Undershaft, originally erected by his widow.
 
 272 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 the Company costs upward of 1,000/., and Ben Jonson writes the 
 dramatic entertainment. 160S. On consideration, French and Dutch 
 tailors are admitted to employment. 1609. The Virginian adventure 
 is discussed. 1610. John Churchman, from whose benefaction the 
 Company derives some very valuable propcrt}-, and who had served as 
 Master, becomes an almsman through reverses of fortune. Besides 
 usual allowances, a pension of 20/. a year is settled on him, and he is 
 permitted special privileges. July 16, 1614. No Knights are to be put 
 up for the wardenship, as it is not thought to be consistent. 1625-6, 
 March 21. The Persian Ambassador is allowed to walk in the Com- 
 pany's garden for his recreation, and is invited to dinner on May 10, 
 1629. The Merchant Taylors give the inaxivinin quota (225/. 15.^.) 
 toward the cost of celebrating the coronation of Charles I. 
 
 1635, July 14. Certain tenants, bound by their leases to furnish bucks 
 to the Master on the renewal, refuse to perform the covenant, and have 
 the sealing of their new leases postponed till they submit. 1640. 
 October 7. The Merchant Taylors contribute i^5,ooo to the ^^'200,000 
 demanded by the King from the City for the maintenance of the army 
 in the North. 1642, April 16. The Company has to furnish arms and 
 ammunition in aid of the defence of the City. 1645-6, March 11. 40/. 
 are paid toward the expenses of the Scottish troops under the Earl of 
 Leven. 1654. The Company is obliged to sell property to the value of 
 180/. a year, and to retrench, in order to meet the drain on its funds, yet 
 votes 13/. 6s. 81/. to John Ogilb)', a freeman, in recognition of his literary 
 services and merits. 1666, September. The Great Fire. 1684, April 9. 
 The writ of Quo Wan'anto is served. 1684-5, February 9. The 
 Company requests permission of the Court of Aldermen to put up the 
 statue of James II., ordered by them from Grinling Gibbons. 1687, 
 September 25. The Master and Wardens surrender their office. 
 October 3. They and the other Gilds are re-admitted by letters patent 
 under the Great Seal, directed to the Lord Mayor from Windsor. 
 
 1688, May 22. It is ordered that the silver yard be delivered to the 
 Wardens of the Yeomanry, as occasion requires. 
 
 1689, October i8. The whole Court, or any five of them, are 
 appointed to consider and examine of w/iat use and benefit the Yeomanry 
 are to this Company, and wliat advantage t/i:y have brought, or damage 
 they have done, to this Company since their restoration. 1702-3, February 
 7. The Hall and rooms, except the little parlour, the rooms over it, 
 and the Clerk's house, are let to the East India Company at a pepper- 
 corn rent and a fine of 500/., till Midsummer. 1709; and on March 12, 
 1706-7 notice is given of the willingness of the Company to take 
 another tenant on the expiry of the term. The East India Company
 
 THE MEKCUANT TAYLORS. . 273. 
 
 take the premises, however, for another year at a rent of 200/. The 
 Merchant Taylors subsequently again let their Hall, between this date 
 and 1 72 1 or later, to the South Sea Company. 1727. The Irish estates 
 are sold. 
 
 Imoiii this time to the reign of George III. wc do not hear much of the 
 domestic history of the Company ; but its circumstances were probabK' 
 beginning to improve. 
 
 We have been tempted to offer the preceding extracts as a sort of 
 outline, by way of sample of the manner, in which an important and 
 wealthy body of men, possessing in freehold a landed estate and other 
 propert)' of great and growing value, were subjected during centuries to 
 the most trying and humiliating vicissitudes and extortions ; for the 
 light which this glimpse into the records from 1469 to 1727 affords us 
 is a peculiarly representative one, owing to the community of origin, 
 basi.s, and constitution. Jlliitatis imttandis, the archives of all the Gilds, 
 especially of course the greater and richer, tell the same chequered tale, 
 and to meet these calls the personal estate of members necessarih' paid 
 heavy toll. 
 
 Before the Merchant Taylors acquired, 1331, the site of the present 
 Hall in Threadneedle Street, they possessed a place of meeting in 
 Basing Lane, behind the Red Lion, in Cordwainer Street Ward, which 
 still existed in 1593, and is explicitly described as "the old Hall," for 
 which a tenant then offered himself When they used the premises in 
 Basing Lane, they were still, at least until 1327, unincorporated ; but 
 the removal to what was more properly called Three-Needle Street, 
 indicates a prosperous condition and strong confidence in the future. 
 
 For the property represented an important investment and a con- 
 siderable dormant rental. It is described as a dwelling-house, formerly 
 occupied by Sir Oliver de Ingham — who was summoned to Parliament 
 2 Edward HI. as Lord De Ingham, and who died in 1344 without male 
 issue — with its abuttals or easements, and two great gates, one toward 
 Broad Street, the other toward Cornhill. 
 
 The Merchant Taylors appear to possess the scantiest possible infor- 
 mation concerning the circumstances under which the present building, 
 or even that which stood in 1588, after having undergone extensive 
 repairs, evolved from the structure once owned by Lord de Ingham. 
 Judging from a variety of data, the Ingham mansion was a detached 
 one with approaches from two thoroughfares, Cornhill and Broad Street, 
 and a certain area of garden. The new proprietors, who came into 
 possession of it from the immediate owner, " a worshipful gentleman," as 
 Stow terms him, Edmund Crepin, were scarcely in a position to rebuild ; 
 and the probability may even be, that they found the premises too large 
 c-c. 35
 
 2 74 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 for their requirements. The history of the transformation is divisible 
 into two distinct periods: from 1331 to 1666, and from 1666 to the 
 present time. Tlie latter is a subject of inferior interest, though of less 
 obscure character. But it would be very desirable, no doubt, to be able 
 to trace with greater exactitude the successive stages in the work. 
 Almost every point is conjectural ; and as one piece of guess-work is 
 
 as good as another, perhaps, we may hazard a speculation that the 
 Fraternity continued for a long time to use the Ingham house, or a 
 portion of it, unaltered, and merely executed repairs or slight alterations 
 as they were needed. The partial, piecemeal method in which the 
 Company worked at a much later period, ought to reconcile us to the 
 view that at first they were still more deliberate and conservative. 
 
 From certain authoritative statements and indications it may be
 
 TllK .MERCHANT TAYLORS. 275. 
 
 presumed that the existing Hall stands partly on the lines of that before 
 the Fire, but that the latter had been rebuilt at some uncertain date 
 (between 1406 and 1450) on fresh ground, and quite apart from the 
 Ingham Hall and its underlying crypt, which remained little changed, 
 may-be, from Norman times. Where new work had been introduced, 
 was most likely to be in the offices and dormitories — in those portions 
 used for every-day purposes. It must have been a somewhat ill- 
 appointed and uncomfortable domicile or even meeting-place ; for 
 down to the Elizabethan age the windows of the Hall were unglazed, 
 and admitted the rain, and the floors of the rooms were of the mo.st 
 primitive description. 
 
 We know that by the gift of John Churchman, in 1406, of seventeen 
 shops and other messuages at St. Martin's Outwich or Otewich, belong- 
 ing to William and John Otewich, whose e.xecutor he was, facilities 
 were afforded for the enlargement of the premises on that side ; but 
 we seem to have no evidence when this occurred, or how long the 
 process occupied. In short, so many alterations were effected by 
 degrees in the ground-plan and by the almost indubitable absorption of 
 the Churchman or Otewich group of shops by the church of St. Martin, 
 Outwich, succeeded by the demolition of the church itself, that there is 
 little room for wonder, if those most conversant with the matter are at a 
 loss here. 
 
 One rather material point in connection with the Churchman gift, 
 thus presumably merged in the Hall, is, that it was "in perpetual alms" 
 for the benefit of the poor brethren and sisters of the Society. 
 
 From a variety of scattered entries we may just collect that the New 
 Hall, or Taylors' Iim, as it was long termed in distinction from the old 
 house in Basing Lane, was in course of time adorned with costly arras 
 depicting the history of St. John the Baptist, and furnished with a screen 
 surmounted by a gilt image of the patron saint in a gilt tabernacle or 
 portico. The windows were gradually glazed, and many of them embel- 
 lished with armorial bearings of the donors ; sweet rushes were strown 
 on the floor ; tables on trestles ran the whole length of the apartment, 
 and on feast-days were covered with choice table-cloths and the Com- 
 pany's plate ; and from the ceiling were suspended flags and streamers. 
 
 Besides the Hall or Refectory and the offices, the block of buildings 
 may be taken, in the early Tudor era, to have consisted of the Parlour, 
 the Long Gallery, containing portraits of benefactors, the Bachelors' 
 Gallery for the junior members of the Gild, the King's Chamber, which 
 was used when Henry VII. served as Master, but was rebuilt in 1593, 
 and the garden, with alleys and a terrace, and a back-way into Cornhill. 
 In this plot of ground lay the old Ingham Hall, with a crypt beneath it
 
 276 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 and a chapel annexed, and the Treasury, where the muniments and plate 
 are said in 1491 to be kept. 
 
 In the parlour was part of the arras, some oil paintings presented 
 by Mr. Vernon in 1616, a portrait of Sir Thomas White, a picture by 
 Gerard Dow with a silk curtain before it (a practice still followed), and 
 the set of Speed's maps given by him to the Company, similarly pro- 
 tected. 
 
 This description must be received with caution and indulgence as 
 
 INTERIOR OF MERCHANT TAYLORS' HALL, 1842. 
 
 answering to the arguable aspect of the place during the Tudor and 
 Stuart times, and substantially down to the occurrence of the grand 
 catastrophe of 1666. 
 
 Yet that the Hall anterior to the Fire was entirely distinct from the 
 Ingham house, and on another site, there is no question ; and indeed we 
 perceive that in 1646 the Merchant Taylors leased the latter, with its 
 crypt or cellar, for twenty-one years to L. Newman, but reserved the 
 passage into Cornhill, inhibited the tenant from building so as to over-
 
 THE MKKCHA.NT TAVLOKS. 
 
 77 
 
 :ook the garden, and required him to furnish a fat buck annually against 
 the Election dinner. 
 
 ^•\t present, after the expenditure of vast sums of monc}- in icbuilding 
 and redecorating, the Hall has become one of the most splendid edifices 
 of the kind in London. The ancient Ingham crypt survives ; but the 
 chapel has been converted into a kitchen. Ingham's Mai! has doubtless 
 long disajjpeared. 
 
 Merchant Taylors' llall well repays a visit and a study. It is 
 old-fashioned, ample, sumptuous : and it is stored with a variety of 
 
 KUbE-VV.\TER DISH OF THE E.\RLY P.^KT OF THE 17TH CENTURY. 
 
 interesting and historical remains, besides the portraits of eminent men 
 of more modern date and the collection of antique plate. The most 
 remarkable feature is the series of stained-glass windows in one of the 
 corridors, commemorating the momentary feud for precedence in pro- 
 cessions between the Taylors and the Skinners in 1483-4, which 
 terminated in a friendly compromise and a dinner. The successive 
 stages in the quarrel are depicted with great skill and spirit and with 
 all the impressive accessories of costume and colour ; they exhibit the 
 first hustling and skirmish in the streets, the arrest of some of the 
 rioters, the award of the Mayor, the hand-shaking, and the pacificatory
 
 2/8 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 banquet. The whole is a striking, realistic tableau, forming part of the 
 modern buildings erected between 1878 and 1881. 
 
 The Company also possesses two magnificent Palls of early em- 
 broidered work, attributed to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and 
 very ineffectively reproduced in Mr. Clode's Memorials ; the silver Seal 
 of the Fraternity, engraved in Mr. Clode's book, and the solid oaken 
 poop of the barge, with the Arms, as well as a coloured drawing of the 
 vessel, now no longer used. 
 
 The constitution of the Company vests in the Master and four 
 Wardens for the time being all the corporate power and property ; a 
 principle which was, no doubt, adopted in the first place as a matter of 
 convenience and necessity, but which, alike in this and in other parallel 
 cases, has created the anomaly of no title to a share of the assets of the 
 Company belonging, in the event of realization, to the members at 
 large, although their standing has been acquired by a pecuniary pay- 
 ment, and they are partakers of many of the immunities and advantages 
 of association. Should a partition at any period be arranged, it might be 
 difficult to settle in whom the estate is really lodged. 
 
 The governing body is composed, as usual, of the Master, Wardens, 
 and Assistants ; and there are three standing committees of members 
 of the Court : the Estates, the Charities, and the Schools. There are 
 other occasional committees. The Court must consist of at least 
 thirteen members. 
 
 In 1501-2 the Livery of the Gild amounted to 84; in 1534, to 97. 
 In 1699 it is returned as 600. In 1710 it had receded to 481. At the 
 parliamentary poll in 1722, 346 voted ; in 1724 the return was 473 ; 
 but the New and Complete Survey, ITA^'^, reckons 394. The History of 
 the School, 1812, speaks of the Livery as consisting of 300. The printed 
 lists of persons entitled to vote in 1832 gave only 265 inclusive, and in 
 1834, 320. The Returns of 1882 reduce the figures to 226 inclusive ; but 
 those of 1892 give them as 270. 
 
 The Merchant Taylors, in common with the Mercers, Goldsmiths, and 
 other eventually prominent Gilds, do not figure much in the registers 
 and records of the Corporation in connexion with early trade disputes 
 and scandals. In 141 5 the journeymen or yeomen of this calling, who 
 proved a very troublesome element, and one which became at a later 
 period of dubious value, were forbidden to occupy dwellings apart, 
 or to wear any special livery, without the leave of their Wardens. This 
 restriction had reference to a tendency on the part of the working 
 operatives of certain businesses, about and before the commencement of 
 the fifteenth century, to combine together against their principals, and 
 initiate " strikes."
 
 THE MERCHANT TAYLORS. 279 
 
 Looking at these matters with our modern eyes, we sec that there 
 was blame on both sides. From an early date many of the Companies 
 conceived an intolerance of the mere holders of the Freedom, with whom 
 the tie of the rest was apt to be more or less loose and more or less 
 purely eleemosynary ; antl we have the beginning of a spirit of revolt on 
 the part of the Yeomanry against the overbearing attitude of the E.xe- 
 cutive, and of a widening estrangement in the sentiments of the govern- 
 ing section toward those who had been an integral and essential part 
 of the fundamental constitution of these Societies. In this particular 
 case, the recalcitrant workmen were found dwelling in Three Shears 
 Court at Garlick Hill, without official inspection, and were presented to 
 the Lord iVIayor, who reprimanded them, and ordered them to withdraw 
 within bounds. 
 
 In the 4th of Henry VII. the freemen, or Yeomanry, addressed a 
 petition to the Court of Aldermen to be allowed their ancient suffrages 
 in the election of Master and Wardens ; and the municipality fenced the 
 prayer or demand by granting them the exercise of all honest customs 
 as theretofore. The movement indicates a stealthy tendency on the 
 part of the Executive to take the whole government into their own 
 hands. 
 
 Two years later, the Yeomen Taylors petitioned the Court of Alder- 
 men to be suffered, agreeably to ancient usage, to assemble at the 
 Church of St. John of Jerusalem in Smithfield, on the Feast of the 
 Decollation of St. John the Baptist, to make offering for their brethren 
 and sisteren deceased, and for other purposes. But the record is im- 
 perfect, and we do not hear what was decided. 
 
 As the affairs of the Company grew more complex and extensive, it 
 was found that the Yeomanry required a larger share of attention in 
 points of detail and discipline than the normal governing body could 
 afford them ; and some time previously to 1596-7 the Court of Assist- 
 ants resolved, mainly on this account, but partly too, perhaps, to meet 
 the spirit of discontent and insubordination among the lower grades of 
 the Society, to appoint annually thenceforward four Warden Substitutes 
 and si.xteen Assistants from the Yeomanry to manage certain matters 
 laid down for them by the Court, and to have the privilege of meeting 
 in the Hall subject to convenience and approval. In some instances, 
 the retiring Wardens were taken up into the Livery. 
 
 This was an entire innovation on the prevailing practice of the Gilds, 
 and was doubtless adopted in the interests of peace and efficiency. But 
 the experiment did not answer ; the Wardens of the Yeomanry and 
 their colleagues gradually overstepped the limits of their particular 
 jurisdiction ; and in 166 1, the Company, after a good deal of sufferance,
 
 28o 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 abolished the affiliated officers, and proceeded to remodel their internal 
 
 £;overnment. 
 
 The ascendency of the Court and Livery of the Merchant-Taylors 
 
 appears to have steadily increased toward the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, if we may judge from a question, which was 
 seriously raised and discussed in 16S9, whether the Yeomanry 
 was a feature in the system worth preservation. The Company 
 must at this period have almost severed its practical tic with the 
 trade. 
 
 Until the abolition of Bartholomew Fair, in 1854, after an 
 existence of seven hundred years, it was customary for the re- 
 presentative of the Company to proceed to Cloth Fair, and to 
 test the measures used for selling cloth there by the Company's 
 silver yard, of which a specimen is still preserved at the Hall. 
 
 With this exception, we believe that the direct intervention 
 of the Company in trade matters determined in 1691, upon the 
 abolition of the Wardens of the Yeomanry. 
 
 The official supervision of Cloth Fair formed part of prescrip- 
 tion enjoyed since the charter of 1439, by which the Company 
 exercised the general right of search ; there are registrations of 
 cases, in which possessors of unlawful measures and other cul- 
 prits were proceeded against under this authority ; and Professor 
 Morley points to an entertainment held at the Hall on the eve 
 of the search, as if considerable importance was then attached 
 to the process, and others beside the Beadle attended on the 
 occasion. The original practice, while the custom was in full 
 force, was, that the Wardens and Clerk should also attend ; but 
 the Merchant-Taylors during a lengthened period delegated this 
 task to the Wardens of the Yeomanry. When the association 
 with trade and the Fair grew less particular, and these function- 
 aries were abolished, the duty devolved on the Beadle. 
 
 The cloth-yard arrow, of which we hear in the Robin Hood 
 and other ballads, had its origin here ; and it is worth remark- 
 ing that in the Little Gest of Robin Hood, printed in or before 
 1508, where Little John measures out the scarlet and green 
 cloth for the Knight, he employs his bow for the purpose, that 
 siLVKR being, when bent, perhaps approximately a yard or ell in dia- 
 
 CLOTH ^ • 1 1 ^l 
 
 YAKp. metrical length. 
 
 It is curious that among the eminent members of the Fraternity 
 the name of Sir John Hawkwood occupies the foremost place, although 
 his connexion with it is excessively doubtful. A distinguished brother, 
 and one of the governing body, was Robert Dove, the friend of Stow.
 
 TIIK MERCHANT TAVI.ORS. 25 1 
 
 An account of him was published in 1612. In 1604 he gave his fellow- 
 giidsinen twenty gilt spoons marked with a dove. He was very 
 probably connected with Thomas Dove of Exeter, the rich clothier, 
 whom Deloney commemorates in his Six Yeomen of the West, published 
 before 1600. Sir William Fitzwilliam, founder of the noble house still 
 extant, belonged to this body, as we have already seen, and is said to 
 have been immediately instrumental in procuring from Henry VH. the 
 more honourable designation of Merchant-Taylors for his Gild. Fitz- 
 william, who had been in the service of Wolsey, and stood firm to him in 
 his fall, left to it in trust a sum of 7/. to find a priest to say masses 
 for his soul in the Church of West Ham, Northamptonshire ; but the 
 bequest was for a long time " concealed " by the Company, which was 
 ordered in 1578 to pay the arrears, amounting to 103/. ^s. by instal- 
 ments. This Fitzwilliam was doubtless the descendant of William 
 Fitzwilliam, citizen and goldsmith, who, in 1210, founded the Benedic- 
 tine Nunnery of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. One of the benefactresses 
 is Dame Thomasine Pcrcival, of whom there is so romantic a story. 
 John Webster the dramatist was a freeman, and was employed to write 
 the Taylors' Pageant in 1624. There is in one of the rooms at the Hall 
 a long catalogue of royal and noble personages who have been from 
 time to time enrolled as honorary associates. 
 
 Of those who have belonged to the Gild, however. Sir Thomas White' 
 is facile priiiceps. But to John Churchman and Richard Hills it owes 
 much. 
 
 It may be generally observed, that at the present moment the temper 
 and tendency of the Merchant-Taylors are in the direction of extending 
 their eleemosynary and educational grants, and of reducing their sump- 
 tuary expenditure. On their schools and other charities, and on the 
 advancement of culture, they are laying out very large sums. Merchant- 
 Taylors' School alone has cost them within a limited period about 
 150,000/. 
 
 ''i 'SSS- previous to the institution of the school. Sir Thomas White, 
 a member of the Court of the Merchant-Taylors' Company, established 
 St. John's College, Oxford, and reserved forty-three of its fifty endowed 
 fellowships for the scholars ; and in 1561 Mr. Richard Hills, Merchant- 
 Taylor, provided the first payment (500/.) toward the institution of 
 Merchant-Taj'lors' School and purchase of the site in Suffolk Lane. 
 Sir Thomas White co-operated at a somewhat later date ; and Hills 
 
 ' In the dedication of his Brief Chronicle of the Success of Time, 161 1, to the Mer- 
 chant-Taylors, Anthony Munday gives an interesting account of Sir Thomas White's 
 benefactions. 
 
 c.c. 36
 
 202 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 and himself are usually regarded as the co-founders of this charity. It 
 was originally intended for 250 boys ; but in 1616 there were as many 
 as 389. The numbers had receded in 1625 to 131, and in 1665 to 112. 
 The endowment has been greatly enlarged and entirely remodelled 
 within the last thirty years ; and the old house in Suffolk Lane, where 
 the present writer received his education, or a part of it, between 1842 
 and 1850, has been abandoned for an entirely new building on the site 
 of the Charterhouse. 
 
 Great Crosby School, near Liverpool, founded by John Harrison, 
 Merchant-Taylor, in 161 8, for 100 boys, and placed under the care of 
 the Company, has also been rebuilt on an improved and more com- 
 modious scale. 
 
 The Almshouses of the Company, which once stood in Threadneedle 
 Street by the Hall, and were afterward removed to Tower Hill, are 
 now at Lee in Kent, and accommodate thirty-two inmates, widows or 
 daughters of freemen, being not less than fifty-four years of age. The 
 cost of rebuilding in 1825 was upward of 1 1,000/. 
 
 The Company has lately undertaken to subscribe 2,000/. a year to the 
 City and Gilds of London Technical Institute. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Enquirie and Verdite of the Quest Panneld of the Death of Rychaid Hune, 
 Wich was founde hanged in Lolars tower. Svo, [1514.] 
 Only two fragments are known. It is reprinted by Fox ; and see Stow, Annates, 1615, p. 497. 
 Hune was a member of the Merchant-Taylors' Company. 
 
 Londons Dove : Or, A Memoriall of the Life and Death of Maister Robert Doue, 
 Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London. By Anthony Ni.xon. 410, 161 2. 
 
 The Honorable Prentice; Or, This Taylor is a Man. Shewed in the Life and 
 Death of Sir John Hawkwood. By William Vallans. 410, 161 5, 1616. 
 
 The Honour of Merchant-Taylors, wherein is set forth the Noble Acts, Valliant 
 Deeds, and Heroick Performances of Merchant-Taylors in former Ages. By 
 William Winstaiiley. 4to, 1668. Dedicated to the Merchant-Taylors' Company. 
 
 The Honour of the Taylors ; Or, The Famous and Renowned History of Sir John 
 Hawkwood, Knight. 410, 1687. 
 
 An Elegie Raised to the immortall Memorie of the trulie noble, and most ac- 
 complished, with all reall perfections Elizabeth Lady Ducey. By Robert Cod- 
 rington, M.A. [About 1648], An unpublished MS., English and Latin. 
 This lady was the wife of Sir Robert Ducie, who was Lord Mayor in 1630, and who was the son of 
 
 Henry Ducie, of London. 
 
 The Prentize Indentures. Entered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 6, 1594-S, to be printed 
 for the Merchant Taylors' Company. 
 
 A Prayer to be said by the Poor, Needy and Aged Ahnesmen of the Company of 
 the Merchant-Taylors, for the blessed charity of a good brother of that Com- 
 pany. [1625]. A broadside.
 
 TUK MERCHANT TAYLORS. 283. 
 
 Positions Wherin those primitive circumstances be examined, which are 
 
 necessarie for the training up of children. By Richartl Mulcaster, first head- 
 master of Merchant Taylors' School. 4to, 15S1. 
 The First Part of the Elementarie. By the same. 410,1582. 
 
 In Mortem Serenissimse Keginae Elizabethae. By the same. 410, 1603. English 
 and Latin. 
 
 A New Balade. O Dere Lady Elysabcth. By R[ichard] M[ulcaster]. A broadside. 
 
 Catechismus Paulinus. By the same. 8vo, 1599, 1601, etc. 
 
 Poemata. By the same. Svo, 1599. 
 
 The Scholars Petition for Play-dayes instead of Holy-dayes : Exhibited to the 
 Right W'orshipfull the Master, Wardens anil Assistants of the right Worship- 
 full Company of Merchant-Taylors by the .Scholars of their School. Martij 31. 
 An. 1644. [1644-5.] A bro.adside. 
 
 The School's Probation; Or, Rules and Orders for Certain Set-E.\ercises to be 
 Performed by the Scholars on Probation-daies. IVLade and approved by Learned 
 Men, for the Use of Merchant-Tailors' School in London. Svo, 1652, 1661. 
 This work, it appears from Wilson, was compiled as early as 1608. 
 
 The English Rudiments of the Latine Tongue. By William Du-Gard. 8vo, 1656. 
 
 An Humble Remonstrance Presented to the Right WorshipfuU Company of Mer- 
 chant-Tailors, Mail 15, 1661. By William Du Card. 4to, 1661. 
 
 ^*^ In relation to his dismissal from the iiead-mnstership of the school. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS, ETC. 
 
 The Triumphs of Reunited Britannia : Performed at the Cost and Charges of the 
 Right Worshipful Company of the Merchant Taylors, in Honor of Sir Leonard 
 Holliday, Knt., to solemnise his Entrance as Lord Mayor of the City of London, 
 on Tuesday the 29 of October, 1605. Devised and written by A. Munday, 
 Citizen and Draper of London. 4to, 1605. 
 
 A Speech, Music, and other Inventions, by Ben Jonson, 1607. 
 
 In July, 1607, James I. dining with the Court of the Merchant Taylors' Company, Ben Jonson 
 was employed to prepare '* a speech, musique, and other inventions." — Wilson's Hisfory of M. T. 
 School, i. 171. It appears that the speech consisted of eighteen verses delivered by a child " clothed 
 like an angel of gladness " {Fleay, p. 180). 
 
 Troia-Noua Triumphans. London Triumphing : Or, the Solemne, Magnificent and 
 Memorable Receiving of that Worthy Gentleman, Sir John Swinnerton, Knight 
 [Merchant-Taylor,] into the Citty of London, after his Returne from . . . 
 Westminster . . . the 29 of October 1612. By Thomas Dekker. 410, 1612. 
 
 The Freeman's Honour : A play by Wentworth Smith. 
 
 It is only mentioned in the epistle dedicatory of his Hector 0/ Germany, 1615. This play, however, 
 is said to have been "acted by the servants of the King's Majesty, to dignify the worthy Company 
 of Merchant Taylors." It was possibly a mere civic pageant. 
 
 Monuments of Honor, Derived from remarkable Antiquity, and Celebrated in the 
 Honourable City of London at the sole magnificent Charge and expenses of the 
 Right Worthy and Worshipful Fraternity of the Eininent Merchant Taylors. 
 Directed in their most aftectionate love at the Confirmation of their right worthv 
 Brother John Goare, in his high Office of His Majesty's Lieutenant over this 
 royal Chamber. . . . Invented and written by John Webster, Mercliant 
 Taylor. 4to, 1624.
 
 284 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Mars his Triumph : Or, The Description of an Exercise performed the xviii. of 
 October, 163S, in Merchant Taylors Hall, By certain Gentlemen of the Artillery 
 Garden, London. By W. Barrifife. 4to, 1639. 
 
 Huntington Divertisement, Or, An Interlude for the Generall Entertainment at the 
 Coimty Feast, held at Merchant-Taylors" Hall, June 20, 1678. By W. M. 4to, 
 1678. 
 
 London's Glory, or, the Lord Mayor's Show : Containing an Illustrious Description 
 of the several Triumphant Pageants on which are represented Emblematical 
 Figures, Artful pieces of architecture, and Rural Dancing, with the Speeches 
 spoken in each Pageant : also Three new Songs ; the first in Praise of the Merchant 
 Taylors ; the second, the Protestants' Exhortation ; and the third, the plotting 
 Popish Litany ; with their proper Tunes, either to be sung or played. Performed 
 on Friday, October 29, 1680, for the Entertainment of the Right Honourable 
 Sir Patience Warde, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. At the proper 
 Cost and Charges of the Right Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors. In- 
 vented and composed by Tho. Jordan, Gent. 4to, 1680. 
 
 War Horns, Make Room for the Bucks with Green Bowes. 4to, 1682. 
 
 Tills refers to the Entertainment of the London prentices and others at Merchant-Taylors' Hall. 
 
 The Lord Mayor's Show : Being a Description of the Solemnity at the Inauguration 
 of the truly loyal and Right Honourable Sir William Pnchard, Knight, Lord 
 Mayor of the City of London, President of the Artillery Company, and a Member 
 of the Worshipful Company of Merchant-Taylors. Performed on Monday, Sep- 
 tember 30, 1682, with several new loyal Songs and Catches. [By Thomas 
 Jordan.] 4to, 1682. 
 
 The Triumphs of London: Performed on October 30, 1693. For the Entertainment 
 of the Right Honourable Sir William Ashurst, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City 
 of London. Containing a True Description of the several Pageants, with the 
 Speeches Spoken on each Pageant. All set forth at the proper Costs and Charges 
 of the Worshipful Company of Merchant-Taylors. Together with the Festival 
 Songs for his Lordship and the Company's Diversion. By Elkanah Settle. 
 4to, 1693.
 
 Till-: IIAHERDASHERS. 
 
 285 
 
 XLbc 1b;iL'>crJ?a£5l.'tci-5.' 
 
 The Haberdashers may be considered as an offshoot of the Mercers, 
 whose original small-ware business they took over, and at the same time 
 as a fusion of the United Hurers and the Cappers and Hatters, who have 
 been noticed in the former division of the present work. 
 
 The term Habej-dasher was applied to two Brotherhoods, one of St. 
 Catherine, the other of St. Nicholas ; and it was agreeable to the ancient 
 commercial polity and economy, that side by side with them existed 
 other Societies of Hurers, Cappers, and Hatters, with independent 
 interests and administrative systems. In 1376 the Haberdashers of St. 
 Catherine and the Hurers were entitled to send two members each to 
 the Common Council. 
 
 In 26 Henry VI., the branch of St. Catherine received a charter 
 under the style of "The King's beloved Subjects the Men of the Mistery 
 of Haberdashers within the City of London," and had licence thereby to 
 establish a Gild or Fraternity in honour of the blessed Katherine the 
 Virgin of the men of the mistery aforesaid, to have perpetual succession, 
 with power to add to their numbers, to elect four capable and sufficient 
 Wardens among themselves for their government, and to acquire in 
 fee and perpetuity lands, tenements, and other possessions, to make and 
 use a common seal, and to plead and be impleaded in all courts. The 
 instrument further sanctioned the claim for the brethren and the sisters 
 
 Some information respecting these bodies will be found in the preceding section.
 
 286 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 of one livery or vesture of a suit, and the celebration of a Gild-feast on 
 the day of St. Catherine. 
 
 The association thus formed must at this period have attained con- 
 siderable prosperity and eminence, since twelve of the Gild attended the 
 coronation in 1466 of Elizabeth of York. It was then ranked as the 
 eighth in precedence. In 1469, it contributed the large quota of thirty 
 freemen to the City watch, it then counting as the eleventh Company ; 
 and at the coronation of Richard III., the Haberdashers', in common 
 with the other Fraternities, was represented by its Master. 
 
 The St. Nicholas branch apparently coalesced with the other in the 
 
 OLD ARiMS. 
 
 same or following reign, and in 17 Henry VII. the whole corpus of 
 once separate callings was consolidated. 
 
 But the charter of Henry VII. is in its structure very peculiar, since 
 it commences by incorporating the Fraternity of Hurers, otherwise 
 Cappers, and Hatters, as a Gild in honour of St. James the Apostle, and 
 settling their constitution ; and at once proceeds to declare that this 
 newly-created body may, again, be united with the Haberdashers under 
 the style of the Fraternity of Merchant Haberdashers in the City of 
 London, and not otherivise. The two operations were thus most 
 unusually carried out under one seal. 
 
 The inspexinius of 1 5 1 1 specifies them as Haberdashers only ; and 
 under date of April i, in that year, we find that the Court of Aldermen 
 ordered the payment by the Chamberlain of 40 marks to the Company 
 toward their costs in negotiating with the King's Council on this
 
 THE IIABERIMSHEKS. 287 
 
 point, as if the Corporation had intervened in the question of rchnquish- 
 ing the additional title, a process wliich the language of the former one 
 rendered somewhat embarrassing. 
 
 The fairly jirompt revocation — in the next following charter — of the 
 special priv'ilege which placed the Haberdashers on the same titular 
 footing as the Taylors, may be thought to establish two points : the 
 stricter interpretation then placed on the term merchant in our language, 
 and the understood and accepted compliance with it on the part of 
 the more favoured body at a more advanced stage in its career. For, 
 as we elsewhere state and hold, the Taylors at one time were alike 
 manufacturers and salesmen. 
 
 There is no doubt that the relinquishment of the designation was 
 official and absolute. Yet although in the City records under 1 501-2 
 the Company is cited as the Haberdashers simply, in later lists down to 
 23 Henry VHI. they occur with the more honorific style. 
 
 This grant was confirmed by successive Governments. 
 
 The amalgamation by Henry VH. of the Hatters and Hurer.s, and his 
 simultaneous digest of the entire trade into one Company, did not affect 
 the standing distinction between the vendor of hats and caps and the 
 vendor of small wares, who were respectively known down to a far later 
 date as Haberdashers of hats and Haberdashers of small w'ares. For 
 executive and defensive purposes, the Company undertook to compre- 
 hend both divisions, and was a sort of joint-stock concern, trafficking 
 precisely in those articles of dress and use which were in universal 
 demand. 
 
 It is further to be remarked, that the trade in pins was at this time 
 beginning to prove an important element in the haberdasher's stock ; 
 but they were principally imported from the Continent, and did not con- 
 stitute an English industry, till the extraordinary demand led to the 
 establishment of factories in London, which soon competed successfully 
 with the foreign article. The makers organized themselves in process of 
 time into a chartered body in consequence of the great development of 
 their Craft ; but from some unexplained cause they failed to maintain 
 their corporate rank. 
 
 The aggrandizement of the Haberdasher, both of hats and small wares 
 is represented to have produced a strongly marked change in the aspect 
 of many of the City and suburban thoroughfares, which exhibited a far 
 gayer and more attractive appearance toward the time of Elizabeth than 
 formerly, and involved a much more profuse expenditure on trifles and 
 knick-knacks, especially those of Continental fabric. 
 
 The Haberdashers' earliest b\-e-laws, subsequently to their incorpora- 
 tion, are supposed to have perished in the Fire ; and they do not possess
 
 288 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 any anterior to 1675. They treat of 1. The Election of Master and 
 Wardens ; 2. the choice of Assistants and Liverymen ; 3. Quarterages ; 
 4. Apprentices ; 5. the Wardens' Courts and Assistants' Courts. The 
 freeman's quarterage was then 2s. a year. 
 
 These Articles are set out at large in the Returns of 1882. The only 
 one of special relevance and curiosity is that which deals with the 
 choosing of Bachelors, a designation likewise used by the Merchant- 
 Taylors, but which seems to be intended here in a different sense. The 
 clause ordains that at the election of a new Mayor, a convenient number 
 of freemen shall be appointed bachelors of the Company, and shall serve 
 in foins and budge, when the Mayor goes to take oath at Westminster, 
 and shall contribute to the charges of the Company in attending the 
 pageant a sum not exceeding 6/. 13X A^d. each, under certain prescribed 
 penalties. 
 
 The text does not state so much ; but it is inferable that the persons 
 thus selected became permanent members of the Livery. The amount of 
 assessment appears to demonstrate the affluence of members who were 
 merely holders of the Freedom. But the governing body would naturally 
 choose such as were known to be in a position to disburse the quota. 
 
 The Haberdashers, associating with themselves the Wax-Chandlers, 
 Turners, and Founders, took one of the manors under the Irish Planta- 
 tion Scheme of James L But they were foremost in parting with the 
 property, so far as they were concerned, the co-parceners not apparently 
 joining in the transaction, as the tenants-in-chief sold their interest in 
 1675, and the Founders at all events retained theirs till 1686. 
 
 As early as 1639 the Haberdashers appear to have made a movement 
 toward a realization of their Irish property. In that year the Crown, 
 through the Star Chamber, declared the purchase of the Ulster Planta- 
 tion, from which James I. had obtained so large a sum, to be illegal and 
 void, and in lieu of reimbursing the purchasers, demanded a fine of 
 1 10,000/., or, in other words, aimed at a second despotic extortion. But 
 the House of Commons voted the levy to be an usurpation and an act of 
 injustice ; and the City and Companies were saved from the threatened 
 blow. It was not strange, however, that those who held such a sterile 
 and precarious investment should be anxious in some cases to divest 
 themselves of it ; and had not the Long Parliament, very shortly after, 
 curtailed the royal power, and swept away matiy tyrannical enormities, 
 it is eminently probable that the Companies would have been compelled 
 to part with their property, and forfeit all the outlay so far incurred. 
 
 The Hall is first specifically mentioned in the charter of 20 Elizabeth, 
 where the power is conferred of having one, and of convoking assem- 
 blies.
 
 TIIK UAI'.KRDASIIKRS. 289 
 
 The site on which the modern building stands in Gresham Street, for- 
 merly Maiden Lane, was bequeathed to the Company by William Baker, 
 Citizen and Haberdasher, in 1478, and occupied about half an acre. An 
 accurate plan of this important area is preserved among the Company's 
 archives; but of the Hall there seems to be nothing beyond the tradition. 
 
 The Hall by Wren, which Herbert describes in 1836 as in need of 
 reconstruction, was almost completely destroyed by fire about^two years 
 later, and rebuilt. The Court Room, or part of it, is all thatremains of 
 the second edifice. The old courtyard is covered by warehouses, which 
 immediately flank the present Hall to the south, and form an element 
 of considerable danger.' The compass of the premises has been con- 
 tracted by the temptation to let off superfluous space. 
 
 There are several large portraits in oil on the walls of the Hall, and 
 with two of them, — those of George H. and Queen Caroline, — a singular 
 anecdote is connected. They had been lost during a long series of years 
 when a member of the Court recognised them in a house in the West of 
 England in 1879, and purchased them as a present to his Company. 
 Beyond the feeling of association, however, they possess no importance. 
 
 Of the building burnt down in or about 1S46, Brayley gives an 
 account in Londiniana, 1829, and tells us that the refectory was a lofty 
 and spacious room, with a wainscot twelve feet high all round, and a 
 music or minstrels' gallery over the screen at the lower end. He also 
 
 ' Within the last few years the premises have had one or two narrow escapes, and 
 have been seriously injured. 
 
 C.C. zi
 
 290 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 supplies a view of the exterior, while the courtyard still remained, and 
 the footway in front was paved with rough flagstones. 
 
 The Company has four groups of almshouses : Aske's Hospital at 
 Hoxton, the Jones charity at Monmouth and at Newland, Gloucester- 
 shire, and Adams's benefaction at Newport, Salop. They have also 
 under their management four schools : Trotman's in Bunhill Row for 100 
 boys belonging to the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, Jones's at Mon- 
 mouth for 100 boys belonging to the town or county, Adams's at Newport 
 for 30 boys, and a fourth at Bunbury in Cheshire, instituted in 1594-5. 
 
 Mr. William Jones, Haberdasher and Merchant Adventurer, the 
 founder of the Jones charities in Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire, 
 was a native of Newland in the latter county. Sir Francis Jones, 
 Lord Mayor in 1620, was of a different family, being the son of John 
 Jones, of Claverley, Salop. It is said of the former, that when he 
 became rich he visited his native town incognito, and was not very 
 hospitably received, and that he subsequently waited on the Mayor of 
 Monmouth, to which place he left a considerable share of his fortune. 
 The Haberdashers received 18,000/. 
 
 His will is dated Dec. 26, 1614 ; and Letters Patent, granting the 
 trusteeship to the Haberdashers, issued on the 19th March following, 
 the testator having evidently died in the interval. A fine full-length 
 life-sized portrait of him hangs in the Hall. 
 
 They have several Exhibitions at the two Universities and a share of 
 ecclesiastical patronage. 
 
 The Returns and information supplied to the Royal Commission in 
 1882 were very copious, frank, and satisfactory. Owing to the loss of 
 certain property at Old Change, and the pressure of the Corporate tax, 
 the income has since that time declined, and the expenditure is corre- 
 spondingly curtailed. 
 
 A peculiar distinction appertains to the Haberdashers, in having had 
 among their number, in the reigns of Edward VI. and his two royal 
 sisters, a man who was a familiar figure in the City, and who after his 
 ■decease was judged to be sufficiently prominent and famous to become 
 the hero of a story-book and a character in a play. We refer of course 
 to William Hobson, whom Thomas Heywood, writer of several of 
 the City pageants, has introduced among the dramatis persona: of his 
 " Troubles of Queen Elizabeth," 1605. Two years later, a pamphleteer, 
 in search of material for a fugitive brochure, published the Pleasant 
 Conceits of Hobson. 
 
 In the play he is depicted as a kind-hearted, charitable man, who had 
 begun life as a haberdasher in the Poultry, and had acquired wealth, of 
 which he made good use. Both productions, in which he is commemo-
 
 THE HABERDASHERS. 291 
 
 rated, shew him to have been a ratlier eccentric character, full of quaint 
 phrases and turns of thought, and to have kept his apprentices in good 
 order. Ileywood makes him rate one of them for squandering his 
 master's money on pies at the Dagger in Cheap, and in guzzling at 
 ale-houses. 
 
 In I Edward VI., after the suppression of monastic and other cognate 
 bodies, Hobson is said to have purchased the Chapel of Corpus Christ! 
 and the Virgin at the end of Cony-hope Lane (Grocers' Hall Court), 
 annexed since 1394 to St. Mildred's in the Poultry, and to have built 
 on the site a warehouse and shops, facing the street, with lodgings or 
 chambers over them. In this chapel, according to Stow, was the seat or 
 meeting-place of a Gild or Fraternity, which had a licence to acquire 
 lands and tenements of the value of 20/. a year or upward. But the 
 brotherhood associated with it was that of the Skinners, who in their 
 later charters were described as the Gild of Corpus Christi, and in fact 
 received out of the sale of the chapel a yearly rent of 2s. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANT.S. 
 
 The Triumphs of Peace : r^? elpfivrfs rpoc^fia, Or, The Triumphs of Peace, that 
 celebrated the Solemnity of the Right Honourable Sir Francis Jones, Knight,, 
 at his Inauguration into the Mayoralty of London, on Monday, being the 30th 
 of October, 1620. At the particular Cost and Charge of the Right Worshipfull 
 and Ancient Society of the Haberdashers. With an E.\plication of the severall 
 Shews and Devices. By John Squire. 410, 1620. 
 
 At the House of the Right Honourable Sir Francis Jhones, the first Entertain- 
 ment at the first Great Feast preparde to giue Welcome to his Owne Noble 
 Fraternitie the Company of Haberdashers. 1620. 
 
 This forms part of a volume in 8vo, by Thomas Middleton, entitled Honorable Entcrtainmtnts 
 Composde for the Sent ice 0/ this Noble Cittie^ 1621. 
 
 Londons lus Honorarium. Exprest in sundry Triumphs, pageants, and shewes : 
 At the Initiation or Entrance of the Right Honourable George Whitmore, into 
 the Maioralty. . . . AH the charge and expence of the laborious proiects 
 and obiects, both by Water and Land, being the sole vndertaking of the Right 
 Worshipfull the society of the Habber-dashers. By Thomas Heywood. 4to, 
 163 1. 
 
 Londini Artium et Scientiarum OrigO : London's Fountain of Arts and Sciences ; 
 expressed in sundry Triumphs, Pageants and Shews, at the Initiation of the 
 Right Honourable Nich. Raynton, in the Majoralty of the famous and far- 
 renowned City of London. AH the Charge and Expense of the Laborious Projects- 
 both by Sea and Land, being the sole Undertaking and Charge of the Right 
 Worshipfull Company of Haberdashers. Written bv Thomas Heywood. 4to, 
 .632. 
 
 Londini Speculum; or, London's Mirror, expresst in sundry Triumphs, Pageants, 
 and Shewes, at the Initiation of the Right Honorable Richard Fenn, into the 
 Maioralty. . . . All the Charge and Expence . . . being the sole under- 
 taking of the Right Worshipful Company of the Habberdashers. By Thomas 
 Heywood. 410, 1637.
 
 292 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 London's TrilimpllS : Celebrated the 29th of October, 1664 ; in Honour of the truly 
 Deserver of Honour, Sir John Lawrence, Knight, Lord Maior of the Honourable 
 City of London ; and performed at the Costs and Charges of the Worshipful 
 Company of Haberdashers. Written by John Tatham, Gent. 4to, 1664. 
 
 The TriumpllS of London. For the Inauguration of the Right Honourable Sir 
 Richard Levett, K' Lord Mayor of the City of London. Containing A De- 
 scription of the Pageants, together with the Public Speeches, and the whole 
 Solemnity of the Day. Performed on Monday the 30th Day of October, Anno 
 1699. All set forth at the proper Cost and Charge of the Honourable Company 
 of Haberdashers. Published by Authority. [By Elkanah Settle.] Folio, 1699. 
 
 Ube Saltcrs. 
 
 The universal practice of fasting, which prevailed in our country in 
 Popish times, not only in Lent, but on Wednesdays and Fridays, and 
 on special occasions fixed either by the Church or the Government, 
 assisted in rendering the vocation of a Salter a very busy and profitable 
 one. But he also derived much advantage from the indispensable 
 storage of winter provision and from the constant and large demand 
 for salted victual for the Navy and Merchant Services. The consump- 
 tion of salt fish in former days was unquestionably enormous ; and 
 where our vessels of all kinds occupied in their passage from place to 
 place an infinitely longer period, and victualling stations or depots were 
 scarcely known, the dependence of every class of seafarer on cured fish 
 and meat was almost complete. 
 
 It might not be rash to set back to the remotest antiquity the exist- 
 ence of this craft as a Brotherhood in some shape or other. In the 
 Household Expenses of Edward I. a Salter is mentioned as one of the 
 officers of the kitchen ; and at that time it seems to have been usual to 
 serve up the fish during Lent in the form of bread or loaves. Salmon, 
 herring, sturgeon, eels, are named among the sorts so treated. This
 
 THE SALTERS. 293 
 
 description of viand was placed on the tabic at breai<fast as well as at 
 dinner in the houses of the nobility ; and its exclusive use throughout 
 the country at stated seasons supplies us with an estimate of the 
 aggregate sale of the article. 
 
 The Salters obtained a patent, n Edward III., granting them, in 
 common with the members of the trade elsewhere, certain liberties ; 
 and in the following year the London Fraternity itself received letters of 
 protection. According to the official return, they sent members to re- 
 present them on the Common Council in 1376. In 1394 they had the 
 grant of a Livery from Richard II., with the confirmation of his grand- 
 father's patent; and in 3 and 24 Henry VI., and 3 Edward IV., their 
 privileges were again renewed by inspeximus. The instrument of 1 394 
 is of this importance and interest, that it shews the Fraternity to have 
 been then known as established and existing under the name of the 
 Brotherhood of Corpus Christi in All Hallows, Bread Street. 
 
 It happened in 1454, previously to this last concession, that under 
 the will of Thomas Beamond, Citizen and Salter, and sometime Sheriff 
 of London, he left to the Wardens of the Brotherhood and their 
 successors in perpetuity land in Bread Street, on which stood at that 
 time the Hall of the said Gild and other property, of the proceeds of 
 which some were to be applied to the repair or restoration of the said 
 premises, and part to superstitious and charitable uses in connection 
 with the Salters. There was a suit at law at some subsequent date to 
 establish that Beamond intended the religious body to be benefited 
 by his dispositions ; but judgment was given that the Gild of Corpus 
 Christi and the Salters were one and the same. 
 
 At the Dissolution of religious houses under Henry VIII. there was 
 the usual surrender to the Crown or its nominees of all the property held 
 to superstitious uses, according to the language of the time ; and this 
 escheat was followed by the redemption of such possessions at a con- 
 siderable price. Whoever was actually responsible for these proceedings 
 was responsible for an act of sheer robbery and fraud. 
 
 In the first of Elizabeth, July 20, 1558, the Salters obtained en- 
 larged powers, including a licence to hold and grant real property, 
 and to exercise the right of search within the Freedom, and were con- 
 stituted a body corporate and public, and one perpetual commonalty, 
 with two Wardens on the same footing as other bodies corporate within 
 the City ; and in 2 James I. all existing rights and privileges were 
 acknowledged by inspeximus, and for the first time the Executive is 
 amplified by the appointment, in addition to the two Wardens, of a 
 Master and twenty-four Assistants. The charter, which may be treated 
 as the earliest complete institution of the Company, nominated the
 
 294 THE c;reat companies. 
 
 Master, Wardens, and Court, and fixed the elections thereafter for the 
 Monday sevennight following Trinity Sunday, vesting the function in 
 the Livery ; the Assistants were to hold their places for life, unless they 
 were removed on some reasonable ground. 
 
 The Salters contributed to the purchase of the Irish Plantation in 
 1613, and are one of the few Companies which still keep their interest. 
 They have laid out large sums in improvements since 1853, when a 
 ninety-nine years' lease of the whole, granted by them, expired. In 1876 
 they acquired the Saddlers' share for 33,000/., and in 1879 the Dyers', 
 for 50,000/., both amounts payable by instalment over fifteen or twenty 
 years. 
 
 In 1620, some controversy having arisen respecting property held by 
 the Company in the City, owing to alterations or misdescriptions of 
 names and particulars, letters patent were purchased for 600/ from 
 James I., vesting all such estate in the Master, Wardens, and other 
 governors, the title notwithstanding, to be held bj- them and their 
 successors for ever in free burgage. 
 
 As early as 6 Henry V. (1418) the Court of Aldermen ordained that 
 two Salters, who had purchased salt within the City bounds, should sell 
 it at cost price for the common good. This was a species of benevolence 
 in kind akin to those which the Crown exacted in money. But as one 
 at least of the parties involved was a prominent and rich man, the pro- 
 ceeding was possibly a matter of mutual understanding at some moment 
 of scarcity. 
 
 The Salters, however, shared the fate of the other Gilds in having 
 to contend against the arbitrary exercise of authority on the part of 
 the Crown and its dependents. In 161 1 Sir George Bruce obtained a 
 patent for the manufacture of White Salt to supply Lynn, Boston, and 
 Kingston-upon-Hull on better terms than former holders, and he re- 
 presented that he was employing i,ooo hands in the business. The 
 Company was consulted, and delivered their certificate ; but it does 
 not appear what was its purport. 
 
 Such, with the exception of a charter of James II. (1684-5), which 
 temporarily abridged the franchises and powers of the Salters, but was 
 revoked by the Act of William and Mary, is the brief history of this 
 Gild in its relationship to the Crown during two centuries and a half 
 
 Three sets of Ordinances are said to have been framed by the Salters 
 prior to 1507, namely: (i) Ordinances of the Salters; (2) Ordinances 
 between the Masters and Servants of the Mistery of Salters ; (3) Ordi- 
 nances of the Salters and Tallow Chandlers ; (4) Ordinances of the 
 Salters (7 Edward IV.). In 1507 a fifth set of Articles was approved 
 by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, and the two Chief Justices,
 
 THE SALTL'.RS. 
 
 295 
 
 in which the Company is described as the Wardens and Fellowship of 
 the mistcry and craft of Salters in the City of London, and Kcc|)ers 
 of the Fraternity of Corpus Christi in the Church of All Hallows, Bread 
 Street. 
 
 James I., by his charter in the second year of his reign, permitted the 
 governing body to make bye-laws, provided that they were reasonable 
 and not contrary to the laws of England — a stipulation made as far 
 back as Henry VI., and formulated by Act of Parliament, 19 Henry 
 VH. The Articles were again approved by the Lord Chancellor and 
 Judges in 1676. 
 
 The arms of the Company were originally granted by Thomas Benoist 
 Clarencieux in 1530, John Cage and Christopher Webbe being then 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 Wardens ; and the original document is preserved among the archives. 
 The crest and supporters were added by Robert Cooke Clarencieux in 
 1587. In the " Heralds' Visitation of London" by Sir Henry St. George 
 in 1634, and again in 16S7, they were approved, as appears from the 
 certificate of the Clerk of the Gild attached to the latter. Some doubt 
 has been expressed as to the true intention and significance of the 
 supporters, which have been variously explained and indeed drawn as 
 otters, ounces, and lions. But there can be little question that the otter, 
 which was with peculiar fitness associated with a body so primarily 
 interested in fish, is at any rate the correct symbol. 
 
 The particulars obtainable of the successive Halls of the Salters are 
 .sufficiently scanty and imperfect. There is not much risk in assuming
 
 296 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 that their first home or place of meeting was in Bread Street, and 
 that in 1 394, when they acquired a somewhat extended patent from 
 Richard II., they already possessed on that spot, unless they assembled 
 in the church itself or in the vestry, some convenience for trans- 
 acting business and accommodating muniments. It seems, however, 
 to be a matter of clear record that, at some date antecedent to 1454, 
 when, as we have noted, Beamond left them the fee, the Fellowship had 
 actually built a house independent of the church. Beamond is said to 
 have erected on the same ground during his life the six tenements for 
 almspeople, equally left to his brethren ; and possibly he was the founder 
 of the Hall itself. Herbert found among the books two papers, one 
 belonging, as it is supposed, to 1394, and containing a receipt for a game 
 pasty at Christmas, and the other the bill of fare at a feast in 1506, 
 when fifty of the Company were present. 
 
 In 1539 this structure was so seriously damaged by a fire, that it was 
 found necessary to rebuild it. In the will of Sir Ambrose Nicholas, 
 Salter and sometime Lord Mayor, another benefactor of the Gild, the 
 second edifice is specified as " the common Hall of the said Wardens 
 and Commonalty, called Salters' Hall in Bread Street ; " it was totally 
 destroyed by fire in 1598. There is explicit testimony that the same 
 site was used once more, and served the Company, until in 1641, having 
 purchased of Captain George Smith and Catherine his wife, " the great 
 house," called London Stone, or Oxford House, otherwise O.xford Place, 
 through their feoffees,^ they transferred themselves in due course thither. 
 
 Oxford House had been at one epoch the town inn or residence of 
 the Priors of Tortington, in Sussex ; and in the rear were two houses, 
 where Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley used to live, and 
 might have once been seen in consultation in the garden, while the 
 mansion belonged to the Earl of Oxford. Before it passed to the 
 Smiths, Alderman Stapylton lived there. 
 
 What amount of reconstruction Oxford Place underwent at the hands 
 of its new owners, in the face of their different requirements, we do not 
 hear. But the old Hall in Bread Street probably continued for some 
 time to be used ; and the committee appointed to organize the trained 
 bands of the City are mentioned as meeting there from 1641 to 1643. 
 Even after its desertion by the Company, it preserved its former appella- 
 tion, as we find the Judges holding sittings in the Hall so late as 1654. 
 
 The building, being the fourth, in which the Company had made their 
 seat, perished in 1666, and was replaced by a small structure of brick, 
 the ancient garden still remaining ; and finally, in 1821, the whole of the 
 
 riic fine was paid in Hilary Term, 16 Charles I.
 
 TlIK SALTERS. 
 
 297 
 
 materials in situ were sold b}- auction to make room for a new and 
 the present place of assembly, which was not completed till 1827. The 
 almshouses were more recently (1863) removed to Watford. 
 
 lukrarv notices. 
 
 A Proclamation for tlie maintenance and exercise of the Mines of Saltpeter, and tlie 
 true making of Gunpowder. 1625. A broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation for preservation of Grounds for making of Saltpeter, and to restore 
 such grounds as are now destroyed, and to command Assistance to be given to 
 His Maicsties Saltpeter-makers. 14 March, 1633-4. A broadside. 
 
 A Draught of the Contract about Salt, on the behalf of Nicholas Murford ; also 
 a Proposition made by Thomas Horth, Merchant, and other owners of Salt-pans 
 at South and North Shields, and another Petition on the behalf of the Town of 
 great Yarmouth. [1638-9.] A broadside petition to Parliament. 
 
 A true Remonstrance of the state of the Salte-business, undertaken (for the furnish- 
 ment thereof between IJarwick and Pool with the lie of Wight and members 
 inclusive) by the Societie of Salt-makers of South and North Shields, and of 
 Scotland. [1638.] A broadside. 
 
 Tracts Consisting of Observations about the Saltness of the Sea. By the Honourable 
 Robert Boyle, F.R.S. 8vo, 1674. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANT. 
 
 Descensus Astraeae: The Device of a Pageant borne before M. William Web, Lord 
 Mayor of the City of London, on the Day he took his Oath, being the 29 of 
 October, 1591. Whereunto is annexed, a Speech delivered by one clad like a 
 Sea Nymph, who presented a Pinnace on the Water, bravely rigged and manned, 
 to the Lord Mayor, at the time he took Barge to go to Westminster. Done by 
 G. Peele, Master of Arts in Oxford. 4to, 1591. 
 
 Reprinted in the editions of Peele. 
 
 c.c. 38
 
 298 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 ■n;be Jroiimonocrs. 
 
 PRESENT ARMS. 
 
 The venerable antiquity of this Craft Gild is deducible from the 
 existence of the art of working iron, which was a legacy to us from our 
 Roman conquerors and civilizers. The Forest of Dean, in Gloucester- 
 shire, appears to have been one of the earliest fields of activity in this 
 direction ; and the mineral riches of that region were discovered or 
 
 EARLY ARMS (FROM STOW, 1633 
 
 recognised by the Romans. But the London market, in the earliest 
 times of which there is any clear and continuous record, was supplied
 
 TiiK ironmongp:r.s. 299- 
 
 with products in this valuable metal by the furnaces of the Wealds, 
 which enjoyed the advantage of proximity and short water-transit, 
 so peculiarly great in the case of heavy goods. We are aware that, 
 later forward, there was even an attempt to soar to a higher pitch at 
 Buxted, in Sussex, where a cannon-foundry was established, but did 
 not prosper. 
 
 The first extant direct reference to the iron trade between London and 
 the Wealds of Sussex, Surrey and Kent is, as not unfrequently happens, 
 the result of some exposure of an abuse ; and we have to consider our- 
 selves under obligations as historians to these irregularities, which so 
 introduce to our knowledge and study features and elements 
 of commercial life which would otherwise, perhaps, have 
 maintained still longer and further the undisturbed tenor 
 of their existence. 
 
 According to the Libcv Horn, under 1300, complaint was 
 made in the Chamber of London to the Court of Alder- 
 men, that the smiths of the Wealds and other merchants 
 brought down the iron parts of cart-wheels to London of 
 much shorter dimensions than formerly, to the great loss 
 and scandal of the whole trade of ironmongers ; and this 
 proceeding immediately throws light on the fact that 
 Wardens or overseers of the Craft were then in vogue, and 
 consisted of three persons, an Ironmonger of the Bridge, 
 who doubtless superintended the process of unlading from 
 
 <^ 
 
 ships in the Pool or at the wharves, and two of the Market, ^ , \ 
 
 who exercised surveillance over goods brought from all '' 
 
 quarters and over the multifarious incidence of quality y 
 
 and measurement, purchase and sale. 
 
 These officials possessed a standard rod, sealed by the A^ 
 
 Chamber, for the verification of all iron-work belonging 
 to cart-wheels ; and the Chamber kept two duplicates of "^'^marks.^"^ 
 the same. 
 
 We depend, as usual, on retrospective inference in our formation of 
 an estimate of the growth of the Craft and its initiation as a Gild. We 
 see, in the first place, that the accidental glimpse under 1300 reveals 
 the industry in an advanced stage of development, and in possession of 
 some kind of executive government, namely, two Wardens of the Market 
 and (subordinated to them, as we collect from a document of 33 Henry 
 VI.) one of London Bridge. Now, it is curious that among the eighteen 
 Gilds fined in 1 180 are two designated Gilds of Bridge, oi which we 
 may perhaps take the present to be one and the Pursers the other. 
 But there was a great disparity in their relative importance ; for the
 
 300 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 first paid only one mark, while the second, of which Robert Wood was 
 Aldernrian, paid ten. The minor body, if our guesswork is worth 
 anything, would be the Pursers of the Bridge, who merged in the 
 Leathersellers. 
 
 There is room for suspicion that so important a vocation, comprising 
 a large and profitable traffic, and numbering among its followers men 
 who rose to the highest civic honours, did not remain till the second 
 half of the fifteenth century, the date of its first charter, destitute of 
 some patent or grant from the Crown to protect its external interests, 
 and to facilitate and legalize its management. In 1348 the Ironmongers 
 sent, by virtue of a precept from the Mayor, four " good people, the 
 wisest and most sufficient, to represent them at the Common Council. 
 In 1376, they deputed a similar number ; and meanwhile, in 1363, they 
 subscribed 6/. 18s. 4^. toward the French war. From the middle to the 
 latter end of this century, the Gilds or Misteries, owing to their develop- 
 ment and local centralization, had obtained a principal share in the 
 electoral power, and down to 1384 returned most of the officers and 
 dignitaries of the City. In the last year of Edward III. they numbered 
 forty-eight without any settled order of precedence. Their relative 
 consequence and weight are ascertained by the graduated scale of repre- 
 sentation, which varied from six to two. The Ironmongers are the 
 thirty-fifth on the roll, and sent four councillors. 
 
 These various particulars and indications combine to prove the solid 
 position of the Ironmongers as a voluntary body under two Wardens, 
 when, in 1464, they obtained their parent charter from Edward IV., and 
 cause a passing surprise that they should have waited so long before 
 they took steps to place themselves on a footing of equality with the 
 other Fraternities ; when it is made clear by the preceding official 
 entries that they took high rank among the misteries, and were 
 influentially represented at the Common Council. 
 
 By this instrument, in which the Gild is specified as " our well- 
 beloved and faithful liegemen, all the freemen of the mistery and art of 
 Ironmongers of our City of London and suburbs 
 thereof," it was constituted in effect and name one 
 body and one Commonalty corporate for evermore, 
 of one Master and two Keepers or Wardens, and 
 the Commonalty ; and Richard Flemming, Alderman 
 and past Warden, was hereby appointed the first 
 COMMON SEAL. Mastcr, and Nicholas Maxhall and Robert Toke 
 
 the first Wardens, with perpetual succession, a licence in mortmain 
 to the extent of ten marks a year, the power of pleading and being 
 impleaded, the use of a common seal, and the right of holding law-
 
 THE IRONMONGERS. 301 
 
 fill assemblies and making ordinances not prejudicial to the laws 
 and the prerogative. 
 
 Contrary to the usual practice, this (Company is largely governed by 
 bye-laws anterior to its first charter, namcl)', by the Articles granted in 
 •45S> 23 Henry VI. By this code it was laid down that thirteen persons, 
 beside the Wardens, made a quorum ; that the Yeomanry should pay 
 their quarterages four times a year ; that persons nominated Stewards 
 should be fined 10/. for refusal; that the Wardens, once a year or oftcner, 
 should make search of weights and measures ; that persons admitted 
 to the Livery should pay 6s. 8d. for their pattern, and wear such decent 
 apparel as the Wardens might approve, and other normal details. 
 
 There were, in addition to these ordinances for the Gild at large, "The 
 Orders of the Yeomanry;" for, as we find, the freemen were so termed in 
 this, as well as in the Merchant Taylors' body ; and the younger sort of 
 liverymen were similarly designated 
 Baclielors. There was also a Capi- 
 tulary, or set of rules for the officers 
 of the Gild, from the Senior Warden 
 to the Under Beadle's wife. About 
 1590 the Beadle is said to have under 
 
 , . , , , , , , ELECTION GAKI.AND. 
 
 his care the velvet garlands cm- 
 ployed in elections and five tobacco dishes. The bye-laws were re- 
 newed and enlarged in 1498, and supplementary clauses from time to 
 time added. 
 
 In 1456 Lancaster Herald granted "to the honourable Craft and 
 Fellowship of the franchised men of Ironmongers of the City of London 
 a token of arms," namely, a chevron, gules, set between three gads of 
 steel, a/.ure, on the chevron three swivelles of gold, with two lizards 
 proper, encoopcd with gules on the helmet. 
 
 The original inaxiimim imposed on the Iromnongers' licence in 
 mortmain had been ten marks a year, which was gradually extended 
 to 300/., and under the charter of James II. was made unlimited. 
 But the Company obtained special licences to buy lands for Betton's 
 estate, to 1,000/. a year value, and for Geffery's estate to a similar 
 amount. 
 
 By none of its charters has the Company acquired the right of search ; 
 and in cases where abuses existed in the trade, it was bound to have 
 recourse to the Court of Aldermen to take the initiative in the matter. 
 Other of these bodies were similarly situated ; and the question was 
 more than once raised as to the constitutional right to confer this power, 
 insomuch that we meet with cases where our Kings, having granted a 
 ■Gild the right, subsequently retracted it. But a great deal of uncer-
 
 302 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 tainty and irregularity prevailed on the point, and the inquisitorial func- 
 tion, when trade became less exclusive, often led to unforeseen friction 
 and inconvenience through the claim of one craft to exercise in such a 
 respect a supervision over another, or where, as in one peculiar instance, 
 authority was temporarily vested in the Haberdashers to control the 
 Fishinongers. 
 
 A curious incident, which may be thought to reflect honourably on 
 the Ironmongers, happened upon the occasion of the great dearth of 
 1 597. when an Order in Council enjoined a suspension for that year 
 of all expenditure on civic entertainments, and the money, which such 
 festive indulgences would have involved, was to be applicable to the 
 relief of the poor, and to be collected by Thomas Wood and Richard 
 Wright, Citizens and Ironmongers, on behalf of all the Companies of 
 London. 
 
 The estimation of the ranks of the Ironmongers is affected by the 
 principle that all members of the Livery belong to the Court or governing 
 body, from which the Master and Wardens are annually chosen. There 
 are only therefore the Livery and the Freemen or Yeomanry. At one 
 time women were admitted to the freedom. 
 
 In 1502 the Livery is given as 25. In 1524 the Yeomanry are re- 
 turned at 56, and in 1537 the "Freemen householders" at 59. In the 
 official lists of 1699 and 1724 the Liverymen are stated to amount to 
 100 and 109. In 1882 the Freemen numbered 156, and the Livery 
 
 52.' 
 
 A reference to the municipal and other returns between 1469 and 
 1629 shew this body in the possession of a more than average stability 
 of position. In the first-named year it supplied forty guards for the 
 City gates, and in 1 502 and 1 509 appears as the eighth Company ; but 
 in 1515 it was officially set back to its present rank as the tenth. 
 Through the reigns of the earlier Stuarts it seems to have well main- 
 tained its ground.- 
 
 The Yeomanry, as early as 1497, prayed the Company to be permitted 
 to have their own executive in the shape of two Wardens, to whom they 
 might paj' eightpence a year each man for the expense of government 
 and for a feast on the day of Corpus Christi. At what precise date the 
 demand was conceded is not quite certain ; but the petitioners gained 
 their object, and separate Ordinances, as well as Wardens, for them were 
 provided. 
 
 ' According to Whitaker, the Livery in 1892 was reduced to forty-two. 
 
 - In 1603-4 the Ironmongers were assessed at 17/. 12s. toward the reception of 
 James I., and in 1629 it contributed 76/. igs. 6cf. to the expenses attendant on the 
 coronation of his son.
 
 THE IRONMONGERS. 3O3 
 
 The regulations for the Liver)' and choice of vesture were passed in 
 the time of Edward IV., just at the time when the charter was received. 
 The main principle was, that no change in the pattern or colour was 
 to be made without the assent of the whole Company ; and four 
 persons of the Livcr\- were to accompany the Wardens to the draper's 
 shop or to Blackwell Hall, to witness the purchase of the material. 
 A new suit was customary every third year, and, as with the other Com- 
 panies, the colour generally underwent a change from time to time. It 
 is noticeable that the Chaplain's gown and hood cost 2/. 6s. gd., six or 
 seven times as much as those of an ordinary liveryman. 
 
 The earliest Ironmonger who ser\'ed as Sheriff was William D\'ke- 
 man, in 1368. Sir Richard Marlow, Citizen and Ironmonger, filled the 
 mayoralty in 1410 and 1417. In 1442, Sir John Hatherley, Ironmonger, 
 was Maj-or. In 1566, Sir Christopher Draper, a benefactor, and in 1609, 
 Sir Thomas Campbell or Cambcll, filled the office. 
 
 Of the more eminent members of the Company we may specify 
 Robert Byfield, Sheriff in 1479, Merchant of the Staple, Richard Cham- 
 berlain, Citizen and Ironmonger, one of the Sheriffs, a Merchant 
 Adventurer and of the Muscovite Company, interred at St. Martin's, 
 Ironmonger Lane, in 1562, and Sir James Campbell, Mayor in 1629, and 
 son of Sir Thomas above-mentioned, to whom his brethren were under 
 obligations for important charitable bequests. Of these his clerk, 
 Edward Browne, who is known as a verse-writer and pamphleteer of 
 the Civil War era, has left a curious account and remembrance in a 
 little volume quoted below. The celebrated Beckford, author of Vathek, 
 was an Ironmonger, and served the Mayoralty in 1752 ; and the Master 
 of the Company in 1769 was John Shakespear Esquire, Alderman, and 
 Rope-maker at Stepney, where his Walks were long famous. 
 
 The Ironmongers once followed, in common with the Grocers, Fish- 
 mongers and Carpenters, a dramatic usage at the election of their Wardens, 
 as we may remember from a passage in Evelyn's Diary, when he was 
 present at the banquet on the following day in 167 1. On August 20, 
 on the eve of the Council Feast — at first each fifth year, then in alternate 
 years, and finally, in and after 1527, year by year — a Court of the whole 
 Fellowship was called together, and proceeded to nominate a Master and 
 six other persons, from whom the old Wardens selected two at their 
 discretion as their successors ; and the next day, when the feast was, the 
 old Wardens crowned the new with garland.s. The re-election of the 
 Wardens for a second term of office was in 1527 left to the pleasure of 
 the Master. 
 
 The practice and solemnity were formerly picturesque enough. At the 
 dinner, the old Wardens at a given juncture rose and left the room, and
 
 304 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 shortly returned, with the Beadle bearing the garlands for the new 
 officers, and minstrels playing before them ; and, making obeisance to 
 the Master, the Wardens delivered to him the garlands, that he might 
 place them on the heads of certain there present, esteemed by him 
 the most worshipful. The coronation of the Master and Wardens elect 
 then followed. 
 
 The Ironmongers have suffered this custom to fall into desuetude. 
 
 The law of analogy warrants an hypothesis, if not a conclusion, that 
 the Ironmongers sheltered themselves, agreeably to the usage and feel- 
 ing of primitive times, under the protection of St. Martin's, Ironmonger 
 Lane, while they yet remained a voluntary Society of Corpus Christi, 
 and possibly met in the church or church-house, before they acquired a 
 residence there or elsewhere. 
 
 The first recorded obit performed on behalf of a member belongs to 
 151 1, however ; and in 1479 the Company was already in its quarters in 
 Fenchurch Street, which it may have made a special exertion to acquire 
 upon incorporation thirty years previous. 
 
 The most ancient seat of the Ironmongers was by general allowance 
 in the lane leading out of West-Cheap or Cheapside, which still retains 
 its proprietary name ; and the adjoining churches of St. Olave, Old 
 Jewry, and St. Martin, Ironmonger Lane, received the ashes of many 
 of the early members of the Fraternity from the reign of Edward III. to 
 that of James I. ; long prior to which latter epoch, however, the settle- 
 ment of the trade had been removed to the neighbourhood of the river, 
 and its place of assembly and business was on the existing site in 
 Fenchurch Street, in the parish of All Hallows Staining. 
 
 The original colony in Ironmonger Lane, beneath the shadow of St. 
 Martin's, necessarily rendered that precinct, during its lengthened 
 tenancy, busy, populous and noisy, and involved the possession by those 
 of the Craft of an extensive area for their warehouses, yards, and shops, 
 where they kept the stock of manufactured goods brought from the 
 foundries, and sold them by retail and wholesale. It was much the 
 same with them as with the Soap-makers in Sopers' Lane opposite. 
 As space in the City became more in demand, and the observance of 
 order in the streets grew stricter, they found it convenient to emigrate 
 riverward, where accommodation was more ample, and cartage was 
 saved. 
 
 The most ancient indication of the present site of the Hall is a grant 
 to Richard Attemerke in 1344 by Robert de Kent, Citizen and Horse- 
 merchant of London, and Felicia his wife, daughter and heiress of John 
 Rosemound, Citizen, of a vacant plot of ground surrounded by their 
 tenements, with a certain part of a certain great gate and a solar built
 
 TllK IRONMONGERS. 305 
 
 thereon, opposite the highway of Aldgate Street, on the south side, in 
 the parish of Ail Saints, Staining. These premises passed through 
 several hands before, on the 20th October, 1457, under the will of Alice 
 Stiuard, widow, her executors sold the property, with all its appur- 
 tenances, to Richard FIcmming and others. Citizens and Ironmongers of 
 London. 
 
 One of the earliest steps taken after the purchase was the acquisition 
 of the exemplification of arms from Lancaster Herald ; and another call 
 on the corporate funds was the repair of the premises, which became of 
 course a chronic source of outlay, as well, perhaps, as their adaptation 
 to the wants of the new proprietors. 
 
 The first allusion to a Hall in the parish of All Hallows, Staining, 
 is due, curiously enough, like our first knowledge of the Gild itself, to 
 a matter in dispute. In this case it was a claim for church-dues made 
 upon the Compan)' in respect of their Hall, and after some litigation 
 eventually compromised. 
 
 It was prior to 148 1, seventeen years after the insertion in their 
 charter of a licence in mortmain, that the Company came into posses- 
 sion, by what means or under what circumstances is not stated, of the 
 Manor of Norwood in Middlesex, once appurtenant to the See of 
 Rochester, but formerly attached to the Primate's Manor of Hayes ; and 
 in the year cited the Master of the Ironmongers held his first Court 
 there. This manorial property, which is a peculiar feature in the annals 
 of a Livery Gild, had been granted by the Bishop of Rochester in 1241 
 to Matthew de la Wike in fee farm ; and then and in later records it is 
 valued at seven marks a year, so that it probably, even in 14S1, fell 
 within the powers of the Company under their charter. The scantiest 
 particulars exist on this, which might have formed a very interesting 
 point ; and we merely possess a list of feoffees, members of the Com- 
 pany, who held the estate on its behalf, down to 1580 or thereabout, 
 when it was alienated to Lord Dacre. 
 
 Ironmongers' Hall, as it stood in the Tudor era, occupying the entire 
 area between Fenchurch and Leadenhall Streets with the exception of 
 a few tenements with a frontage to the former, ultimately added by gift, 
 was entered on the Leadenhall side by a gate-house surmounted by a 
 little chamber or solar. The pile was quadrangular, and it contained the 
 large refectory, roofed with lead, with a wooden floor strown with rushes 
 and a wainscot dado ; a little gallery ; a court chamber, partly hung 
 with tapestry and wainscoted ; a stone parlour, a parlour, the counting- 
 house, the great and little garret, the kitchen with a paved entrance, the 
 buttery, the larder, the armoury, and the yard leading to the garden. 
 In the counting-house the books were kept, and oaths were admin- 
 C.C. 39
 
 3o6 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 istered. The smaller garret formed a receptacle for the priest's vest- 
 ments and other canonical requisites. It was apparently the Chaplain's 
 room. 
 
 In the inventory of 1556 we find the following articles specified as 
 part of the furniture and contents : a suit of vestments of cloth of gold, 
 a hearse-cloth or pall of gold in a box, another of black worsted with 
 a white cross of Bruges satin, six dozen of wooden trenchers, a book on 
 which to administer oaths, a dozen silver spoons with lions, weight 16 
 oz., the gift of Mr. Downs ; six cushions of green sey, or silk, with 
 feathers ; two great carpets for the two tables, of tapestry work, one 
 lined ; two pieces of tapestry that hang at one end of the court of 
 entry, a small carpet of tapestry for the window. 
 
 This is a modest stock enough, and seems, among other points, to 
 imply that the collection of plate had not been recovered or redeemed 
 at this time. 
 
 In 1578 the Company formed the project for a new Hall, which was 
 finished in 1587 at an initial cost of nearly 600/. This did not possibly 
 
 encroach much, if at all, on the garden, which 
 was maintained, as the accounts shew, with 
 great care. The ordinary working gardener 
 had S(/. a day for his wages, and the Company 
 found all that was necessary. We perceive 
 that this plot, stretching behind Leadenhall 
 Street and Fenchurch Street, was planted 
 with roses, vines, lavender, marjoram, rose- 
 mary, camomile, and pinks, and that a 
 certain portion was in lawn ; for in 1610 there is mention of mowing 
 the grass and cutting the hedges. In 1656 a penalty was payable by 
 any one drying clothes in the garden. 
 
 For the new Hall the Company gradually bought fresh furniture and 
 other appointments ; and we hear of an old banner with the Ironmongers 
 arms, which had been, no doubt, in the former house ; and an inventory 
 taken in 1643 exhibits a grand advance in all branches of useful and 
 ornamental effects, including a very respectable assemblage of plate, 
 though whether it was the original or a new collection we cannot say. 
 One " ale-pot," presumably of silver, purports, however, to have been a 
 prize in a lottery. But all these lists are open to the suspicion of being 
 imperfect or partial, as others of or about the same period disclose an 
 armoury, an assortment of fine table-linen and pewter, and other symp- 
 toms of comfort and prosperity. 
 
 It is assumed, probably with correctness, that the second Hall on the 
 Fenchurch site had its frontage on the southern, instead of the northern, 
 
 THE HALL ABOUT 1560. 
 It is the building marked lo*
 
 THK IRONMONGERS. 
 
 307 
 
 side, and faced the street as the building does at present ; but it should 
 be added that this course was facilitated by the bequest of Sir 
 Christopher Draper, Mayor in 1566, who left his brethren the land on 
 which the Elizabethan Hall was partly erected, and that the possession 
 of the supplemental ground was an inducement to rebuild with an 
 abuttal nearer to the river. 
 
 In the days of Mary (1556) the armoury possessed seventeen back 
 and breast plates, seventeen sets of splints, twelve gorgets, twelve swords, 
 eleven daggers, white soldiers' coats of kersey with red crosses on them, 
 four coats of russet frieze, corslets, skull-caps, bills, morris-pikes, and 
 sheaves of arrows. 
 
 There was an armourer to keep the articles in proper condition. His 
 fee was 20s. a j-ear. 
 
 U.\U(I .\T lkON.M(jNi;KKS HALL. 
 
 This feature of the Hall, eventually removed, was to a certain extent 
 of a practical character in two respects : in the first place, as illustrati\'e 
 of metal-work, and secondly as containing the weapons and body- 
 furniture, which members of the Fraternity might have occasion to use 
 in ceremonial observances, in their official attendance by rotation upon 
 the City gates, and at critical junctures. The collection of weapons and 
 armour was calculated to equip a dozen men or so ; its scope was 
 municipal. 
 
 We shall find that the Carpenters and others founded a similar insti- 
 tution for their own use. 
 
 The 1587 dining-room is described as furnished with seven long 
 wainscot tables, one mahogany table, six dozen leathern chairs, and five 
 larger chairs for the Master and Wardens ; there were some portraits of 
 benefactors on the walls ; and the windows exhibited commemorative
 
 308 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 coats or shields, which might have been, and indeed doubtless were, 
 transferred from the first house of the Company in this quarter. 
 
 One of the portraits in the windows was a small whole-length of Sir 
 Christopher Draper above-mentioned. 
 
 The Company's noble premises in Fenchurch Street still remain 
 intact, and occupy a considerable area in the rear of the main thorough- 
 fare. Fewer entertainments are now given than of old, and the 
 Company does not possess much plate. It has nothing whatever, we 
 believe, emblematical of the Craft. 
 
 The entries in the Ironmongers' books afford many interesting illus- 
 trations of the part taken by the Company in current public events, and 
 in the tyrannical proceedings of the Crown for the levy of supplies for 
 all sorts of purposes. In 1523 the Company had to deliver part of its 
 plate as security for the speedier payment of the quota toward the sum 
 of 20,000/. peremptorily demanded by Henry from the City, and 
 pawned the remainder, besides handing over the whole of the cash in 
 hand, 25/. 14.S. The expenses of meeting the Queen on her entry into 
 London in 1541 from Greenwich in their barge were nearly 9/., which 
 may have included the refreshments taken on board : a kilderkin of ale, 
 claret, ling, gurnets, fresh salmon, great eels, bread and cheese, and 
 other items. In 1542 the imposing City pageant of setting the Mid- 
 summer Watch on the Eve of St. John the Baptist cost the Gild 38.?. ; 
 and two years later some of the plate had to be again pledged to furnish 
 ten billmen and four archers, fully provided, for the expedition to 
 Boulogne. In 154S 40/. were allotted as the Ironmongers' proportionate 
 amount for storing grain against a season of dearth. 
 
 Other charges appear for repairing the Church of All Hallows, 
 Staining ; for erecting a stand to witness the passage of Mary I. 
 through Cheapside to her coronation in 1554; for "fetching in" of 
 Elizabeth in 155^ ! for the expense of the " May-game" which preceded 
 her Majesty to Greenwich ; for the cost of the Royal Exchange (75/.) ; 
 for supplying men-at-arms and seamen for the Queen's service, at various 
 times from 1562, fully armed and equipped ; for contributing to ten ships 
 of war and a pinnace for the defence of the realm (1591) ; for finding 
 their quota of a loan of 20,000/. to Elizabeth on her bond for six 
 months (1599); and for meeting the fine of 1,000/ levied on the City 
 for negligence in not having discovered the murderers of John Lamb. 
 
 Under 1579 occur two singular remembrances: one being a letter 
 from the Queen herself to the Company, praying them to grant a lease 
 of premises to William Sparke, to which they accede ; and the other, 
 an arrangement under which two Ironmongers and two Grocers were 
 required to station themselves from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Bishopsgate
 
 THE IRONMONGERS. 
 
 509 
 
 to take note of the habits or dress of all persons passing through in 
 the course of the day. 
 
 All through the period of the Civil War, and from the Restoration to 
 the Revolution of 1688, the fortunes of the Ironmongers were more or 
 less chequered and dark. They had absolutely refused to participate 
 in the advance of 200,000/. asked by Charles I. in 1640, to enable him 
 to oppose the Parliament, but subscribed to a loan of 40,000/. for the 
 King's use. In 1665 a new form of internal impost manifests itself in 
 the requisition to the Companies to lay up coal, between Lady-Day and 
 Michaelmas annually, for retailing to the poor below cost price. Then 
 in 1684 came the Quo Warranto. 
 
 It would be difficult to name any device which was not put into force 
 all round for rendering the funds of this and other like bodies little 
 more than fiduciary, whether they chose or not, and for neutralizing any 
 natural tendency on their part to accumulate wealth, save the actual 
 land in fee, which did not represent immediate value. 
 
 WHIFFLER. 
 
 HESCH.MAN. 
 
 In the Preface to the present book we have pointed out how very 
 imperfectly, on more than one account, the printed pageants represent 
 the long series of commemorative solemnities on the occasion of the 
 advent of members of the various Gilds to the mayoralty. Of those 
 Shows, which fall within the time when periodical publication had 
 become, at all events, the rule, there are records among the Companies' 
 muniments, in many instances, where no printed copy has been yet 
 recovered. But the idea of registering such particulars at large does 
 not seem to have been generally adopted, and the somewhat elaborate
 
 3IO 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 description of the Ironmongers' spectacle for 1566, for Sir Christopher 
 Draper, may therefore be worth noticing in detail. 
 
 We start with the singular fact that the contract for supplying the 
 twenty boats and their crews, and the music, all properly fitted and 
 equipped, was accepted by John Candish, haberdasher, at 10/. There 
 were to be two trumpeters, a drum and a flute, eight single and eight 
 double basses, and squibs sufficient for the time. Candish was evident!}' 
 expected to attend, as two ells of sarcinet are allowed for his cassock, 
 and los. in money for his hose, and he was to wear a silk night-cap and 
 a scarf The master and gunner of the foist, from which the salutes 
 and fireworks were sent, were also dressed in sarcinet cassocks, silk 
 night-caps, and scarves. The torches were furnished by Richard 
 Sharpe, wax-chandler. They were an ell long, and cost i^s. the dozen. 
 Richard Baker, painter-stainer, agreed at 16/. for the carpenter's and 
 painter's work, and to have 4.0s. more, if necessary. 
 
 The banners and streamers of course formed a prominent feature in 
 the display and in the expense. There were two long streamers of 
 crimson taffeta, twenty-four trumpet-banners, a banner with the Mayor's 
 arms, another with the Queen's, and many more. 
 
 Mention occurs of the apparel borrowed for the 
 children from Thomas Giles of Lombard Street, pro- 
 bably an upholder ; of the breakfast given to the 
 children before the business of the day, by the good 
 man of the Be// in Carter Lane, where they were lodged 
 and dressed ; of the drink given to the children at the 
 Be// in Mincing Lane ; of the subsequent erection of 
 the pageant in the Company's Hall, and of the payment 
 for the white staves borne by the whifflers, who cleared 
 the way before the Show, and were frequently members 
 of other Companies. 
 
 John Tailor, master of Westminster School, accepted 
 
 40^. for his pains and cost in sending six of his boys 
 
 to take part in the procession. The Lieutenant of the 
 
 Tower contributed the ordnance, ammunition, and arms, 
 
 CRESSET. probably for a consideration. The device of the pageant 
 
 was written by James Peele,' who had 30^'. as his fee. 
 
 Sixteen of the junior members or bachelors of the Company attended 
 
 in satin cassocks, crimson satin hoods, and furred gowns. Thirty more 
 
 wore gowns furred with budge, coats or cassocks of satin or damask, 
 
 ' Probably the father of George Peele the dramatist. He is also known as the 
 author of a work on Book-keeping, 1553, 1569. He was possibly a glover, either by 
 rade or freedom, as he supplied seven pairs at 6tf. a pair for the children.
 
 THE IRONMONGERS. 
 
 3'i 
 
 and the same hoods. Stewards were appointed, to sec that all these 
 had their breakfasts against the starting-time. 
 
 The pageant was carried by porters, for whom hogsheads were placed 
 at intervals to enable them to lay their burden down occasionally. 
 
 The several members of the Company paid their proportion toward 
 the charges, and also sent in their plate to embellish the table at the 
 banquet. 
 
 The total cost was 63/. i \s. 8(/. 
 
 I.UKIJ MAVOk S .SHOW. 
 Wild or Greenwood Men clearing the way. 
 
 In the time of Elizabeth, the vast and increasing demand for wood- 
 fuel for domestic purposes was held to justify legislation in order to 
 preserve for the use of the City and suburbs all timber within twenty-two 
 miles of the metropolis, and to prohibit the erection of any new furnaces, 
 mills, or forges inside that radius, with a special exemption of the 
 woods of Christopher Darrell, gentleman, in the parish of Newdigate, 
 Surrey, who had planted for the use of his own works there. Two years 
 later, a second statute was enacted to prohibit the establishment of any 
 new foundries, even in the Wealds, on account of the great number 
 already thereabout, and possibly, besides, in view of the large quantities 
 of imperfectly smelted ore, which improvements in the bloomeries 
 gradually enabled the undertakers to re-smelt with profit 
 
 No explicit account seems to be discoverable of the position and 
 origin of the London Locksmith. The Continent, especially Antwerp, 
 supplied us in ancient days with locks, as well as with chests of safety 
 for treasure. But there were necessarily native craftsmen in this kind of
 
 312 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 industry from a very remote date ; and they were in the time of the 
 Plantagenets known as Lockyers. In a sworn inventory of goods under 
 1356 two of this trade appear on the inquest. The Lockyers probably 
 formed a branch of the Ironmongers, but never attained sufficient num- 
 bers and influence to aspire to a separate constitution. Down to a much 
 later period, the bolt did duty for both methods of fastening doors and 
 apartments, and strong-boxes were principally imported. 
 
 The Ironmongers have practically sold their Irish estate, of which the 
 income had recently declined. There is no doubt that delay was 
 prejudicial in this case to realization. In the account of the Scriveners' 
 Company some reference will be found to the sub-share taken by the 
 latter and the misunderstanding which arose in respect of it, as in other 
 analogous cases. The other Companies associated with the Ironmongers 
 were the Brewers, Coopers, Pewterers, and Carpenters. 
 
 As the Skinners christened their manor the manor of PeUipar from 
 their own craft, so the Ironmongers' estate was denominated the 
 Manor of Lizard, from the supporters of their coat of arms, as granted 
 by Lancaster in 1456. 
 
 The reply tendered by the Ironmongers to the inquiry of the Royal 
 Commission of 1880, under the head of Reform, was one which might 
 have been with equal propriety made by most of the other Gilds, 
 certainly by those possessing regular organization. The Clerk, in whose 
 name the Report was forwarded, stated that he knew of no body of men 
 more capable of managing the affairs of the Ironmongers' Company 
 than the members of the Court, who consisted of naval, military, legal, 
 and medical gentlemen, of bankers and merchants, and of persons con- 
 nected with various businesses, many of them landed proprietors, and all 
 qualified by their pursuits and knowledge to decide upon such matters 
 as are brought before them. The accounts, he added, were kept in the 
 clearest and simplest form, and there was no official routine and unne- 
 cessary delays ; and he considered that it would be a great misfortune, 
 if the conduct of the affairs were transferred to a public department. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Metallica; Or the Treatise of Metallica: briefly comprehending the Doctrine of di- 
 verse new Metallical Inventions, but especially how to neale, melt, and worke all 
 kinde of mettle-oares. Irons, and Steeles, with Sea-coale, Pit-coale, Earth-coale, 
 and Brush-fewell. By Simon Sturtevant. 4to, 1612. 
 
 A Treatise of Metallica. But not that which was published by Mr. Simon Sturttvant 
 upon his Patent, which is now by order cancelled and made voyd. Whereupon 
 Privilege by Patent is granted ... to John Rovenzon Esquire for the making 
 of Iron and other Mettals . . . 4to, 1613.
 
 THE IRONMONGERS. 313 
 
 Letters of Deputation, by Willinm Elliots and Matthias Meisey of London, gentle- 
 men, for tlie searching and seizure of all foreign Steel unlawfully imported. 
 March 27, 1627. .V broadside. 
 
 Panzoologicoinineralogia ; Or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals. By 
 Robert I.oveil, of Corpus College, O.xford. 8vo, 1661, 
 
 Dud Dudley's Metallum Martis : Or, Iron made with Pit-coale, Sea-coale, etc. 
 i2nio, 1665. \\'itli a plate. 
 
 Metallogn^aphia ; Oi-, .-Xn Historj- of Metals. By John Webster, Physician and 
 Surgeon. 410, 1671. 
 
 The Art of Metals. By A. A. Barba. Translated in 1669 by the Earl of Sandwich. 
 
 Svo, 1^174, 
 
 Fodinae Regales ; Or the History, Laws, and Places of the Chief Mines, and Mineral 
 Works in England . . . By Sir John Pettus. Folio, 1670. 
 
 Fleta Minor. The Laws of Art and Nature. In Knowing, Judging, Assaying, 
 Fining, Refining, and Inlarging the Bodies of Confin'd Metals. By Sir John 
 Pettus. Folio, 16S6. With engravings. 
 
 An Epitaph on the death of the Vertuous Matrone, the Ladie Maioresse, late wyfe to 
 the Right Honorable Lorde (.A.lexander Auenet) Lord Maior of the Citie of 
 London. Who deceased the vii. Dale of July, 1570. By John Philip. A broad- 
 side. 
 
 An Epitaph on Sir Ale.\ander Avenet. By the same. Entered at Stationers' Hall, 
 July 13, 1580. 
 
 The Whole Life, and Progresse of Henry Walker the Ironmonger. By John Taylor. 
 
 4to, 1642. 
 „*» It may be observed that in Hazlitt's Collections and Noles, 1876-91, are notices of several tracts 
 by Walker, who also wrote under the name of Mercurius Morbicus. 
 
 A rare Paterne of Justice and Mercy ; Exemplified in the many Notable and 
 Charitable Legacies of St. James Cambel Knight, .Alderman of London, deceased : 
 Worthy imitation ... By Edw. Browne. Svo, 1642. 
 Browne was also a member of tlie Ironmongers' Company, and describes himself as sometime 
 
 sen'ant and clerk to Cambel or Campbell. 
 
 Time Well Spent; Or, Opus Ir^ et Labor Benevolentia;, In Seven Bookes. By 
 
 the same. 4to, 1643. With portraits of the Author and his second wife. 
 
 ,% Book IV. contains a list of the Legacies of Sir James Cambel, who was son of Sir Thomas 
 Campbell, Ma)'or in 1609. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS. 
 
 [The Device of the Pageant borne before Sir Christopher Draper, Ironmonger, at his 
 
 initiation into the Mayoralty, 29 October, 1566. \X the cost of the Worshipful 
 
 Company of Ironmongers. By James Peele.] 
 
 No printed copy of this work is known ; but it appears that Peele or Pele received 30^. for it, and 
 
 whereas he also supplied the Company with seven pairs of gloves for the children in the Show at dd. a 
 
 pair, he may have been of the Glover's Company. There is very little doubt that he was the father 
 
 of the dramatist, who received from him his literary bent. 
 
 Like that of 1590, this pageant may hereafter be found. That it was printed is established by the 
 following entry in the Ironmongers' books : 
 
 " Paide to the prynter for printing poses, speeches, and songs, that 
 
 were spoken and songe by the children of y' pagent V." 
 
 Whence we are entitled to infer that the tract was, in the same way as the Fishmongers' above 
 referred to, privately printed for the Company, and perhaps only a few struck off. 
 
 c.c. 40
 
 314 THK GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 Camp-bell, or the Ironmongers' Fair Field, at the installation of Sir Thomas 
 Campbell, October 29, 1609. By Anthony Munday. 4to, i6og. 
 Only a fragment of this pageant is at present known. 
 
 Sideto-Thriambos. Or Steel and Iron Triumphing : Applauding the Advancement 
 of Sir Sebastian Harvey, Knight, to the Dignity of Lord Mayor of London. 
 Taking his seat in the same authority at Westminster on Thursday, being the 
 29th day of October, 1618. Performed in hearty love to him, and at the charges 
 of his kind brethren, the Right Worshipful Company of Ironmongers. Devised 
 and written by A[nthony] M[unday], Citizen and Draper of London. 4to, 
 1618. 
 
 London's Tempo; Or, The Feild of Happiness. In which Feild are planted 
 severall Trees of Magnificence, State, and Beauty, to Celebrate the Solemnity of 
 the Right Honourable James Campebell, at his Inauguration into the Honorable 
 Office of Prffitorship, or Maioralty of London, on Thursday the 29 of October, 
 1629. All the particular Inventions ... At the sole Cost, and liberall 
 Charges of the Right Worshipfull Society of Ironmongers. By Tho. Dekker. 
 4to, 1629. 
 
 Londini Sinus Salutis ; or, London's Harbour of Health and Happiness : Expressed 
 in sundry Triumphs, Pageants, and Shows, at the Initiation of the Right Honour- 
 able Christopher Clethrowe into the maioralty of the far renowned City London. 
 All the charges and expenses of this present ovation being the sole undertaking 
 of the Right Worshipful Company of the Ironmongers, The 29 of October, 
 1635. Written by Thomas Heywood. 8vo, 1635. 
 An interesting and curious account of the negotiation with the Ironmongers' Court for the produc- 
 tion of this show, for which Heywood and another person, named John Christmas, received 180/. 
 inclusive, may be found in the History of the Company by Nichol, edit. 1866, pp. 222-3. The 
 Company was to have 500 copies of the printed account. 
 
 London's Annual Triumph: Performed on Thursday, October, 29, 1685. For the 
 Entertainment of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Jeffieys, Knight, Lord Mayor 
 of the City of London. With a Description of the several Pageants, Speeches, 
 and Songs, made proper for the Occasion. All set forth at the proper Costs and 
 Charges of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers. Composed by Matt. 
 Taubman. Printed and Published by Authority. 4to, 1685.
 
 THE VINTNERS. 
 
 315 
 
 ^be Uintiicrs.' 
 
 The prevalent notion that the followers of certain vocations are limited 
 n their worldly aims to an exceptional extent by the sordid desire of 
 gain, and by the life-long endeavour to conduct a profitable traffic to the 
 vital detriment of the community, has its chief seat of strength in those 
 businesses which concern the sale of liquors of an intoxicating nature ; 
 and this circumstance may be possibly attributable to the survival 
 among us of Puritan traditions and prejudices, coupled with the inevit- 
 able liability of an abuse of stimulants to become a public scandal and 
 a statutory offence. Many misdemeanours and vices of a far graver 
 character have failed to attract the same amount of general notice, or to 
 receive an equal degree of juridical attention, owing to the fact that they 
 fail to come within the official cognisance of the local or other govern- 
 ment of the country. A man may not expose himself in a state of 
 inebriation in the Queen's high-way ; but he may within certain (and 
 very wide) bounds do much worse things in his own house. The sin of 
 drunkenness is, no doubt, a social crime also ; and it is that alike, 
 whether it is committed in view of others or in private, except from 
 two points of view — the mischievous example and the unhappy conse- 
 quences. The legitimate application of drink, however, is vastly in 
 excess of its misuse; and the injury likely to accrue from its suppression 
 must be regarded as infinitely greater, even if we keep the want of equity 
 out of sight, than any benefit which could possibly be received under 
 existing social and sanitary conditions. 
 
 Not merely is it the case that those who have been, and are, engaged 
 in the liquor-traffic suffer from unjust and untrue criticism as regards 
 the political and moral bearings of their occupation ; for we find by 
 looking into ancient records that, among the authors of philanthropic 
 
 ' See a volume entitled : The Vintners' Company, their Muniments, Plate, and 
 Eminent Members, with some Account of the Ward of Vintry. Revised and 
 Edited by Thomas Milbourn, Architect. 4to, 18S8. With Illustrations. The matter 
 represents an enlarged text of Papers originally read by three or four gentlemeu 
 before the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society.
 
 3l6 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 benefactions from remote times, the men who have devoted their hves 
 to this industry and merchandise may claim a distinguished rank ; nor 
 ought we to overlook the fact that their wealth has contributed during 
 centuries, as it does still to-day, to support and cherish that very Church 
 which is so loud in its condemnation of the brewer, the wine-merchant, 
 and the publican — so loud in its condemnation, because it happens to 
 be its cue to see only one side of the question. For otherwise, of course, 
 no amount of money bestowed on alms for ecclesiastical purposes could 
 atone for the evils of intemperance. But every one, who desires to enjoy 
 the reputation of possessing average intelligence, should be willing to 
 allow that society at large is not to be brought down to the standard of 
 the fool or the sot, and that because a proportion of the people cannot 
 restrain their desires, the whole world is not to be debarred from reason- 
 able indulgence and tonic repair, any more than we are to cease to eat 
 grapes because one or two folks have been choked with a grape-stone. 
 
 The trades which at present interest themselves in the importation or 
 manufacture of liquors of various kinds, with all the accessory appliances 
 requisite for their sale and use, have in some cases descended from 
 antiquity, and possess historical records and traditions, while others are 
 of modern growth and of a different constitution. The changes of taste 
 or the progress of science have rendered a few obsolete. We hear no 
 longer of the Homers, who used to be associated with the Bottle-makers, 
 nor of the Pewterers, nor of the Shivers, who carried on for a short time 
 the business of supplying the wine and beer trades with wooden bungs. 
 But, on the other hand, a gigantic unincorporated commerce has arisen 
 by the immense development of the spirit industry, especially in whisky, 
 and by the call for a numerous assortment of miscellaneous beverages, 
 of which the two most important are, perhaps, cider and perry — drinks 
 formerly made on the farm or in the kitchen for domestic consumption. 
 
 Our ancestors, however, almost exclusively applied their attention to 
 the shipment of wine from abroad and to the production of ale and beer ; 
 and we find, as a consequence, that the persons engaged in these callings 
 were the first to seek from the Crown security and encouragement. It 
 was absolutely essential in former times for all who aimed at conducting 
 mercantile transactions with safety and profit to shelter themselves under 
 royal protection, and to forestall competitors. Monopolies were gener- 
 ally recognised, and the prize was to the highest, or at all events to the 
 earliest, bidder. In the same manner as the vassals of a powerful baron 
 grouped themselves round their lord's castle, and looked to him for 
 succour in the hour of need, so the members of a trading fraternity 
 procured their charter, which guaranteed them immunities and privileges, 
 and defined their powers.
 
 THE VINTNERS. 317 
 
 These corporations multiplied, and into their number gradually 
 entered some which were connected, directly or indirectly, with the 
 liquor-business. The Vintners, or, to follow the 
 earlier and more correct orthography, Vintonncrs, 
 took the lead. Their origin is so ancient as to be 
 involved in considerable obscurity ; they formed a 
 large and influential body long before they were 
 formally recognised by letters patent of 37 Edward 
 III. (July 15, 1364), followed by an iiispeximus of 
 the same, 6 Henry VI., November 8th, 1427, and 
 
 ^ > -r / > Qjj^ ARMS. 
 
 they eventually became one of the Twelve Great 
 Livery Companies. It was perhaps fit that the Gild which trafficked in 
 the most dignified and costh- sort of drink should take precedence 
 over the rest. 
 
 This Patent forbad any to trade for wine to Gascony, except such as 
 were enfranchised of the craft of Vintners, and obliged the Gascons, 
 when they imported their wines, to sell them in gross, so as to exclude 
 retailers. It conferred on the Company the right of search over the 
 trade, and four persons were to be annually presented to the Lord Mayor 
 of London or his deputy for approval, and to take the oath, in order to 
 •discharge this dutj', such being no keepers of taverns. These officials 
 were invested with full discretionary power to see that dealers conformed 
 to the law in respect to measures, prices, and other particulars, and to 
 provide for the punishment of defaulters. Stow tells us that the wine 
 measures employed in old times were the gallon, pottle, quart, and pint' 
 
 The vintner did not by any means invariably dispose of his wines 
 absolutely, but consigned them to a taverner or tavern-keeper on sale. 
 This appears in various extant transactions from the fourteenth century. 
 A tavern at the head of London Bridge, in the parish of St. Olave, 
 Southwark, was let by Thomas Drinkwater, a taverner, to James Beau- 
 fleur, Citizen and Vintner, mainly with a view to the retailing by Drink- 
 water of the wines of the other party, and the rendering of a proper 
 account from time to time by the vendor. Twenty shillings were allowed 
 for the gown of Drinkwater ; but he was expected to find necessary 
 furniture and drinking vessels, as hanaps of silver and wood. 
 
 The regulations for the delivery, taxation, and sale of wine in London 
 naturally preceded the existence of any systematic organization for the 
 control of those engaged in the industry, and the protection of the rights 
 
 ' That is to say, for retail transactions. The pipe, tun, and hogshead (oxliide) 
 vere employed for shipments and for sales in gross.
 
 31 8 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 of the Crown and the interests of the community. In 1257 the King 
 claimed to be entitled to prisage from every ship bringing wine into the 
 port of London, and subject to full custom of two tuns, at 40.?. the tun. 
 The earliest vestige of a Gild specially dedicated to this branch of 
 commerce occurs in the shape of the grant of Botolph Wharf in 1282 
 to Henry de Kingston, for the use of the Vintners of London, at a 
 penny rent. 
 
 In 1 301 there were four societies of Wine-Di-cnvcrs in London: the 
 New Meyne, or New Gathering ; the King's ; the Shipup ; and another 
 not named. These bodies, of whose corporate history we only casually 
 and temporarily hear, grew prominent and substantial enough to secure 
 a charter, to which the Vintners offered strenuous opposition, but seem 
 to have eventually merged in the general Gild and vocation. 
 
 The year 131 1 marked an important era in the London wine-trade ; 
 for it witnessed the issue of a writ, whereby none but the King's butler 
 might thenceforth value or buy wines coming by ship toward the City 
 until the same had been unladen and warehoused, with the additional 
 provisos, that, before they were stowed away, each tun should be marked 
 with the gauge mark at both ends, that they should not be touched for 
 three days, and that no wholesale dealer or grosser of wines should be 
 a taverner, or vice verstt Parties utilizing the lees and droppings to the 
 prejudice of health were liable to exemplary punishment. 
 
 The same writ of 4 Edward II. lays down other regulations and re- 
 commendations, and fixes the selling prices for the year at ^d., 4//., and 
 3(/. per gallon, according to quality. 
 
 In 1342, additional regulations and restrictions were set forth by the 
 Corporation, and these were from time to time renewed and augmented. 
 It appears from a precept of 135 1, 25 Edward III., that the mistery 
 had become sufficiently important to send four representatives to the 
 Common Council. In 1364 a signal example was made of a vintner 
 who sold unwholesome wine "in deceit of the common people, in con- 
 tempt of our lord the King," etc. ; he was compelled to drink some of 
 the liquor, the residue being poured over him; and he was disfranchised 
 as a member of the Craft. But at a very early date a distinction was 
 drawn between " unsound and unwholesome wines " and those which 
 were merely " medled " or blended. The latter was an allowable and 
 recognised process. 
 
 In 1370 the Mayor and Court of Aldermen agreed to certain regula- 
 tions for tavern-keepers, drawn up by the Vintners, and involving wide 
 powers of search and inspection, and considerable amercement in cases 
 of contumacy or fraud. The tavern-keepers were supposed to proceed 
 to the appointment of four Overseers to secure observance of these rules.
 
 THE VINTNERS. 319 
 
 Wine seems to have been a popular article in certain cases of fines 
 inflicted on culprits. In a quarrel between the Saddlers and certain 
 other craftsmen in 1327 twenty tuns of wine formed the penal pay- 
 ment by the former on breach of the terms of agreement, and two 
 years later Robert !e Bret, Goldsmith, was amerced in one tun because 
 he forsook his brethren, w-ho had been sent on a message to the King at 
 Windsor. The same person and another Goldsmith had to agree to lo.se 
 two tuns to their fellows, if either of them was proved to have taken the 
 initiative in any fresh dissension. 
 
 Stow, speaking of the \'intr_\- and Vintry-ward, describes it thus : — 
 
 "Apart of the banke of the River of Thaines, where the Merchants of Biirdeaux 
 cianed ' their Wines out of Lighters, and other Vessels, and there landed and made 
 sale of them, within forty dayes after, untill the twenty-eighth of Edward the first, at 
 which time the said Merchants complained, that they could not sell their wines, pay- 
 ing poundage, neither hire houses or cellars to lay them in ; and it was redressed by 
 vertue of the King's Writ, directed to the Maior and Sherriffes of London, dated at 
 Carlaveroke or Carlile. Since the which time many faire and large houses (with 
 Vaults and Cellars for stowage of Wines, and lodging of Burdeau.x Merchants) have 
 been builded in place where beforetime were Cooks houses : for Fiizstephen in the 
 reign of Henry the second, writeth, that upon the Rivers side, betweene the Wine in 
 ships, and the Wine to be sold in Tavernes, was a common Cookes Row, &c , as in 
 another place I have set down whereby it appears, that in those daies, (and till of late 
 time) every man lived according to his owne professed Trade, not any one interrupt- 
 ing another. The Cookes dressed meat, and sold no wine ; and the Taverner sold 
 wine, but dressed no meat for sale. . . ." 
 
 Referring to Galley Quay, he proceeds to state that the Gallies of 
 Italy and other parts did there discharge their wines and merchandises 
 brought to this city ; and in like manner, in course of time, he adds, that 
 the merchants of Bordeaux built at the Vintry tenements for their use, 
 made of stones brought from Caen in Normandy, which soon presented 
 a worn appearance, and needed constant repair ; and when the place 
 was no longer required for the original purpose, the premises became 
 dilapidated, and were let out to other tenants. 
 
 Stow's Continuator, in speaking^ of the growth of lu.xur)' after the 
 accession of the Stuarts, observes : — 
 
 " In the time of Henr)- the eight, and Edward the sixt, Vinteners and Tauernors 
 houses were not in any such ineasure, manner, nor plentious store and variety of wines 
 of all Nations in any one mans house, as now at this time, there is in every vinteners 
 house, for in those dayes whosoever drew White, Clarret, and red Wine, sould no 
 more kindes of Wine. The Dutch then sold onely renish wine, as now they doe, and 
 at that time, when an Argosey came with Greeke, and Spanish Wines, viz. Muscadel), 
 Malmsey, Sacke, and Bastard, the Apothecaries of Londun then w-ent vnto those 
 
 ' The Three-Craned Wharf stood here, and near at hand was the printing-otifice of 
 William Copland, whose imprint cites his address. 
 ^ Annals, 161 5, p. S67.
 
 320 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 marchants, and euery man bought such Rundlets, vessels, and quantities of those rich 
 Wines, as they thought they should retayle in the citty, vnto such as vsually bought 
 of them only for phisicke, and for the communion Table, and for speciall countrey 
 chapmen that dwelled in Citties, or speciall good Tovvnes." 
 
 The Company was not formally incorporated till 15 Henry VI., 
 August, 23, 1437, when it received the ordinary privileges and endow- 
 ments as to perpetual succession, the right of using a common seal, and 
 of pleading and being impleaded in all courts, the title to appoint a 
 governing body of four Masters or Wardens, and a licence in mortmain 
 to the extent of 20/. a year. The style of the Gild was. The Freemen of 
 the Mistery of Vintners of the City of London. 
 
 The licence in mortmain was somewhat differently framed from those 
 conceded to the other bodies ; for it was limited to the City of London 
 and the suburbs thereof, and the lands or other hereditaments were to 
 be held of the Crown as well for the support of the poor of the com- 
 monalty as for the celebration of prayers for the King, his ancestors, and 
 successors, and for the men of the said mistery and all the faithful 
 deceased. 
 
 It is further noticeable that merely Wardens are mentioned, and no 
 person clothed with authority over them. 
 
 This instrument was confirmed and renewed by inspexhnus of 24 
 Henry VII., October 2. But a grant of arms had been made by 
 Clarencieux, King-of-Arms, in 1447, and was certified in 1530 and 
 1634. 
 
 The Act 7 Edward VI., March i, embodied a series of very stringent 
 and injurious provisions in regard to the sale of wine in London by re- 
 tail under any circumstances whatever ; and the Vintners immediately 
 after the death of the King, which shortly followed, approached the 
 Government of Mary with a prayer for a special e.xemption in their 
 favour from the operation of the statute. They obtained three successive 
 patents from the Queen between 1553 and 1555, enabling them to con- 
 duct their business as heretofore. But the Company appears to have 
 laboured for some time under considerable disadvantages, and to have 
 suffered a lengthened interference with their franchise, as the patent of 
 Philip and Mary emphatically refers to criminal informations, bills, and 
 suits as commenced against the Gild corporately or individually, and to 
 forfeitures, penalties, and losses as either incurred or imminently hazarded. 
 So much was this the case, that it was deemed expedient to apply for a 
 new charter, which was granted in a most copious and elaborate form, 
 July 30, 1558 (5 & 6 Philip and Mary). 
 
 The main feature in this grant was the re-incorporation of the Vintners 
 of London proper as a separate mistery, which must be supposed to
 
 THE VINTNERS. 32 I 
 
 signify an exclusion of the suburbs, as well as of the provinces, and the 
 enlargement of the licence in mortmain from 20/. to 40/. a year ; and 
 we perceive that a .Ifash-r and three Wardens are named for the first 
 time. 
 
 The \'intncrs' charter was renewed by Elizabeth in 1567 and 1577, 
 by James I. in 1603 and 1619, and by James II. in 1685. The last 
 varied in certain particulars from the preceding, and was not only de- 
 clared void b}- the Statute 2 William and Mary, but was revoked bj' 
 James himself, when he found it judicious to disarm the resentment of 
 the City. 
 
 By the earlier charter of Elizabeth liberty to possess a Hall was first 
 accorded ; and in the later charter, the widow of a Vintner, if she re- 
 married within the Freedom of London, or the wife, apprentice, or servant 
 of a Vintner or his widow, was entitled to keep a tavern for the sale of 
 wines. 
 
 In the preamble of the second charter of Elizabeth there is a curious 
 reference to the right of every one to pursue such lawful calling, whereby 
 he may gain his living, as is most agreeable to his choice or taste. 
 
 There are bye-laws drawn up by the Company, and approved by the 
 Primate and others, of 1507, 1581, 1594, and 1607. In 1S29 the Court 
 devised a supplementary ordinance for removing from the Freedom any 
 member who allowed the sale of wines, by retail or otherwise, on his 
 premises by a person who was not free, or not the widow or apprentice 
 of a Vintner ; which seems to exclude ordinary servants. 
 
 The bye-laws of the Vintners emulate their charters in length and 
 prolixity, and testify to the troublesome and disorderly incidence of 
 the industry, no less than the multifarious detail connected with it. 
 One of the provisions, under which a free Vintner held his house, was, 
 that he should not sanction or connive at any bawdry on the pre- 
 mises, and should enforce good and honest conversation b}' frequenters 
 thereof 
 
 Bj' 19 Elizabeth a special charter had been granted to the Company, 
 empowering any free Vintner to sell wines ; and this faculty was renewed 
 and enlarged by her successor. It transpired, in a case which came 
 before the courts in February 1888, that the privilege was exercised only 
 by about fifty out of 450 members of the Gild ; and while the later 
 charter of James I. laid down the principle that the law was to be con- 
 strued liberally, it lent no countenance to delegation by a Vintner to any 
 third party, or to any colourable pretext, by which the trade was carried 
 on under exemption from licence by a person purporting to be the 
 servant of a Vintner. Nor does the law recognise dispensation with a 
 certificate, except in such places and under such conditions as come 
 C.C. 41
 
 322 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 within the meaning of the Company's charter, or the immunity of free 
 Vintners from any statutory enactment not directly overriding the terms 
 of their grant ; since it is not agreeable to the spirit of the law that a 
 prescriptive title, which favours a limited section of the community, 
 should be strained or extended beyond its express provisions. 
 
 The privilege or exemption was, and is, narrowed in fact to the lines 
 of the old highways to and from leading ports, and is not a general 
 inland franchise. 
 
 It may be presumed, — in face of a continuous series of royal and 
 parliamentary enactments controlling the sale and price of wines, — that 
 the authority and function of the Company were merely administrative, 
 and that at most it had power to make bye-laws for the guidance and 
 protection of the Trade. What is known as the " Wine Project " was 
 one of the incidences of the Civil War, and arose from a patent or 
 monopoly procured by sundry persons, especially Alderman Abel and 
 Richard Kilvert. These farmed the wine business, paying to the 
 Government 40^;. per tun ; but the system did not enjoy a long duration. 
 This is no place for discussing such a question, which can only interest 
 us here in its relation to the jurisdiction of the Company ; doubtless the 
 latter experienced, in common with many other institutions, a temporary 
 deadlock from the disturbance of political tranquillity and the intro- 
 duction of parliamentary and military power. 
 
 The authority of the Vintners in early times was apt to be continually 
 traversed and curtailed by the grants from the Crown, as a matter of 
 requital or favouritism, of patents and monopolies to uncovenanted 
 persons independent of the Gild. Queen Elizabeth conferred such a 
 grant on Sir Walter Raleigh ; and from a licence issued by him ex officio 
 in 1584 to Jeffery Bradshaw, of Bradford, Yorkshire, to keep a wine 
 tavern, and stamped with Raleigh's name by his deputy or clerk, we 
 learn that the price of French wines wholesale was then about 1 2/. a 
 tun, and the retail price \6d. a gallon, and that sack, malmsey, and 
 other sweet sorts were 8/. the butt or pipe, and about 2s. the gallon. 
 
 From time immemorial, the Vintners enjoyed the exclusive right of 
 loading and landing, rolling, pitching, and turning all wines and spirits 
 imported into or exported from the City of London and all places within 
 three miles of the same. The Company employed its own tackle-porters, 
 and held itself answerable for their defaults. But modern legislation 
 has gradually reduced this system and privilege to a nullity. 
 
 The governing body is composed of a JVIaster, Upper Warden, Renter 
 Warden, Swan Warden, twelve past Masters, and two other members. 
 The Swan Warden has under his charge, in concert with the Dyers' 
 Company, a certain proportion of the swans on the Thames. Thirteen
 
 THE VINTNERS. 3'2J 
 
 constitute a quorum. Of the aggregate total of 450 members about 
 one moiety is on the Livery.' 
 
 During the ten years 1870-80 the income seems to have had a pre- 
 vaih'ng tendency to exceed the expenditure ! A large sum is annually 
 laid out on entertainments, and about the same amount on charitable 
 objects outside the trusts. There had not then manifested itself a very 
 strong feeling in the direction of applying surplus funds to educational 
 and benevolent purposes ; but the movement shewed symptoms of 
 commencing vitality ; and in the hands of a capable Executive this 
 Association would doubtless prove itself worthy of its municipal rank 
 and obligations. 
 
 So early as 1357, Sir John Stody, a member of the Fraternity, then un- 
 incorporated, left the Vintry and its appurtenances, comprising Stody's 
 Lane, to his brethren, and thus afforded them the opportunity of securing 
 on easy terms the site for a residence and place of business. It was, no 
 doubt, there that the earliest house or Hall stood ; but whether it was an 
 old structure or a new one, we do not hear. On Nov. 7, 1446, Guy 
 Shuldham devised to them part of his lands in the parishes of St. 
 Martin's in the Vintry and St. James, Garlick-Hithe, subject to a rent 
 of 5/. a year to superstitious uses inherited from a former owner, his 
 immediate predecessor, John Micole or Michel ; and Shuldham charged 
 the property with a further payment of 6s. 2,d. a year to like uses, re- 
 quiring the Vintners to maintain thirteen almshouses * in proper repair 
 and to appropriate them to thirteen poor of the commonalty rent-free 
 for ever. 
 
 This second gift led to the determination to erect a new Hall, with the 
 almshouses on the Stody and Shuldham sites, so peculiarly convenient 
 in the case of a body whose functions were so intimately and constantly 
 identified with the water-side ; and the block of buildings then con- 
 structed, and perhaps completed at intervals, exhibited a broad frontage 
 to the Thames with a garden in the rear, and abutted to the North on 
 Thames Street, when that thoroughfare was narrower, and had not 
 encroached on the premises of the Gild in that direction. In 1446 the 
 Hall is described as consisting of the refectory, parlour, counting-house, 
 with two rooms over it, kitchen and coal-house, pantry, buttery, and a 
 yard with a well therein. The parlour is said to be on an upper floor, 
 and to possess a leaden roof The yard was then a piece of waste 
 ground, probably toward the river, and may be perhaps identified with 
 the subsequent garden. 
 
 ' In 1892 the Livery was returned as 198. 
 
 '^ These have long been removed to the Mile End Rond.
 
 324 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 The formal licence to have a Hall occurs only in the charter of 1567, 
 which, however, merely sanctioned something already long in existence ; 
 for the licence in mortmain dated back to 1364, and it could have been 
 requisite to vest the property in feoffees only down to that time, unless 
 we are to understand the statutory force of acts done on the spot as so 
 far wanting. 
 
 The historian of London enumerates several freemen of the Company, 
 who held the mayoralty from 1341 downward, especially Henry Picard, 
 who, in 1356, entertained on the same day the Kings of England, 
 France, Scotland, and Cyprus, and Sir John Stody, his immediate 
 successor, and other great personages. This signal circumstance is the 
 presumed origin of the health, drunk to this day, of Five Times Five. 
 
 jT^-yy 
 
 
 
 VINTNKKS' H.\LL ABOUT 1650. 
 
 The incident is thus narrated by Stow : — 
 
 "Henry Picard, Vm\VL<rc, Maior, 1357. In the year 1363, did in one day sump- 
 tuously feast El/ward the third, King of England, John, King oi France, David, King 
 of Scots, the King of Cipres, then all in England; Edward, Prince of Wales, with 
 many other Noblemen, and after kept his Hall for all comers, that were willing to 
 play at dice and hazard ; the Lady Margaret his wife kept her chamber to the same 
 ■effect," etc. 
 
 The allusions to the Hall in early documents and accounts are very 
 few ; but two curious exceptions occur in the mention under 13 Henry 
 Vn., January 10, 1497, of an official view of the premises for the 
 purpose of assessing the fine for amortizing them pursuant to the 
 licence ; and in 1609 it was directed that a pair of stocks should be 
 placed there for the punishment of refractory members. 
 
 In 1660, shortly before the Restoration, General Monk accepted the 
 invitation of several of the City Companies to partake of their splendid 
 hospitality ; and he attended at Vintners' Hall on April 12. An 
 address was delivered to him "shadowing forth his illustrious virtues
 
 THE VINTNERS. 325 
 
 as the printed copy expresses it, " under the emblem of a vine," and a 
 musical entertainment was specially prepared for the occasion. 
 
 Six years later, the building, where these proceedings had taken 
 place, was lost in the Great Fire, with the bulk of the contents ; and 
 the Company met, first at the Hall in St. Nicholas Lane, and sub- 
 sequently at the Fleece in Cornhill. The new Hall, erected in part 
 on the old foundations, was not ready for occupation till April, 167 1 ; 
 and the wainscoting of the Court-room was completed only in 1676. 
 The whole outlay was defrayed by private subscriptions. 
 
 At a much later period, in 1702, Sir Samuel Dashwood, V^intner, 
 being elected Lord Mayor at the accession of Queen Anne, gave a 
 banquet at which Iicr Majesty and the Court were present ; and that 
 year's show was produced at the cost of the Fraternity. The Hall in 
 which the Queen and her .suit dined was, doubtless, that described by 
 Hatton below, and was the third which has occupied the same precincts. 
 The Company possesses a remarkable piece of tapestry, executed in 1466, 
 and illustrating the history of St. Martin ; an embroidered pall or hearse- 
 cloth, and a fine collection of Queen Anne and other plate. The oldest 
 relic of this kind belongs to the year 151S; but from the records it 
 is gathered that much was sold in 1545 and 154S, as well as at other 
 times, without any note of the date. The so-called " Milkmaid Cup" 
 seems to be only a copy of one of the numerous varieties of double 
 cups of foreign, usually German, fabric, belonging to the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. The \'intners used to be famous for their cellar 
 of port. 
 
 It used to be a custom at the Vintners' banquets to present each of 
 the guests with a silver spoon bearing the Company's arms. 
 
 Hatton, in his Neiv Viciv of London, 1708, furnishes an interesting 
 account of the Hall, as it then existed. He tells us that it was situated 
 on the south side of Thames Street, near Queen Street, and was a large 
 and commodious brick edifice. The chamber, called the Hall, was 
 paved with marble, and wainscoted with an enrichment of carved fruit 
 and leaves, more particularly the screen at the east end, " where," he says, 
 " the aperture into the Hall is adorned with columns, their entablature 
 and pitched pediment ; and over acrosters are placed the figures of 
 Bacchus between several Fames, and these between two panthers ; and 
 there are other carved figures, as St. Martin, their patron, and the 
 •cripple, . . . there are also other embellishments of several coats of 
 arms, etc." 
 
 The present aspect of the Hall and premises is still very striking, and 
 except that some of the decorations of the wainscot have been repaired 
 ■or renewed, and modern stained glass windows introduced (including an
 
 326 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 additional one), and that on a portion of the old garden a spacious 
 smoking-room has been built, the place is substantially much the same 
 as it was in Hatton's time. There are persons living who remember 
 the mulberry-trees which used to stand in the garden of the Vintners' 
 premises before its absorption by Hambro' Wharf and other structures. 
 
 Stow specifies the numerous gifts made to the Vintners from time to 
 time by members of the Brotherhood ; but their charity was by no 
 means confined to home, as the copious gifts bestowed upon all kinds of 
 benevolent objects abundantly testify : — 
 
 "In 1357, Sir John Sfody, Citizen and Vintner, gave the Vintry, with Stody's Lane, 
 and all the tenements adjoining, to the Brotherhood. 
 
 " Richard Chawcer, Vintner, gave to St. Mary Aldermary Church his Tenement 
 and Taverne, with the appurtenances, in the Re61e or Royal,' the corner of Kirion 
 Lane, and was there buried, 1348. 
 
 " Simon Eyre, 1459, gave the Taverne, called the Ciirdinals Hat in Lombard Streel, 
 with a Tenement aniie.xed on the East part of the Taverne, and a mansion behind the 
 East Tenement, together with an Alley from Lombard Street to Cornhill with the 
 appurtenances, all which were by him new builded toward a Brotherhood of our Lady 
 in Saint Mary WolnotKs Church. 
 
 " Richard Jacob, Vintner, gave a gift of sixteene pounds for ever, that it should be 
 distributed to Christs Hospitall, Saint Barthotomeivs, Bridewell, and Saint Thomas 
 in Soutlnvarl;, forty shillings to each house yeerely : and the other eight pounds to be 
 given to certain appointed poore Parishes m London. 
 
 " He gave moreover (for so long time as two hundred yeeres should last) the summe 
 of twenty-eight pounds yeerely. Of which portion of money, sixteene pounds was 
 appointed for poore Prisoners, that lay imprisoned in any of the eight Prisons in and 
 about London yeerly ; to each Prison forty shillings : as the Gatehouse, the Fleet, both 
 the Compters of the Poultry and IVood Street, Ludgate, the Marshallsea, the Kings 
 Bench, and the White Lion. 
 
 "What remained of the over-plus of the money, was to be distributed to the poore 
 of divers appointed Parishes. 
 
 " Mistris Sibilla Jacob, widdow unto Richard Jacob, Vintener, gave unto Christs 
 Hospitall, three pounds, and to Saint Thomas, three pounds. 
 
 " Master Henry Prannel, Vintner, and Alderman of London, gave among the 
 Hospitals the summe of 50 pounds yeerely. 
 
 " Boniface Tatam of London, Vintner, buried in the Parish of Saint Peter upon 
 Cornhill the third of February, 1606, gave 40^. yeerely to the Parson, for preaching 
 foure Sermons every yeere, so long as the Lease of the Marmaid in Cornehill (a 
 Taverne so called) shall endure. He gave also to the poore of the Parish thirteene 
 penny loaves every Sunday, during the foresaid Lease. 
 
 " Roger Mason, of the Parish of Saint Giles without Creplegate, Citizen and Vintner 
 of \.ondo\\, gave to the poore of the freedomc of this Parish, 200 pounds, wherewith an 
 yeerely rent of 1 6 pounds or thereabout, is purchased for ever ; to be bestowed on ten 
 Gownes of black Cloth titled, to bee distributed yeerely upon tenne poore men of this 
 Parish, upon All Saints day, at the discretion of the Vicar, and Churchwardens for 
 the time being. He died the 3 day of Septemb. 1603. 
 
 " 1623. fasper Underwood, Vintener, gave 10 pounds to bee distributed. 
 
 * This locality, so called from its selection as a quarter by the wine-trade of Bordeaux, is named in 
 the grant of land by Sir Richard Whittington in 1411 for tlic reljiiilding of the church of St. Michael 
 Paternoster, near which he resided.
 
 THE VINTNERS. 
 
 1^1 
 
 " George Clarke, Citizen and Vintner of London, gave unto the use of the poore of 
 the Parish of Saint Leonard's, Slioreditch, the summe of loo marks in money. 
 
 " Stephen Skidmnre, Vintner, gave a gift of forty foure pounds yeerely, and ordered 
 in this manner : 
 
 "To seventeen poore Parislies in London, .'ippointed by nomination, seventeen 
 pounds. 
 
 "To the poore of the Parish of S. Stt'phcn in Cvleman-strcct, twelve pence weel<ly 
 in bre.id. 
 
 "To the poore of Corke in Ireland (where it seemeth he was borne) being twelve 
 in number, to each poore body forty shillings. 
 
 " Master William Day, Vintner, gave fourescore pounds : with the which sum are to 
 be provided twelve coates, for twelve poore mens children, for ever yeerely, and to bee 
 distributed at the said Feast c>{ All Saints." 
 
 STONEWARE JUG (i6th Century). 
 
 But the most munificent donor belonging to this ancient and honour- 
 able Gild remains to be mentioned : — 
 
 " Robert Gale, Vintner, out of his Lands lying in divers places, gave the summe of 
 one hundred and forty pounds yeerely, to be imployed in manner following after the 
 decease of Dorothy his wife. 
 
 To six of the poorer sort of Scholars in Corpus Christi Colledge, in the University 
 of O.xenford, usually commorant and residing in the said Colledge, and yeerely to be 
 chosen on the Feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, by George Lacocke, his heires 
 or assignes, under his or their hand and seale : To each Scholar he gave three pounds
 
 328 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 six shillings eight pence yeerely for ever, to be paid by the said Lacocke, his heires 
 or assignes for ever, out of his lands in Claipoo/e, in the County of Lincolne, and 
 Brassington, in the County of Derby. 
 
 To the poore in the towne of CJiippciiJtam in Wiltshire he gave twenty pounds. 
 
 To the Preacher there, 20 shillings. 
 
 To the Bailiffe and Burgesses, as a friendly remembrance, yeerely twenty shillings. 
 
 To Christs Hospitall in London, twenty pounds. 
 
 To the Company of Vintners, twenty pounds. 
 
 To the poore in Lincolne, 20 pounds. 
 
 To a Preacher there yeerely, ten shillings. 
 
 To the Maior and Chamberlaine, twenty shillings. 
 
 To the Minister of S. Markes Church there, ten shillings." 
 
 The eminent or noteworthy members of the Company also include 
 the names of John Adrian, Lord Mayor in 1270 and 1271 ; Reginald 
 atte Conduit, Mayor in 1334; John de Oxenford, Taverner, Mayor in 
 1341 ; Henry Pickard, Mayor in 1356; Sir Samuel Dashvvood, M.P., 
 Mayor in 1702 ; Sir Gilbert Heathcote, mentioned by Pope, and said 
 to be the Sir Andrew Freeport of the Spectator, Mayor in 17 10, and 
 the last who rode to Westminster, to be admitted, on horseback, and 
 (above all) Benjamin Kenton, the distinguished philanthropist, in his 
 youth a waiter at the Crown and Magpie in Aldgate, and who left 
 400,000/. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Vintners' Licence to Retail Wine. 1561. 
 
 Mentioned in the Coopers' Accounts as having been enrolled ; but whether printed or not is not clear. 
 
 A New Soke of the natures and properties of all Wines that are commonly vsed 
 
 here in England. ... By William Turner. 8vo, 1568. 
 The Proofe and Prayse of Wine, taken in measure and due time. Licensed for 
 
 the press in 15S2. 
 A Ballad, called the \'ntymely End of Master Page, a vintener in London, who was 
 
 murthered by a mayde servante of his house. Entered at Stationers' Hall, 
 
 September 8, 16 13. 
 A Ballad, being the second parte of the murder of Master Page by his mayd, and 
 
 of her execucon by burninge in Smithfield for that fact 11 Septembris, 1613. 
 
 Entered the same day. 
 Wine, Beer, Ale and Tobacco, contending together for superiority. 410, 1629, 
 
 1630, 1658. 
 
 ^*^ In the first edition this tract is ascribed to Gallobclgiciis. 
 A Proclamation for the Prizing of Wines. February i, 1634-5. A broadside. 
 The same. February 21, 1636-7. A broadside. 
 The same. February 8, 1637-8. A broadside. 
 The Tree of Hvmane Life •, or. The Blood of the Grape. By Tobias Whitaker, 
 
 M.D. i2mo, 1638, 1654. 
 A Health to all Vintners, Beer-brewers, and Ale-taverners, Tapsters. . . . 
 
 Constituting a Jury for the Regulating of Drinking and Drunkenness. [About 
 
 1640.] A broadside.
 
 THE VINTNERS. 329 
 
 The Petition of the Retailing Vintners of London, and their Propositions and 
 Dcmaundcs contrived and made amongst themselves at their Hall, in Novemb., 
 1637, whereby it may appear who projected the penny a Quart on Wines. 
 [1641.] A broadside. 
 
 A Trve Discovery of the Proiectors of the Wine Proiect, and of the V^intners 
 oune orders, made at their Common-hall. 4to, 164 1. 
 
 A Trve Relation of the Proposing, Threatning, and Persuading the Vintners to yield 
 to the Imposition upon Wines. 4to, 1641. 
 
 A Reply to a most untrue Relation made and set forth in Print, by Certaine \''inlncrs, 
 
 in e.xcuse of their Wine Proiect. 4to, 1641. 
 A Dialogue or Accidental Discourse betwixt Mr. Alderman Abell and Richard 
 Kilvert,' the two niaine Proiectors for Wine, . . . contayning their first 
 
 manner of their acquaintance, how they began to contrive the Patent it selfe, how 
 
 they obtayned it, and who drew the patent. 4to, 1641. 
 The Same in Dutch. 4to, 1641. 
 
 The Last Discourse betui.-ct Master Abel and Master Richard Kilvert. 4to, 1641. 
 Resolutions of the House of Commons concerning the Prices of Wines, etc. 
 
 May 26, 1641. A broadside. 
 The Humble Remonstrance of the Farmers and Adventurers in the Wine-farme 
 
 of fourty shillings per tun, to the honourable House of Commons. . . . 1641. 
 
 A broadside. 
 An Exact Legendary Compendiously containing the whole life of Alderman .A.bel, 
 
 the maine Projector and Patentee for the raising of Wines. His apprentiship 
 
 with a \'intener, . . . 410, 1641. 
 The Copie of a Letter sent from the Roaring Boyes in Elizium to the two arrant 
 
 Knights of the grape in Limbo, Alderman Abel and M. Kilvert. 410, 1641. 
 Good Newes for all true-hearted Subjects. Videlicet, the Parliament goes on. Written 
 
 by Francis Mussell, Vintner. 1641. A poetical broadside. 
 The Prisoner's Observations by way of Complaint. Printed February 4, 1645. 
 
 Dy the same. A poetical broadside. 
 The Vintners' Answer to some Scandalous Pamphlets Published (as is supposed) 
 
 by Richard Kilvert ; And abetted in some points by his Brother Roger, and 
 
 Alderman Abel. 4to, 1642. 
 An Ordinance ... for Freeing and Dischargeing the Vintners from any Demand 
 
 for, or concerning any Delinquencies, concerning the Imposition of forty shillings 
 
 per Tuune on Wines or anything concerning the same, except the persons 
 
 herein excepted. May 12, 1645. 4to. 
 A Ternary of Paradoxes. By Johannes Baptista Van Helmont. Translated by 
 
 W. Charleton. 410, 1650. 
 
 »*, One of the paradoxes is the Nativity of Tartar in Wine. 
 The English Rechabite; or, A Defyance to Bacchus and all his Works. By 
 
 Robert Whitehall, of Merton College, Oxford. Folio [about 1660]. 
 A Proclamation for the Publishing of an Act of Parliament late made for the better 
 
 Ordering and Selling of Wines by Retail, etc. 1660. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation concerning the Granting of Licenses for Selling and Retailing of 
 
 Wines. 1661. A broadside. 
 A Proclamation, prohibiting the Importation of divers Foreign Wines and Mer- 
 chandizes into this Realm. 1661. A broadside. 
 
 ' Kilvert had been a proctor in the Court of Arches. 
 
 cc. 42
 
 330 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 A Proclamation for Prizing of Wines. February 4, 1661-2. A broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation concerning Wine Licences. 1662. A broadside. 
 
 The Art and Mystery of Vintners and Wine-Coopers. 8vo, 1683. 
 
 A Proclamation for Prizing of Canary Wines. December 16, 1687. A broadside. 
 
 A New Treatise of Artificial Wines. By W. Y.-Worth. i2mo, 1690. 
 
 The Britannian Magazine; or, A New Art of Making above Twenty Sorts of 
 
 English Wines. By W. Y.-Worth. The Third Edition. i2mo. [About 1690.] 
 A New Art of Making Wine, Brandy, and other Spirits, compliant to the Act 
 
 of Parliament concerning Distillation. By the same. i2mo, 1691. 
 The Search after Claret; or, a Visitation of the Vintners. In verse. By Richard 
 
 Ames. 4to, 1691. .Second Edition. 410, 1691. 
 A Further Search after Claret; or, A Second Visitation of the Vintners. 410, 1691. 
 The Last Search after Claret in Southwark ; or, a Visitation of the Vintners 
 
 in the Mint. 410, 1691. 
 The Bacchanalian Sessions ; or, the Contention of Liquors : with a Farewell to 
 
 Wine. By R. Ames. 4to, 1693. 
 Miscellanies over Claret ; or, The Friends to the Tavern the best Friends to Poetry. 
 
 4to, 1697-8. Four Parts. 
 In Vino Veritas ; or, A Conference betwi.\t Chip the Cooper, and Dash the 
 
 Drawer, discovering some Secrets in the Wine-brewing Trade. 8vo, 1698. 
 The Juice of the Grape; or. Wine preferable to Water. . . . With a Word of 
 
 Advice to the Vintners. By a Fellow of the College [of Physicians]. 8vo, 1724. 
 
 The Order for Swannes both by the Statutes, and by the Auncient Orders and 
 Customes, used within the Realme of England. 4to, 1570. 
 
 Several of these Books of Orders, etc., were once in e.xistence. There are also extant many MSS. 
 Collections of Swan-marks for different parts. 
 
 The supervision of the City swans devolves by custom on the Skinners and Dyers jointly. 
 
 The Orders, Lawes, and Ancient Cvstomes of Swannes. Caused to be printed by 
 John Witherings, Esquire, Master and Governour of the Royall game of Swans 
 and Signets throughout England. By John D'Oyly. 4to, 1632. 
 D'Oyly refers to older orders in print. 
 
 Bacchus Festival; or, A New Medlej', being A Musical Representation at the 
 
 Entertainment of his Excellency the Lord General Monck at Vintners' Hall. 
 
 April 12, 1660. A broadside. By T. Jordan. 
 A Speech made to his Excellency George Monk, General, and [the Council of State] 
 
 on the twelfth day of April, 1660. At a Solemn Entertainment at Vintners' Hall. 
 
 Wherein his illustrous virtues are shadowed forth under the Emblem of a Vine. 
 
 [By Thomas Jordan. 1660.] A broadside. 
 
 Two editions the same year.
 
 THE CLOTHWOKKERS. 
 
 33^ 
 
 JLbc ClotI.nvorr.cr3. 
 
 The parentage and foundation of this, in some respects the most 
 important of all the Gilds of London, are to be found in our preceding- 
 account of the Shearmen and the Fullers, of whom the Clothworkers 
 were an amalgamation, as certain primitive minor Crafts already noticed 
 had been fused at an earlier stage with those other two bodies. It 
 may be true that the history of this Association was at one time closely 
 interconnected with that of the Weavers ; but the rise into independent 
 recognition and rank, not only of the Clothworkers under their original 
 styles as Shearmen and Fullers, but the severance from them of the 
 Drapers and Taylors demonstrates the great antiquity of this branch 
 of the cloth trade as a distinct industrial art. 
 
 This separation of the various processes and steps in manufacture was 
 partly due to the steady and enormous development of the demand for 
 goods employed for personal, domestic, and even decorative purposes, 
 and to the changes which took place in the material of certain fabrics. 
 But, of course, the period of signal prosperity for the Weavers them- 
 selves, who were doubtless the pioneers in this direction, was when the 
 market was free from competition, and they enjoyed the monopoly 
 of sale to the draper and the tailor of the produce of their looms. 
 Every reform and improvement in their Craft tended to their dis- 
 advantage ; the community, as it became more populous and less
 
 OJ- 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 simple in its tastes, encouraged every novelty, which was introduced 
 either by our countrymen or by foreigners established in London ; in 
 the statutes framed for their relief we easily discern a trace of this com- 
 mencing decline ; and nothing but the principle of Protection sustained 
 archaic methods of workmanship and old-fashioned schools of design. 
 The English, or at least the London, artisan soon discovered that, if he 
 desired to occupy a favourable position, and to hold his ground, it was 
 necessary for him to be an apt scholar in learning the lessons taught 
 by our continental visitors, and to make that a starting-point for further 
 progress. There is no doubt that, if we read aright the municipal 
 expansion of the several departments of the woollen and linen cloth 
 industries, we must interpret it as directly symptomatic of a parallel 
 growth in our enterprise, skill, and success in establishing by sure 
 degrees a machinery in our own capital, which long remained adequate 
 to our wants and worthy of our national character. 
 
 One striking piece of testimony to the independent magnitude of the 
 Shearmen and Fullers, anterior to their embodiment as a single Gild, 
 seems to lie in the comparatively late date of final union, inasmuch as 
 the individual interests of two prosperous and influential Fraternities 
 would be less readily accommodated or adjusted than those of two or 
 more minor fellowships. 
 
 The Charter of 19 Henry VIII., January 18, 1527-8, commences by 
 rehearsing the circumstances under which Henry VII. and other 
 
 sovereigns had previously 
 accorded privileges or in- 
 corporation to the Shear- 
 men and Fullers respec- 
 " tively, proceeds to transfer 
 and change the said two 
 Gilds of Shearmen and 
 Fullers into " the name of 
 one Master and four War- 
 dens of the Gild or Frater- 
 nity of the Assumption of 
 the Blessed Virgin Mary 
 of the Art or Mistery of 
 Clothworkers in the City of London," to be one Body and one Com- 
 monalty corporate, with the power of acquiring, holding, and alienating 
 rents and other possessions whatever, with perpetual succession and a 
 common seal. It likewise provides for the election from time to time 
 of the governing body, for the Livery of clothing of one suit or pattern 
 to the brethren each year, or each alternate year, at the pleasure of the
 
 THE CLOTIIWORKERS. 333 
 
 Executive ; for the exercise of a common right of search over denizens 
 and aliens, and punishment of offenders or defaulters according to the 
 law of England or the custom of London, in all matters pertaining to 
 the misteries of Shearmen and Fullers, and to woollen cloths and 
 fustians, and all other goods, used in the same ; and for the restraint 
 of foreign workmen, not admitted to the Freedom of the Clothworkers. 
 
 This large grant, which forms the groundwork of the present con- 
 stitution, was confirmed by inspeximus of 4 & 5 Philip and Mary, 
 June 4, 1558, and of 2 Elizabeth, July 8, 1560. 
 
 Charles I. in a charter dated April 24, 1633, recites the former grants, 
 and renews the Gild under the name of the Master, Wardens, and 
 Commonalty of Freemen of the Art or Mistery of Clothworkers of the 
 City of London, and appoints the existing functionaries, that is to say, 
 Thomas Byard to be the first and modern Master, and other four 
 persons to be the first and modern Wardens, ad interim and until the 
 period for the ordinary elections of officers, namely, the first Monday in 
 the next ensuing August. The royal letters further released and purged 
 the beneficiaries from any doubts or inadvertences whatever in former 
 proceedings and acts. 
 
 Charles II. by letters patent under the Great Seal, February 5, 1684-5, 
 gave the Clothworkers a new charter, in which their privileges were 
 considerably abridged, the king assuming a right to nominate the 
 Assistants and Clerk, as well as the Master and Wardens ad interim as 
 before, and to debar the governing body from entering on office, unless 
 they took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the 
 Test and Corporation Acts. In other respects the Company was left 
 undisturbed. 
 
 The reign of James II. was short enough to prevent any protracted 
 inconvenience and loss, and long enough to occasion a great deal of 
 vexation and trouble. The period of more than three and a half years, 
 between February, 1684-5 ^"d October, 16S8, when James revoked his 
 arbitrary, intolerant, and strategic infringement of the civic rights at 
 large, was an interval during which the Clothworkers and their con- 
 temporaries suffered equal anxiety and discomfort. But the Revolution 
 of 1688 permanently cleared the atmosphere. 
 
 The Ordinances, commencing with those of 153 1-3, approved by Sir 
 Thomas More as Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, and the Chief 
 Justices, followed in a certain measure those previously drawn up for the 
 government of the Shearmen and the Fullers as separate Fraternities. 
 They dealt, as usual, with the election of officers, the livery of clothing, 
 the rendering of accounts, the relief of necessitous brethren and their 
 burial, if necessary, out of the common box, with the dirges and masses
 
 334 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 to be said for their souls, the attendance of members at the obsequies 
 of a brother in their best apparel, and the treatment of apprentices, 
 journeymen, and foreigners. There are provisions regulating the details 
 of work and hours of attendance, forbidding men of the mistery to play 
 at unlawful games or resort to riotous practices, and imposing fines for 
 misdemeanours. 
 
 This Code, which is unusually lengthy, was renewed 29 Elizabeth, 
 July 2, 15S7, and 15 Charles I., April 18, 1639. It would be impossible 
 to furnish more than an outline of the contents. But some of the rules 
 and conditions are very curious, more particularly in respect to the con- 
 ditions and hours of labour. 
 
 In common with the Taylors, Skinners, and other Gilds, the Cloth- 
 workers admitted sisters to the freedom ; and as the children of both 
 succeeded to the privilege as an inheritance, the ranks of the Yeomanry, 
 as it was generally termed, increased from time to time to such an 
 extent that the bond between them and the Livery and Court had a 
 natural tendency to slacken. The bulk of freemen and frcewomen by 
 birthright have consequently long ceased to exercise any control over 
 the government ; but the Clothworkers preserve the ancient usage of 
 permitting their Hall to be occasionally employed by the Yeomanry for 
 their sports and recreations during good behaviour and subject to con- 
 venience, to the extent of inviting the whole body of almsfolk to an 
 annual feast. Provision is also made on a very liberal scale for the 
 relief of all the poor of the Company, and even for the payment of 
 funeral expenses. 
 
 At a former period, however, the Court experienced the same kind 
 of disposition to aggressive encroachment or self-assertion on the part of 
 the freemen as we have had occasion to notice in other instances. A 
 successful effort in obtaining concessions had a contagious influence ; 
 and the Clothworkers, like the Merchant-Taylors, temporarily acquiesced 
 in the institution of Wardens of the Yeomanry. But they were dis- 
 continued in 1754. It is worth remarking, that one of the points of 
 debate between the Court and the operative class was the legality of the 
 seizure by the Wardens of ill-wrought goods ; for this entered into the 
 very questionable power of search conferred by the majority of the 
 charters. 
 
 The disaffection to the autocratic jurisdiction of the Court and Senior 
 Liverymen may be traced back a long way, since it furnished the 
 subject-matter of a pamphlet (apparently a reply to another), in which 
 the whole constitutional question is ventilated, and the pretensions of the 
 Diffusive Body or Commonalty to a share in the control are shown to be 
 groundless and at variance with the meaning and spirit of the charters.
 
 THE CLOTUWORKERS. 335 
 
 The present aggregate numbers of the Company may be about 500, 
 of which the Livery represent about 1 50, the Court inclusive. The 
 latter is estimated at 44 with the Master and Wardens. Every precaution 
 is taken to secure respectability on the part of the Livery, and on that 
 of the Executive section able and substantial persons. The general 
 temper and feeling are emphatically tolerant and reasonable. 
 
 The Company was one of the twelve contributories of 5,000/. toward 
 the total of 60,000/. eventually paid to the Government of James I. for 
 the forfeited Irish estates, of which we have given particulars in several 
 earlier places. In this instance, the Clothworkers, as proprietors in chief, 
 found 2,260/., the remainder being found by the Butchers and five other 
 bodies. But considerable difficulty was experienced, even under these 
 conditions, in raising the amount. In 1610 or the following year, at the 
 request of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, Lord Compton 
 (ancestor of the Marquis of Northampton) contributed 200/. toward the 
 Ulster Plantation " to the ease of the poor Company of Clothworkers," 
 whereof his father-in-law. Sir John Spencer, knight, was a member and 
 principal upholder. 
 
 In 1769 the Clothworkers' Irish estate was let by public auction on a 
 lease of sixty-one years and for three lives at a rental of 600/. and a fine 
 of 28,000/. But it has since been sold for i 50,000/. 
 
 In 1 3 16 the Aulnage, a word derived from the old French aiilne, ell, 
 the common standard of measurement, was granted to John Peacock 
 of canvas, linen cloth, napery, as well English as foreign, kerseys, 
 worsted, and all kinds of cloth of Lincoln, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, 
 Stamford, Beverley, St. Osyth, Devon, and Cornwall. 
 
 The cloths offered to foreign dealers in exchange for wine and other 
 produce were found at a very early period to be not unfrequently false 
 in dimensions, colour and substance, and fraudulently mixed with wool ; 
 and in 13 Richard II. (1389) it was enacted that " no plain cloth, tacked 
 or folded, shall be set to sale within the counties of Somerset, Dorset, 
 Bristol, and Gloucester, but that they shall be opened, upon pain to 
 forfeit them, so that the buyers may see them and know them, as it is 
 now in the County of Essex, and that the workers, weavers and fullers 
 shall put their seals to every cloth." 
 
 The great abuses represented to Queen Elizabeth as being practised 
 in connection with the "draping of cloth," led her Majesty in 1 581, in 
 concert with Lord Burghley, to recommend a suitable person for the post 
 of Alnager, Searcher, or Surveyor to the City. It was an office which 
 was created by the most ancient statutes, and was finally abolished in 
 1700, ten years after the appearance of published Reasons for commuting
 
 336 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 aulnage for a custom or excise. We find John May, Deputy- Alnager, 
 who had been a servant of the Duke of Lenox, pubHshing a vindication 
 of the functionaries discharging the duty ; and a good deal of discontent 
 and irritation was produced from time to time by this surveillance over 
 the trade, which in its turn was attended by tyranny, espionage, and 
 extortion. 
 
 It can only be pointed out generally, that henceforth there was an 
 almost uninterrupted series of correspondence and discussion on this 
 subject among the parties officially or commercially interested, and that 
 the question of the manufacture, oversight, and sale of this commodity 
 awakened the attention of the highest legal and other authorities. 
 
 The exclusive use of woollen cloth of the old-fashioned texture was 
 discontinued in 1567 or thereabout, in consequence of the introduction 
 of serges and other lighter fabrics, as it is held, by manufacturers at 
 Norwich and elsewhere in the provinces. This new material, which of 
 course tended to break the monopoly of the London Clothworkers, and 
 of what became known by distinction as the Old Drapery, was called 
 the New Drapery, and was probably designed for wear during the warmer 
 season. 
 
 The John May above mentioned obtained a lease from the Corpora- 
 tion in 161 2 of a site for a proposed market for the sale of strained 
 cloths and other stuff of the Nezu Drapery, but was hindered in carrying 
 out his plan. Perhaps he was invested as a solatium with the office of 
 Deputy-Alnager. 
 
 The early cloth trade was divided between Yorkshire and the North 
 of England, Shropshire and North Wales, Gloucestershire and Devon- 
 shire. It is now almost exclusively restricted to Yorkshire and North 
 Wales. We possess literary and other records of its flourishing condi- 
 tion in those districts where it has ceased to be a prevailing or leading 
 industry ; and a popular writer of the reign of Elizabeth produced a 
 novel, of which the six great clothiers of the West are the heroes and 
 central figures. They belonged to Reading, Gloucester, Salisbury, 
 Worcester, Exeter, and Southampton. But three like eminent characters 
 of the Midland and North country are also particularized in connection 
 with Manchester, Halifax, and Kendal. Still more curiously, the Six 
 Clothiers of the West formed the subject-matter of a drama in two 
 parts, which was written and acted in 1601 — the only performance of 
 the kind, perhaps, ever brought on our stage. 
 
 One of the earliest symptoms of a tendency to revolt against the 
 imposts laid on trade in the metropolis under various heads and pretences 
 was the proposal to establish a Staple of North-Wales cottons and 
 frieses at Chester in 1582, with liberty to export the same direct abroad ;
 
 THE CLOTHWORKERS. 
 
 00/ 
 
 and one ground of objection offered by the City was the loss imminent 
 thereby to its hospitals through the failure of the charges leviable at 
 Bakewcll or Blackwell Ilall, amounting by estimation to about lOO/. a 
 j-car. Curiously enough, the bailiffs of Shrewsbury appear as opponents 
 to the scheme, of which we do not hear further, save the attempt of the 
 drapers of Shrewsbury and Oswestry to hamper the London dealers by 
 way of reprisal in procuring their goods, as theretofore, from North 
 Wales, agreeably to their power under the City Charter of trading with 
 all parts of the kingdom. 
 
 Our knowledge of the original Hall of the Shearmen on the east 
 side of Mincing Lane, subsequently occupied by the united Gild, is 
 limited to a very rough outline in 
 the map of London published by 
 Agas about i 560, and figured in the 
 text. It is said that in the stained 
 glass windows of the refectory were 
 the arms of ten Lord Mayors and 
 sixteen Sheriffs, who had belonged 
 to the Fraternit}'; and mention oc- 
 curs of an upper-hall window, and 
 of parlours also embellished with stained glass. 
 
 General Monk, in the early part of 1659-60, paid a series of ceremonial 
 visits to the Halls of the principal Gilds ; he was at Clothworkers' Hall 
 on the 13th of March ; and a speech or address, prepared by Thomas 
 Jordan, the City poet, was delivered to him in the course of the enter- 
 tainment given in his honour by the Company. 
 
 Pepys notes, under September 6, 1666 : " Strange it is to see Cloth- 
 workers' Hall on fire these three days and nights in one body of flame, 
 it being the celler full of oyle." The London Gazette of September 8, 
 1666, refers to the arrest of the flames at this point. 
 
 In 1668, the house opposite the Hall was burnt down, but fortunately 
 without injury to the surrounding buildings. Yet Pepys, under June 19, 
 notes that the fire broke out at between two and three in the morning, 
 so that tke danger was all the greater. 
 
 The ground-plan and frontage of the second Hall are now given, 
 and will be found to differ very essentially from those of the building 
 erected in 1S62, on a report that the former one was insecure from the 
 ravages of dry rot. In the rear of the demolished structure lay a 
 large garden, with a fountain in the centre. 
 
 Hatton, in his Nezv Viezv of London, 170S, describes it as "a noble rich 
 building." " The Hall," he says, " is a lofty room, adorned with wains- 
 
 C.C. 43
 
 338 
 
 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 cot to the ceiling, where is a curious fretwork. The screen, at the south 
 end, is of oak, adorned with four pilasters, their entablature and com- 
 pass pediment of the Corinthian order, enriched with their arms, palm- 
 branches, etc. The west end is adorned with the figures of King James 
 and King Charles I., richly carved as big as life in their robes, with 
 regalia all gilt with gold, where is a spacious window of stained glass, 
 and the Queen's arms ; also those of Sir John Robinson, knight and 
 
 baronet, his Majesty's 
 Lieutenant of the 
 Tower of London, Lord 
 Mayor of this honour- 
 able City, anno 1663, 
 and president of the 
 Artillery Company, 
 who kept his mayoralty 
 in this Hall, in which 
 }-car he entertained 
 their majesties, the 
 King, Queen, and 
 Queen's mother, and 
 their royal highnesses, 
 the Duke and Duchess 
 of York, and towards 
 the re-edifying of this 
 Hall a worthy bene- 
 factor. His coat of 
 arms, 6th and 4th giiles 
 and or quarterly em- 
 battled, the 2nd and 
 3rd vert semi of trefols: 
 a buck trippent or : 
 and the like buck for 
 the crest." Here were 
 also the arms of 
 Samuel Pepys, Master 
 in 1677, those of Wil- 
 liam Howard, Master 
 in 1687, and those of Sir Joseph Williamson, principal Secretary of State, 
 Master in 1676, all benefactors of the Company. In two small windows 
 were the arms of the City and of the Clothworkers, the latter with the 
 motto, Mj/ trust is in God alone. The exterior of the house had fluted 
 brick columns with Corinthian stone capitals. 
 
 TWO PL.\NS SHEWING THK SITE \KU AKEA OF THE H.\LL 
 DEMOLISHEP IN 1S62.
 
 THE CLOTinVORKERS. 339 
 
 There arc engraved representations of the exterior of the late Hall ; 
 but the general effect does not essentially vary from that of the one now 
 existing. 
 
 Clothworkcrs' Mall stands on a far larger area than the block taken 
 down in 1862, of which an appreciable part was occupied by a garden. 
 But the mansion-house now covers the whole ground, and abuts in the 
 rear on the Churchyard of All Hallows, Steyning. It is a spacious and 
 splendid edifice, planned on a scale commensurate with the wealth and 
 wants of the Compan}', and so far resembles it, that its modern side is 
 principally conspicuous, although not more so than is the case with 
 many others. 
 
 Before their removal to Islington, where, as early as 1640, the Com- 
 pany already possessed a similar endowment of the gift of John Heath, 
 the Clothworkcrs' almshouses were situated in Whitefriars, on part of a 
 garden belonging to Margaret, Countess of Kent, who held the ground 
 under a demise from the Prior of the Friary. 
 
 Among the celebrities who have belonged to the Clothworkcrs, may 
 be mentioned William Lambe, a benefactor of this and other institutions, 
 and a man of high public spirit ; he was Master in 1569-70, and died in 
 1580. His name survives in Lambs-Conduit Street. The Company 
 also boasts Samuel Pepys, F.R.S. ; Sir John Spencer, ancestor of the 
 Marquis of Northampton, and a great upholder of the Company ; James 
 the First ; Sir Thomas Trevor, Baron of the Exchequer ; Sir John 
 Robinson, nephew of Archbishop Laud, Lord Mayor in 1662-3, and 
 Lieutenant of the Tower ; Sir Godfrey Webster ; the Countess of Kent, 
 freewoman and widow ; and William Hewer of Clapham, Esquire, some- 
 time Pepys's clerk, and like him a book-collector. But there is a long 
 and honourable roll of generous and philanthropic members, the fruits 
 of whose beneficence assist in enabling this excellent and noble Associa- 
 tion to carry on its industrial and eleemosynary schemes ; and a tolerably 
 convincing proof of the vitality of the Company, no less than of the 
 reliance on its probity and administrative machinery, lies in the most 
 recent trust-estate left to it — that of 70,000/. under the will of Mr. 
 Thomas William Wing, of Piccadilly, 1884 (proved in 1889) for the 
 Relief of the Blind. 
 
 In 1677 Samuel Pepys was Master of the Company, and signalized 
 his year of office by the presentation of a Bowl and Cover of silver gilt, 
 enriched on the exterior with frosted work, and weighing 166 ounces. 
 His brethren also received from him a gilt ewer and bason weighing 196 
 ounces. Both of these memorials of him are still in the Clothworkcrs' 
 possession. Pepys's and Hewer's arms used to be in the eastern 
 window of the Hall.
 
 THE CLOTHWORKERS. 
 
 341 
 
 Let us recollect, too, that no less a man than Geoffrey Chaucer, 
 though not a member, discharged official duties in connection with the 
 cloth and leather trades, having been appointed in 1374 Comptroller of 
 the Subsidj' of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides. The poet received 
 the not inconsiderable emoluments; but in 1385 he was permitted to 
 fulfil the functions, as well as those of the Comptrollership of the 
 Petty Customs of the Port of London, by deputy. 
 
 The relative importance of the Clothworkers was recognised by 
 Herbert, when he wrote his work, about 1836 ; for he speaks of them as 
 having a very large estate, out of which they annually paid to the poor 
 1,400/. "It is," says he, "a rich, eminent Company." It goes almost 
 without saying that not only these figures, but even those in the par- 
 liamentary return of 1884, are ancient history, since the annual amount 
 at present devoted to educational and charitable purposes does not 
 probably fall short of 50,000/., irrespectively of the New Wing Fund. 
 
 Annexed are the latest statistics connected with the Company's 
 Yorkshire College at Leeds, as furnished to us by the courtesy of Sir 
 
 Owen Roberts : — 
 
 Technical Education. 
 CLOTHWORKERS' COMPANY. 
 
 Yorkshire College, Leeds — 
 
 Textile Industries, Dyeing and Art 
 Departments wholly Founded and 
 ALiintained by the Company 
 Bradford Technical College 
 Huddersfield Technical School 
 Halifax „ „ . • 
 
 Keighley „ „ . . 
 
 Dewsbury „ „ . . 
 
 Salt Science, Art and Technical Schools, 
 
 Shipley .... 
 Bingley Technical School 
 Ossett ,, „ 
 
 Morley „ „ 
 
 Wakefield „ „ 
 
 Yorkshire Union of Mechanics' Insti- 
 tutes — 
 (5 83/. los. Contributed to Technical 
 Prize Fund. Grants of Books to 
 Village Library of Value of 140/.) 
 University College, Bristol — 
 
 (Grants from 1876 to 1886 = 3,700/.) 
 Trowbridge, Wilts, Technical School 
 Glasgow Technical School — 
 (Grants from 1878 to 1884=1,050/.) 
 
 Annual Subscriptions 
 
 for 
 
 Maintenance. 
 
 Building 
 Equipment. 
 
 £1,000 
 
 ^30,000 
 
 500 
 
 4,100 
 
 1 300 
 
 2,000 
 
 Not Settled 
 
 2,COO 
 
 150 
 
 1,300 
 
 50 
 
 800 
 
 100 
 
 
 50 
 
 350 
 
 20 
 
 200 
 
 20 
 
 
 — 
 
 100 
 
 25 
 
 
 100 
 
 1,000 
 
 — 
 
 105 
 
 50 
 
 200
 
 342 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 City and Gilds of London Institute for the Advancement of 
 
 Technical Education 4,000/. per annum. 
 
 Special Donations to Building and Equipment .... 12,000/. „ 
 
 Total Grants to City and Gilds of London Institute to 31 December, 1 89 1, 57,600/. 
 
 The Clothworkers' Company e.xpend on "Technical Education" in London, York- 
 shire, and other Provincial Districts connected with the Clothworking Industry alone, 
 upwards of 12,000/. per annum. 
 Clothworkers' Hall, 
 October 14, 1S91. 
 
 Above all the Companies, perhaps, on the whole, the Clothworkers' 
 
 are to be considered as having preserved a continuity of existence and 
 
 approbation in their former warrantable espousal and protection of 
 
 the trade and their present generous and intelligent patronage of it. 
 
 They have thus strengthened their own hands and have become a source 
 
 of power and security to others ; and this proud result is largely due to 
 
 the efficiency of the Executive. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE.S. 
 
 A profitable booke, declaring dyuers approued remedies to take out spottes and 
 Staines in silkes, veluets, Linnen, and WoUen Cloths. With diuers colours how to 
 die V'eluets and Silkes, Linnen and Woollen Fustian and Threade. Also to dresse 
 leather, and to colour fells. How to Gild, Graue, .Sowder, and Vernishe. And 
 to harden and make soft Yron and Steele. . . . 4to, 1588,1596, 1605. 
 A tr.insl.ition from the Dutch I)y L[eon.irdj Airascall]. 
 
 A Declaration of the Estate of Clothing now vsed within this Realme of England. 
 . . . With an Apologie for the Aulneger, shewing the necessarie vse of his 
 Office. Written by lohn May, a deputie Alneger. 4to, 1613. 
 
 To the Most Honorable Assembly of the Commons House of Parliament. The 
 humble Petition of the Artizan Cloth-workers of the Citie of London. [1624.] 
 A broadside. 
 
 An Ordinance to prohibitL' the transporting of Wooll and fuller's earth. 1647. A 
 broadside. 
 
 The Golden Fleece: The Riches of English Wool in its Manufacture. By W. S. 
 8vo, 1656. 
 
 A Proclamation for the preventing of the Exportation of Wools, Wool- Fells, Woollen- 
 Yarn, FuUer's-Earth, and other Scouring-earths, out of this Kingdom. 1660. A 
 broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation for the free E.xportation of Woollen Manufactures of this Kingdom 
 from the Twentieth day of May until the Five and Twentieth day of December 
 next. 1662. A broadside. 
 
 Reasons for a Limited Exportation of Wooll. 410, 1677. 
 
 A Treatise of Wool and Cattel. 410, 1677. 
 
 An Act for Burying in Woollen. 167S. A broadside. 
 
 The Golden Fleece: Or, Old England Restored to its old Honest Vocation. By J. F. 
 4to, 1679. 
 
 The Trade of England Revived. [By John Blande.] 410, i68o. 
 
 ,*„ This tract deals witli Wool, Woollen Cloth, Linen Cloth, Sillv, Silk weavers, etc. 
 
 A Treatise of Wool, and the Manufacture of it. Svo, 1685.
 
 Tin; CLOTHWOkKKKS. 343 
 
 An Abstract of the Proceedings to prevent Exportation of Wooll Unmanufac- 
 tiiied from the year 1667 to this present year, 1688. I5y William Carter, Clothier. 
 
 4t(), 16S8. 
 The Aulnage Case, or Reasons olTcr'd for taking away the Office of Aiilnage, and 
 
 changing the subsidy of Auhiago into a Custom. [January, 1690-1.] A broad- 
 side. 
 Reasons of the Decay of the Clothing Trade, Humbly offered to the Parliament : 
 
 with some Short Proposals of Redress. By a Well-wisher to the Trade, and the 
 
 True English Interest. 4to, 1691. 
 An Essay on Wool and Woollen Manufacture. 4to, 1693. 
 Some Thoughts on the Bill Depending before the Right Honourable the House of 
 
 Lords, for proliibitiiii; the ExiJortation of the Woollen Manufactures of Ireland 
 
 to foreign |)arts. 410, Dublin, i6g8. 
 
 The Interest of England, in Relation to the Woollen Manufacture. In a Dialogue 
 between a Merchant and a Clothier. 4to, 1701. 
 
 Proposals humbly Offer d to the Honourable House of Commons, by the Gloucester- 
 shire Clothiers, and other Woollen Manufactories, for the more effectual prevent- 
 ing the Exportation of Wooll, etc. [About 1700.] A broadside. 
 
 An Essay towards the Improving of the Hempen and Flaxen Manufactures in the 
 Kingdom of Ireland. By Louis Crommelin, Overseer of the Royal Linnen 
 Manufacture of that Kingdom. 4to, Dublin, 1705, 1734.' 
 
 An Epitaph, or funerall inscription, upon the godlie life and death of the Right wor- 
 shipful! Maister Wdliam Lambe, Esquire, Founder of the new Conduit in Hol- 
 borne . . . Deceased the one and twentieth of April, and intumbed in 
 S. Faiths Church vnder Powles, the sixt of Male next and immediatly follow- 
 ing. Deuised by Abraham Fleming. [1580.] A broadside. 
 
 The Pleasant History of John Winchcomb, in his younger yeeres called Jack of 
 
 Newberie, the famous and worthie Clothier of England. By Thomas Deloney. 
 
 Licensed tor the press m 1595. 4to, 1619, 1626, etc. An edit. 8vo, Newbury, 
 
 1760. 
 
 See Herbert's Twelve Livery Companies, sZ-^6, i., 394. 
 
 Thomas of Reading, Or, The Sixe worthie Yeomen of the West. By Thomas 
 Deloney. 4to, 1612, 1623, 1632, 1636, etc. 
 
 The Six Clothiers of the West ; A play by Richard Hathwaye, Wentworth Smith, 
 William Haughton, and John Day. Mentioned by Henslowe under date of 
 November 12, 1601, but no longer known. 
 This drama was doubtless based on Deloney's Thomas of Reading, originally printed before 1600, 
 
 in which year it is not only mentioned in Keinpes Nine Dazes Woyider, bat was appropriated by 
 
 Henry Roberts in a tract entitled Haigli for Devonshire. Henslowe also quotes the piece before us 
 
 as the Six Women of the West, tlie sub-title of Deloney's prose narrative. 
 
 The Ancient Honours of the City of London recovered by the Noble Sir John 
 Robinson, Knight and Baronet, Lord Mayor for the year 1662-3, '" the true 
 English and man-like exercise of Wrestling, Archery, Sword, and Dagger ; with 
 the Speeches of Mr. William Smith, Master of the Game, and Clerk of the 
 Market upon this solemn occasion. Intermitted twenty-four years, since Garaway 
 was Mayor. [410, 1663.] 
 We have only seen an account of this tract in a note to Herbert's Livery Companies, 1836. 
 
 The Beau-Merchant. A Comedy written by a Clothier. 410, 1714. 
 
 In Burn's Star Chamber, 1870, may be found several notices relative to the cloth trade.
 
 344 THE GREAT COMPANIES. 
 
 CIVIC PAGEANTS. 
 
 Londini Emporia; or, London's Mercatura, expressed in sundrj' Triumphs, Pageants, 
 and Shows, at the Inauguration of the Right Hon. Ralph Freeman, all the charge 
 and expense being the undertaking of the Right Worshipful Company of the 
 Clothvvorkers. By T. Heywood. 4to, 1633. 
 
 The Triumphs of Fame and Honour : At the Inauguration of Robert Parkhurst, 
 Clothworker. Compiled by John Taylor, the Water Poet. 4to, 1634. 
 
 London's Triumph, Presented by Industry and Honour: with Other Delightful 
 Scenes, appertaining to them : Celebrated in Honour of the Right Honourable 
 Sir John Ireton, Knight, Lord Mayor of the said City, on the 29th day of October 
 1658. And done at the Cost and Charges of the Worshipful Company of Cloth- 
 vvorkers. By John Tatham. 4to, 1658. 
 
 A Speech made to the Lord General Monck, at Clothworkers" Hall in London, the 
 13 of March, 1659, at which time he was there entertained by the Worthie 
 Companie. [1660.] A broadside. Written by Thomas Jordan. 
 
 London's Triumph : Presented in severall Delightful Scoenes, both upon the Water 
 and Land : and Celebrated in Honour of the truly Loyal and known Deserver of 
 Honour, Sir John Robinson, Knight and Baronet, Lord Mayor of the City of 
 London. At the Costs and Charges of the Worshipfull Company of Cloth- 
 workers. 4to, 1662. 
 
 London's Triumphs : Illustrated with many Magnificent Structures and Pageants ; 
 on which are orderly advanced several stately Representations of Poetical 
 Deities, sitting and standing in great splendor on several Scenes in Proper 
 Shapes. With Pertinent Speeches, Jocular Songs (sung by the City Musick), and 
 Pastoral Dancing. Performed Oct. 29, 1677, for the Celebration, Solemnity, and 
 Inauguration of the Right Honourable Sir Francis Chaplin, Knight, Lord Mayor 
 of the City of London. All the charge and Expenses of the Industrious Designs 
 being the sole Undertaking of the Ancient and Right Worshipful Society of 
 Clothworkers. Designed and composed by Tho. Jordan, Gent. 410, 1677. 
 
 The Triumphs of London : Prepared for the Entertainment of the Right Honourable 
 Sir Thomas Lane, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London. Containing A 
 full Description of the Pageants, Speeches, Songs, and the whole Solemnity of 
 the Day. Performed on Monday, the 29 of October, 1694. Set forth at the 
 Proper Cost and Charges of the Honourable Company of Clothworkers. Pub- 
 lished by Authority. By Elkanah Settle. 4to, 1694.
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 c.c. 44
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 XTbc 2lpotbccariC3. 
 
 BY a charter of 4 James I., April 9, 1606, the Grocers had obtained a 
 renewal of their ancient privileges and powers in relation to the 
 sale of all goods, drugs inclusive, connected with their Gild, and their 
 plenary control of members of the undivided community. No idea was 
 apparently entertained that an early dissolution of the bond between 
 the Grocers and a branch of their corporation was to be expected, or 
 that the grant of 1606 would be the last under which the ancient Com- 
 pany would retain jurisdiction over pharmacy. 
 
 But throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor the voice of 
 complaint and remonstrance against the incompetence of apothecaries, 
 and the quality of the drugs sold or dispensed by them, had been gather- 
 ing strength ; the governing body of the Grocers, through their Wardens, 
 frequently seized and destroyed bad or adulterated wares of various 
 kinds ; and the medical profession exposed the mischief, scandal, and 
 danger of so important a department of medical science being without 
 due technical training and supervision. We have no specific authority 
 for the view ; but it is excessively probable that the opportunities which 
 the eminent apothecary, Gideon Delaune, member of a family illustrious 
 by its attainments in science and letters, enjoyed through his official 
 
 347
 
 34^ THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 preferment, about 1615, as Apothecary to the King, had a large share in 
 shaping and maturing the project for severance in the royal mind. It 
 was just such a scheme as James would be apt to patronize. Perchance 
 his son Henry, instead of being poisoned by him, as it has been alleged, 
 was poisoned by some professional empiric ; and we see that in 1614 
 the City did not improve matters by certain annoyances, to which James's 
 Apothecary at that time, James Garrett, was subjected, and in respect 
 of which he invoked his employer's intercession. 
 
 The King, in or before 16 14, began to move in the matter, and took 
 credit to himself for having been primarily instrumental in accomplish- 
 ing a very vital reform. On the 6th December, 16 17, a separate charter 
 was given to the Apothecaries, in spite of the opposition of the parent 
 body, which memorialized and argued against the step as an unjust en- 
 croachment on their endowment, and prevailed on the Municipality to 
 share the same opinion. 
 
 The Apothecaries' grant restrained the Grocers and all other Com- 
 panies from keeping an apothecary's shop, and from exercising the 
 mistery in London or within a radius of seven miles thereof ; it required 
 every practitioner to have served his full term of apprenticeship, and to 
 have obtained a certificate from the College of Physicians, and it con- 
 ferred on the Society the power of search, seizure, and destruction over 
 apothecaries' shops in London and within the aforesaid radius. 
 
 The new body was entitled to buy, sell, and make drugs ; and here a 
 main difficulty was experienced from the want of corporate resources 
 and the expensive character of the true material. The plan was con- 
 ceived of facilitating the execution of this very essential part of their 
 functions by creating a Stock, to which any member might subscribe to 
 the extent of a single non-transferable share, and which was calculated to 
 enable them to carry on the pharmaceutical business on behalf of, and 
 in the name of, the Society. But the heavy cost of pure drugs obliged 
 these stockholders to produce or sell at a loss, until their affairs became 
 embarrassed, and the Society itself took over the business, which it still 
 manages in its corporate capacity. 
 
 In addition to their own specialities, the Apothe- 
 caries to a certain extent trespassed on the province 
 of the Vintner in laying in stocks of the richer sorts 
 of wines for retailing, possibly on the ground or 
 pretext that they were liqueurs for medicinal pur- 
 poses. Stow specifies more particularly muscadel, 
 malmsey, sack, and bastard. 
 "I" AKMv When the Grocers represented to James I. the 
 
 prejudice which his movement would entail upon them, he rejoined in
 
 THE Al'OTHECARIES. 349 
 
 a tone and spirit which certainly did him honour. After excepting to 
 other points, the King said: "Another grievance of mine is, that you 
 have condemned the patents of the Apothecaries in London. I myself 
 did devise that Corporation, and do allow it. The Grocers who complain 
 of it are but merchants. The mistcry of these Apothecaries was belong- 
 ing to the Apothecaries, wherein the Grocers are unskilful, and therefore 
 I think it fitting that they should be a Corporation of themselves. They 
 [the Grocers] bring home rotten wares from the Indies, Persia, and Greece, 
 and herewith thro' mixtures make waters and sell such as belong to 
 the Apothecaries, and think no man must control them, because they 
 arc not Apothecaries." 
 
 The Society was so far fortunate in having James for a friend ; his 
 Majesty would even call this his Society ; and in the grant of arms by 
 Camden Clarencieux, the obligations of the Apothecaries, who might 
 otherwise have failed to withstand the influential hostility of the 
 Grocers, were symbolized in the introduction of the two unicorns, the 
 dexter one denoting Scotland. 
 
 At one time the Society was one of those among the Gilds of the City, 
 which superintended the King's Beam at the Steelyard ; and the Society 
 probably undertook the charge of the Small Ream, which was calculated 
 for troy weight. 
 
 It is deeply to be regretted in the public interest that the apothe- 
 cary of our days is permitted to tamper alike with his material and 
 his customer, and to deliver prescriptions, which in a heavy propor- 
 tion of cases are false ; or to tender professional advice, which is often 
 as worthless as it is ultra vires. But modern legislation has been 
 rather in the direction of extending and strengthening the authority 
 of the Society, and enlarging its sphere of usefulness ; and in the 
 future Parliament can do no wiser thing than to make it, with proper 
 safeguards, the medium for securing the country against the crying 
 abuse of corrupt pharmaceutical concoctions by all but a few leading 
 •establishments. 
 
 So far back as 1812 a strong effort was made to organize the medical 
 profession on a sounder basis under parliamentary sanction ; but it was 
 not at that time successful. 
 
 The Apothecaries, the Stationers, and the Clothworkers are honour- 
 ably distinguished in their several ways as the municipal Livery bodies, 
 which recognise and carry out the practical side of their nominal callings, 
 apart from any charitable or fiduciary element and consideration ; and 
 so far as the first Society is concerned it must be obvious that, unless it 
 is courageously and energetically supported, as being the best available 
 machinery for the purpose, in protecting the community against igno-
 
 350 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ranee and fraud, the advance in the other branches of medical and 
 surgical science is sensibly retarded and neutralized. 
 
 The Court of Aldermen, manifestly under the Grocers' inspiration, 
 looked unfavourably on the detachment of the Apothecaries ; and as 
 early as 1614, when the matter was already mooted, addressed a petition 
 to the Lords of the Council upon it. The question was referred to two 
 of the Judges, and all the points seem to have been well considered, be- 
 fore the charter passed. But the controversy did not terminate there ; 
 and as late as 1618 the King's letters patent were still unenrolled by 
 the City Chamberlain, and James was maintaining a correspondence 
 with the Corporation on the subject. 
 
 The Society is governed by a Master, two Wardens, and twenty-one 
 Assistants. Four ordinary Courts are held in the year, and two special 
 Courts for the swearing in of Examiners or other extraordinary business. 
 
 The three grades of the Apothecaries are the Yeomanry or Freemen, 
 the Livery, and the Court. Women are not admitted to the Freedom. 
 Freedom of the City is optional. In 1882 and 1S92 the numbers were 
 about 400, of whom the Yeomanry made 250. 
 
 This Society, the Stationers, and the Brewers enjo)' the distinction 
 of excluding persons not belonging to the vocation. They are all tj'pes 
 of the Craft Gild, which must be accounted in some respects as more 
 interesting and technically important than the Gild Merchant. 
 
 The members of the Society dine together annually on or about Lord 
 Mayor's Day, and usually invite such members of the Colleges of Phy- 
 sicians and Surgeons, and others, as the Court thinks fit. There used 
 to be a botanical excursion, known as Herborizing Day, once a }'ear, 
 when a second dinner was given ; but this custom has been abandoned ; 
 and it may be predicated generally indeed of the expenditure, that it is 
 exemplarily frugal. 
 
 The Hall was acquired under the charter in 1633, and originally con- 
 sisted of a house and grounds known as Cobham House, then the pro- 
 perty of Lady Howard of Effingham ; these premises extended to the 
 Thames on the eastern side of Water Lane, and occupied a larger area 
 than the present buildings, which, with the laboratories, warehouses, and 
 other appurtenances, cover about three-quarters of an acre. 
 
 When the Society first came into possession of this estate, it was 
 classic ground on almost every side. There was Baynard's Castle, once 
 held by the Fitzwalters, to whom the site of Grocers' Hall also belonged ; 
 Bridewell, first a palace and then a prison ; the Wardrobe ; and the 
 Theatre, where so many of the dramas of the early playwrights were 
 performed, and of which Playhouse Yard is the sole existing memorial. 
 Moreover, Surgeons' Hall was in the Old Bailey, and the College of
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Physicians in Warwick Lane. The Apothecaries have alone remained 
 on their original holding, until realities have faded into associations. 
 
 Pepys, in his Diary, January 29, 1 660-1, records his presence at a 
 performance of three acts of The Maid in tlic Mill, by Fletcher and 
 Rowley, at Apothecaries' Hall, and being pleased. It was at a period 
 when the theatres were not yet fully in working order again ; and the 
 Hall from its vicinage was not an inappropriate substitute for a regular 
 playhouse. But this is the only incident of consequence which has been 
 handed down to us of the original Hall, which totally perished in the Fire 
 a few years later. 
 
 A writer in 1695 describes its successor as " seated almost opposite to 
 the Paved Alley that leadeth to the Ditch side, down steps against 
 Bridewell Bridge." It was then entered by a pair of gates leading into 
 an open courtyard, paved with broad stones. The Hall itself was 59 
 feet in length, 28 in width, and 26 in height. At the southern end 
 was a screen of Irish oak, 17 J feet high, surmounted by the Society's 
 arms ; and the apartment was wainscoted in the same material to a 
 height of 15 feet. At the other extremity was the orchestra, or music 
 gallery, surmounted by the royal arms. 
 
 The place still preserves an antique aspect and a contrast to the modern 
 life around ; although its owners and occupiers so thoroughly and 
 worthily identify themselves with their own time and its calls. 
 
 The famous men who have been members of this body, include many 
 names familiar to the scientific and literary student : Tobias Smollett, 
 William and John Hunter, Edward Jcnner, Sir Humphrey Davy, Dr. 
 Sydenham, Sir Spencer Wells, and Sir Erasmus Wilson ; and among 
 those who joined the Society, but owed their celebrity to other gifts, 
 there were Tobias Smollett, Oliver Goldsmith, George Crabbe, and John 
 Keats. 
 
 The Physic Garden was originally leased to the Apothecaries by 
 Charles Cheyne, Esquire, lord of the manor, in 1673, for a term of sixty- 
 one years, and was then described as consisting of three acres, one rood, 
 and thirty-five perches ; but in 1731, some time before the expiry of 
 the tenure. Sir Hans Sloane, the new lord, gave the ground to the 
 Society for ever, at a quit-rent of 5/. a year, and on condition that it 
 should annually present to the Royal Society fifty well- cured specimens 
 of plants, the produce of the said garden, till such reached the number 
 of 2,000 ; or, by default, the said parcel of ground to lapse to the Royal 
 Society, which should perform the same covenants to the College of 
 Physicians, and finally, if the Royal Society failed so to do, the property 
 should go to the Physicians. 
 
 The Apothecaries seem to have had before them more than once in
 
 Tilt: Al'OTlIECARIES. 353 
 
 recent times a project for parting witli the Garden, and even for migrat- 
 ing to other premises, in order to enable them to profit by the hirgely 
 augmented value of those in Blackfriars. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Copie of a Letter sent by a learned I'hysician to his friend, wherein are detected 
 the manifold errors vscd hitherto of the Apothecaries ... By T. W. 8vo, 
 1 5 86. 
 The ignorance of tl>e early apothecaries is particularly mentioned in the dedication by Dr. Turner 
 of his Herbal to (Jueen Elizabeth in i =568. 
 
 A Short View of the Frauds, and Abuses committed by Apothecaries ; as well in 
 relation to Patients, as Physicians. By Christopher Merritt, M.D., F.R.S. 4to, 
 1669, 1670. 
 
 Lex Talionis; Sive Vindicie Pharmacopoeorum : Or, A Short Reply to Dr. Merrett's 
 Book, And Others, written against the Apothecaries . . . 4to, 1670. 
 
 A Potion for an Apothecary ; Or, the Apothecarye's Portion ... To the Tune 
 of, Old Flesh. Also the words that were written in the counterfeit Letter, as if 
 they came from her brother out of the Country. [About 1670.] A broadside 
 ballad with three woodcuts. 
 
 A Charter granted to the Apothecaries of London, The 30th of May, 13 Jac. I. 
 
 Translated and Printed for the better information of the said Apothecaries in 
 
 their Duty to the City of London, the CoUedg of Physicians, and Their own 
 
 Society. 4to, 1695. 
 
 The translator was probably Gideon de Laune or Delaune. The tract is inserted in T. Delaune's 
 
 Account of London, 1690. 
 
 Physick lies a Bleeding : Or, The Apothecary turned Doctor. A Comedy acted 
 every Day in most Apothecaries Shops in London. And more especially to be 
 seen, by Those who are willing to be cheated, the First of April, every Year. 
 Absolutely necessary for all Persons that are Sick, [or] may be Sick. [Quot. 
 from Juvenal.] By Tho. Brown. 410. Dedicated to that Worthy and Ingenious 
 Gentleman, Dr. J. B. 4to, 1697. 
 On the back of the title are the names of the principal actors in this mock-play ; John Galen, Tom 
 
 Galypot, Lancet Pestle, etc. ; the scene is Apothecaries' Hall. 
 
 The grete herball. Folio, isi6[.'], 1526, 1529, 1561. 
 
 A translation from the French. 
 A newe mater the whiche sheweth and treateth of y vertues & proprytes of herbes ; 
 the whiche is called an Herball. 410, 1525, 1526. 
 
 A translation from a Latin tract called De Virtulibus Hcrbarnm. 
 
 A new HerhaU. By William Turner, M.D. Folio, 1551. 
 
 The seconde parte. Folio, 1562. 
 
 First and seconde partes [and third part]. Folio, 1568. 
 
 ^ ^ This includes the Book of the Baths of England, and a most excellent and perfect homish 
 Apothecarie, or Homish physic book, translated from the German by John Holybush. 
 
 A little Herball of the Properties of Herbes. By Anthony Ascham. 8vo, 1550. 
 A boke of the propertyes of herbes, the whiche is called an Herbal. By Walter 
 Cary. 8vo, Robert Redman [about 1540]. 
 
 There are other editions. 
 
 C.C. 45
 
 354 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A Newe Herball ; or, Historic of Plantes. By Renibert Dodoens. Translated by 
 
 Henry Lyte. Folio, 157S ; 4to, 1586, 1595; folio, 1619. With woodcuts. 
 A Herbal for the Bible. By Levinus Leminius. Translated by Thomas Newton. 
 
 Svo, 1587. 
 The Herball; or, Generall Historic of Plantes. By John Gerarde. Folio, 1597, 
 
 1633, 1636. 
 Pambotanologia . . . Or, A Compleat Hcrball. By Robert Lovell. Svo, 1665. 
 A Herbal containing 500 Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in the 
 
 Practice of Physick. By Elizabeth Blackwell. 2 vols. Folio, 1737, 1739, or 
 
 1 75 1. Folio, with plates. 
 
 There was only one edition. 
 
 The Composition or making of the moste e.xcellent and vertuous Oil called Oleum 
 
 Magistrale. By George Baker Chirurgian. Svo, 1574. 
 CatalogUS arborum, fructuum ac plantarum ... in horto Johaniiis Gerardi 
 
 ciuis & Chirurgi Londinensis nascentium. 410, 1596; folio, 1599. 
 The practise of the new and old phisicke. By Conrad Gesner. 4to, 1599. 
 The Vertue and Operation of this Balsame. Made by N. P., Master of Arts, and 
 
 Minister of God's word. A broadside advertisement. [Charles I.] 
 Anatomia Sambuci; or, The Anatomy of the Elder. By Martin Blochwich. Svo, 
 
 1677. 
 Some Observations made upon the Brasillian Root, called Ipecocoanha. 4to, 1682. 
 Some Observations Made upon the Root railed Serapias, or Salep, Imported from 
 
 Turkey. Shewing its Admirable Virtues in Preventing Womens Miscarriages. 
 
 Written by a Doctor of Physick in the Countrey to his Friend in London. 410, 
 
 1694. 
 The two preceding pieces are only part of a series or group of tracts of the same cliaracter pub- 
 lished between 1663 and 1695, and all described in Hazlitt's Collections. 
 
 Variety of Surprising Experiments made of two Incomparable Medicines: 
 Exilir Febrifugum Martis, and Salt of Lymons. By Moses Stringer. Svo, 1703.
 
 THE ARMOURERS AND BRAZIERS. 355 
 
 TLbc Hvinourcrs an& ^Gra.sicrs. 
 
 FROM STOW. 
 
 DURINC. some centuries this Association was limited to the former 
 industry, and the Gild is in possession of records, which establish its in- 
 vestiture with a right of search and control over armour and weapons. 
 At successive periods it absorbed certain independent crafts, the 
 Heaumers and other minor divisions of this flourishing industry in those 
 times, when the use of armour, both for infantry and cavalry, and for 
 the horses as well as their riders, was so general. It is concluded that 
 the Braziers, who are said to have been separately incorporated about 
 1479, did not join them till 1708. The Braziers are described as a 
 distinct body in 1578 ; but it is possible that from the tendency of the 
 Armourers to traverse the lines of the other craft, the two succeeded 
 in arriving at some unofficial basis of understanding, or co-operated for 
 certain specific objects. The Braziers appear to have absorbed the 
 ancient Fraternity of Potters, whom we have mentioned in the preced- 
 ing section. As trades always established themselves, before they gave 
 names to individuals, the antiquitj' of the brazier or brass-founder is 
 shown by the patronymic Brass-faber, Humphrey Brass-faber having 
 been one of the Sheriffs of London, and possibly also follower of the 
 vocation, in 1249-50. 
 
 The earliest Ordinances, drawn up by the Armourers with the assent 
 of the Corporation, are dated 1322, and provide for the good and suf- 
 ficient quality of the goods made by this body and offered for sale by 
 them, whereas it had been found that old, worn-out articles were 
 vamped up, and sent into the country beyond jurisdiction, to be sold to 
 the unwary, and that persons of all classes were thus deceived. To 
 meet this evil, supervisors of the craft were appointed ; and those, who 
 made the iron or steel parts, were under covenant to deliver each piece, 
 whether bassinet, gambeson, or acton, to be lined or covered, to a Linen- 
 Armourer or Taylor. The supervisors had power of search, and might 
 seize any armour on the premises of an armourer or otherwise that was 
 not made according to regulations, which are specially cited in some 
 proceedings at Guildhall in 1578, as though they were still the code in
 
 356 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 force and use. There is no indication of a renewal of these Ordinances. 
 But tne Armourers were gradually rising in consideration and re- 
 sources, and in or about 1428 established themselves in a place of 
 business and assembly at London Wall, if they did not at that period 
 already own likewise the chantry in St. Paul's dedicated to St. George 
 the Martyr, which is noticed in 1453 as belonging to the Gild. It is 
 observable that all crafts, whose employment involved noise and smoke, 
 as well as an abnormal demand for space, selected as a rule the outskirts 
 of the metropolis, and fixed themselves, where accommodation was most 
 plentiful and the interference with the traffic and the repose of the 
 inhabitants at night was apt to be least serious. 
 
 On the 8th May, 1453, 31 Henry VI., the Armourers received their 
 first charter, in which we see that they are mentioned and instituted as 
 the Fraternity or Gild of St. George of the Men of the Mistery of 
 Armourers of the City of London. 
 
 At this period they were presumably a far more numerous body than 
 the Braziers. In the particulars of the muster of the Crafts for the City 
 watch, in 1469, they supplied thirty-four men against the Braziers' eight. 
 On the 8th November, 1559, i Elizabeth, the grant of Henry VI. was con- 
 firmed by inspcxiuins. On the 29th September, 1619, 17 James I., in 
 consideration of 100/. paid by the Company, all its privileges, with its 
 licence in mortmain, were again renewed ; and by his letters patent, 
 recognising the Armourers, James II. conferred in 1685 a very ample 
 power of search and presentment over all edge tools and armour, and all 
 copper and brass work wrought with the hammer in the City and within 
 a radius of five miles thereof 
 
 The status of the Company in 1619 was probably very subordinate, if 
 we are entitled to judge from the modest amount — 40/. — which it sub- 
 scribed under the Goldsmiths to the purchase of the Ulster Plantation. 
 
 It appears that in process of time the Armourers had, as we learn 
 from the patent of 16S5, extended their industry to copper and brass 
 work, and thus trenched on the province of the Braziers ; and this 
 circumstance may have led to the fusion which took place in 1708, when 
 Queen Anne incorporated the two Gilds under the style of the Company 
 of Armourers and Braziers in the City of Londo;.. There is explicit 
 reference in this instrument to the development of the Armourers' busi- 
 ness just referred to ; and doubtless the present union formed the best 
 and most satisfactory modus viveiidi, inasmuch as the governing body 
 of the combined Crafts was clothed with the largest possible faculty of 
 inspection and penal restraint. 
 
 The charter of Queen Anne is the one by which the Company is 
 now ruled ; but its ancient privileges have become virtually inoperative,
 
 THE ARMOURERS AND liKAZIERS. 
 
 )57 
 
 although it occasionally bound apprentices a few years ago. The Execu- 
 tive is composed of a Master, Upper Warden, Renter Warden, and eigh- 
 teen Assistants. The Court holds an annual view in May of the Com- 
 pany's estates. According to a statement made in 1882, the pictures, 
 [)late, furniture, and armour in its possession were worth nearly 12,000/. 
 Armourers' Hall, at London Wall, used to adjoin Leathersellers' Hall, 
 and is traced back to the earlier half of the fifteenth century. The 
 owners were accustomed to permit its occasional use by other Companies 
 or Fraternities at the ordinary rate of a groat a day. The Founders 
 hired it for two days in 1497. 
 
 A FL'NEK.^L <:.\K1'. 
 
 The Armourers and Braziers have been liberal contributors to the 
 City and Gilds Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. 
 They subscribed 78/. 15J. to the preliminary outlay, and appear as 
 annual donors of 525/. 
 
 The Company has the honour to reckon among its honorary' mem- 
 bers Henry VI., who gave it its first charter. 
 
 In the general lottery of 1567, the posy on the Armourers' ticket. 
 No. 182,833, drawn by Thomas Tindal of London, was " God make all 
 sure for the Armourers." But the prize was only IJ-. 2d. According to 
 information derived .from the Loseley MSS., there was a public lottery 
 in 1585, for the disposal of a collection of "beautiful armour;" but 
 nothing definite is known of it, nor is any copy of the scheme or pro- 
 spectus forthcoming. It was at all events an extremely unusual class 
 of property to offer to competition in such a way at that date.
 
 358 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ^be JSal?ers.' 
 
 The United Gild of White and Brown Baiters dates its corporate 
 origin from a charter of Henry VIII., 22 July, 1509, under which power 
 was vested in the new body to make, create, build, and establish a 
 certain perpetual Fraternity or Gild of one Master and four Keepers of 
 the commonalty of freemen of the Mistery of Bakers of the City of 
 London and suburbs thereof, with the right to re-elect annually the said 
 Master and Keepers, or Wardens, for the due government of the Society. 
 In 1 5 15, the municipal authorities accorded the Bakers as one Company 
 the nineteenth place in order of precedence. 
 
 A second charter was obtained 26 May, 1 1 Elizabeth, by which a 
 licence in mortmain, to the value of 40/. a year, e.xclusive of the Hall, 
 the authority to plead and be impleaded, and the power of search and 
 amerciament, were conceded. The Hall is mentioned in this instru- 
 ment as not yet acquired, but as being in the parish of St Dunstan in 
 the East. The Bakers were then presumably in treaty for it. It was 
 in Harp Lane, Tower Street, and in addition to the Hall itself, con- 
 sisted of certain tenements which have been rebuilt since 1882 at the 
 expense of the Company. 
 
 In the Elizabeth, as in the Henry VI 1 1., charter, the White Bakers had 
 taken the initiative in drawing the makers of brown bread, whose busi- 
 ness was far more limited and unimportant, into union with them on 
 unequal terms, and the latter body dissented and renounced ; whereupon 
 the Queen was advised by the Lords of the Council to recall her patent. 
 This proceeding seems for a time to have caused the matter to drop ; 
 but in 19 James I., June 6, 1622, the Brown Bakers succeeded in secur- 
 ing separate incorporation, with a common seal, a Master, three Wardens, 
 and sixteen Assistants, as well as all other usual rights and powers. 
 
 ' .Some account of the two separate Associations of White and Brown Bakers has 
 already been given at p. 103.
 
 TllK BAKEKS. 359 
 
 We hear nothing further of the matter till 1629, when the two bodies 
 were still separate, the White Bakers being assessed for a levy by the 
 City in that year at 25/. l6.f„ the other at 4/. 6^., a proof of the rela- 
 tive weight and resources of the disputants, which is confirmed by the 
 proportions contributed by each to the Ulster scheme a few years prior, 
 namely, 480/. and 90/. In 1654, the Brown Bakers had apparently re- 
 linquished their independent quarters at Founders' Hall, Lothbury, as 
 if an union had been arranged ; and in 2 James II., the charter was 
 received with the usual restrictions in regard to the oaths of allegiance 
 and supremacy, and conformity to the Church of England, but other- 
 wise in such form as to lead to the belief that it comprehended both 
 sections of the trade. Here we find the governing body fixed at one 
 Master, four Wardens, and thirty Assistants ; and the constitution of the 
 Company still follows the terms of this grant in that and other points. 
 
 The Bakers, since the Act 3 George IV., cap. 16, altering the law in 
 respect to the supply and sale of bread in London and the environs, 
 have ceased to exercise the ancient right of control, and in fact have no 
 longer any practical connection with this branch of commerce. Nor are 
 working bakers required to join, unless they choose to apply. Women 
 are admissible to the freedom. 
 
 The Company possesses a code of bye-laws drawn up 22 February, 
 1622 ; but the Standing Orders of 1874 form the present basis of 
 administration. These Orders are publicly read every year on election 
 day, and a copy is handed to each member. 
 
 In 1882, there were about 250 freemen and 216 on the Livery. In 
 1699, the latter is returned at 146, and in 1724, at 189. Between 1871 
 and 18S0, the income considerably increased ; but the expenditure was 
 even more than equally progressive. The Court and Livery fines used 
 to be very moderate ; but it was found that the applicants grew so 
 numerous as to render a prohibitive scale for the latter expedient, and 
 it has been raised from 16/. to 75/. The fine for the Court is 50/. 
 Down to 1877, the sub-share in the Ulster Plantation was retained, but 
 was in that year sold to the Skinners for 40,000/., payable by instal- 
 ments. It had been fortunate for the Bakers that the rise in the annual 
 income from this source between 1871 and 1878, owing to the Skinners' 
 capable management, largely enhanced the selling value. 
 
 Bakers' Hall, on the eastern side of Harp Lane, is a spacious building, 
 formerly possessing a garden frontage, which is now occupied by ware- 
 houses. Stow (1633, p. 138) says that this house or site at one time 
 formed the residence of the Chichley or Chichele family in the person 
 of John Chichley, Chamberlain of London, son to William Chichley, 
 Alderman, and a descendant of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the
 
 J 
 
 60 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 same name. But it subsequently passed by the marriage of one of the 
 Chamberlain's daughters to Sir Thomas Kirrioll of Kent. 
 
 The old structure was destroyed by fire, January 13, 17 14-15, when 
 a conflagration at Wapping made terrible havoc in the neighbourhood. 
 It was rebuilt in 1719, and wainscoted in 1722. But the entrance 
 has been diverted southward since the restoration of the tenements 
 facing the lane, and the approach to the Hall through the iron gates 
 is embellished by a series of mural paintings illustrative of the Gild 
 and its craft. We see the concession of the charter : the laying the 
 first stone of the first Hall : the swearing in of the Wardens : a water- 
 scene in the Company's barge : a procession on horseback, representing 
 the Mayor on his way to Westminster ' : the making of the bread with 
 the ovens formerly in use, and at one period to be seen in the kitchen in 
 Harp Lane : the weighing of it for the assize in the scales of which a 
 specimen is still preserved at the Hall : the Almsgiving. 
 
 In the court-room, over the fireplace, are a series of Masters' and 
 Wardens' badges, and in the refectory the Company's banners are sus- 
 pended from the roof 
 
 A copy of the Bakers' coat of arms, emblazoned in their proper 
 colours, is kept here, and formed the subject, not long since, of a con- 
 troversy with a well-known confectioner, who was charged with im- 
 properly adopting it. 
 
 A rather curious circumstance happened in the beginning of 1667, 
 when John Gase, Citizen and Saddler, who also seems to have been in 
 business as a baker, elected to confine himself to the latter employment, 
 and paid his old Company 10/. as a fine on translation, but with the 
 excellent proviso, that he should have the privilege thereafter of supply- 
 ing the whole of the bread to Saddlers' Hall. ' 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Assyse of Bread what it ought to w.iye after the pryce of a quarter of wheete. 
 And also the assyse of al inaner of wood, lathe, bourde, tymbre, and the waight 
 of Butyre, and chese. 410, 1528. 
 John Rudstone, one of the Aldermen of London, at whose request, and that of Michael Enghsh, 
 this tlie earhest known Assize of Bread was printed, was Mayor in 1528. 
 
 Tliis continued, "with the Assize of Ale, to be pubhshed annually down to the last century. 
 
 The Assyse of Breade. . . . And also the Assyse of Ale. 4to[i54oJ. 
 
 This, as we have slated elsewhere, was republished at regular intervals. 
 Artachthos. Or a New Rooke declaring the Assize or Weight of Bread, not onely 
 by Troy weight, according to the Law, but by Avoirdupois weight, the common 
 Weight of England. 410,1638. 
 
 The Assize of Bread and Ale. Christopher Packe, Mayor. At the General Quarter 
 Sessions, April 23, 1655. A broadside. 
 
 ' The head of the principal figure would, it was hoped at the time, have been that 
 of a Baker ; but the Company's candidate was not elected.
 
 Tin; llARIiKRS. 
 
 36: 
 
 zrbe JBarttcrs. 
 
 Till', earliest vestiges of this interesting Gikl, which is popularly- 
 associated with the striped pole and the cupping dish, belong to an 
 epoch long anterior to its incorporation in 1461. 
 
 In 1308 the Barbers of London presented to the Mayor and Alder- 
 men, Nicholas Le Barbour, dwelling o[)posite the church of All Hallows 
 the Less, to be their Supervisor ; and he was admitted, and swore that 
 he would make scrutiny throughout the whole trade, and distrain ujjon 
 an)' that kept brothel, or acted otherwise contrary to law or usage. 
 
 In 1357, the Barbers, by reason probably of the necessity of their 
 constant attendance at their places of business in case of sudden illness 
 or casualties, were exempted from serving on juries and inquisitions. 
 
 The earliest code of bye-laws for the Barber-Surgeons appears to be 
 that of 1376, which sought to grapple with the mischief done by 
 unskilful persons coming up from the country to practise barbery, 
 surgery, and the cure of maladies ; and the Articles forbad any one for 
 the future keeping shop or "otherwise working in the craft, who was not 
 approved by the two Masters thereof, duly presented to the Mayor and 
 Aldermen, and sworn before them. At this time the Gild returned twp 
 members to the Common Council. 
 
 The Barbers stand alone in the single respect of possessing, so far 
 as our present information extends, a copy of the return to the writ 
 of 12 Richard IL (1388), requiring all the Gilds in the kingdom to 
 afford full details of the charters under which they claimed and 
 exercised their powers. The transcript among the Barbers' archives 
 was derived in 1634 from the original document then preserved in the 
 Tower of London, and was transferred in 1648 to a vellum book of 
 ordinances still extant. We seem to be indebted to this proceeding 
 for the survival of the text. 
 
 The Gild is represented as being governed at this date by a Master 
 and Surveyors or Overseers, and the Articles closely resemble those 
 C C. 46
 
 ?62 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 of earlier and later periods, and of the other fraternities. They provide 
 for the payment of quarterwages, the appointment to offices and refusal 
 to serve, the distribution of alms, and the maintenance of order. 
 
 It is not at all surprising that the City discovered much inconvenience 
 and miscarriage from the union, in the persons of Barbers, of the prac- 
 titioner in shaving and hair-cutting, and in surgery and physic. But it 
 was not till 1415, apparently, that any formal steps were taken to check 
 this evil, and to prevent the misdeeds and extortions of ignorant and 
 indiscreet men. The Court of Aldermen in this case not only approved 
 the appointment of Ma.sters of the crafts of Barbery and Surgery, but 
 
 His Candlestick. 
 
 His Chnfer. 
 
 His Crisping Irons. 
 
 His Chafing Dish. 
 A BAKBER AND HIS IMPLEMENTS IN 1688. 
 
 summoned all the practitioners in the dual employment severally, took 
 their names, and examined them as to their technical capability. 
 
 While the Barbers united with their occupation that of surgery 
 and medicine, there were Master-Surgeons, who also formed an Associ- 
 ation in early times, and who required, before they could practise in the 
 City, authority from the Corporation. Sometimes they were obliged to 
 tender security. 
 
 We also meet with the specialist, who set limbs and bones, and who 
 appears to have been distinct from both. These more e.xperienced 
 persons were often, at the outset, foreigners, from whom, as in other 
 departments of science, the English derived their knowledge of anatomy 
 and medicine. But others were denizens ; and in course of time both
 
 THE BARUERS. 
 
 3^3 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 these and naturalized subjects developed into the important Fellowship 
 which was consolidated with the Barbers by the Act of 1540. 
 
 Of the professor of dentistry as a separate and special employment 
 we meet with an example in Stow's Survey, under 1554, in tlic person of 
 John Hrickct, Citizen and Toothdrawer, who left funds to provide twelve 
 sacks of charcoal at Easter for ever to the poor of St. liotolph's, 
 Bishopsgate. 
 
 The letters patent of i Edward IV., February 24, 1461-2, recite that 
 the Freemen of the Mistery of Barbers of the City of London, usinsj the 
 mistcry or faculty of Surgcrj-, had long exercised, 
 and still continued to exercise, their skill and 
 labour in healing and curing wounds, blows, and 
 other infirmities, as well as in bleeding and tooth- 
 drawing ; but that, owing to certain unexpcrt 
 practitioners, divers people had greatly suffered ; 
 whereupon it was accorded to the said Freemen 
 to be one body and one perpetual communit\% 
 with power to elect two Masters or Governors, 
 who should have the right of search and inquisition throughout the 
 City over all freemen being barbers and using the mistery of 
 surgery, and over all foreigners practising surgery, and should oversee 
 what instruments, plaisters, and medicines were used and applied. 
 Every barber, before he presumed to enter upon that vocation, was 
 required to seek approval by the Masters of the Gild, who were to 
 present them to the Mayor for the time being, and all certified barbers 
 were exempted from serving on juries and assizes — a privilege enjoyed 
 b_\- the Craft since 1357. At this date the fellowship was presumably 
 of considerable importance, and tolerably prosperous, as to the muster 
 for the Watch in 1469 it was assessed at I20 men. 
 
 This grant, which echoed the complaints and substantially repeated 
 the terms of the bye-laws made a century before, was renewed by 
 Henry VII. (December 5, 1500), and by Henry VIII. (March 12^ 
 1512-13).^ In 32 Henry VIII. an Act of Parliament united the two yet 
 distinct Societies of Barbers and Surgeons, the latter of whom were 
 then a voluntary unchartered Fellowship, under one government and 
 charter by the name and style of the Masters or Governors of the 
 Mistery or Commonalty of Barbers and Surgeons of London, with 
 right of search and supervision over the City and one mile compass, and 
 
 ' It appears that in 1 5 15 the number of Barbers practising as surgeons in tlie City 
 was nineteen. By the municipal order, settling precedence, the Company ranked 
 twenty-eighth.
 
 364 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 immunit)' from bearing armour and service on watches, juries, and 
 assizes. 
 
 The Barbers thus stood in the peculiar position of having their pro- 
 ceedings and jurisdiction concurrently directed by a charter and an Act 
 of Parliament, which were to be read and construed together. 
 
 In this Act it is set forth "that no person within the City or suburbs, 
 and one mile compass of the said City, using any barbery or shaving, 
 should occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or any other thing belong- 
 ing to surgery, except drawing of teeth, and that whosoever should use 
 the mistery or craft of surgery should not occupy the feat or craft of 
 barbery or shaving." 
 
 Such language seems incompatible with the unreserved amalgamation 
 of the two bodies in 1461, under the circumstances mentioned in the 
 preamble to the charter of that date ; for the statute expressly pro- 
 hibits the two Crafts from traversing each other beyond dentistry, and 
 leads us to speculate, whether we are not to understand two classes of 
 barber, of which one only really answered to its designation, and was 
 narrowed in its enterprise by the long prevalent general habit of wear- 
 ing the beard. 
 
 The physician and apothecary were alike excluded from the scope 
 of the law, which solely affected the Company of Surgeons and the 
 qualified Barber. The origin of the assumption by the latter of certain 
 functions not appertaining to his normal industry is to be sought in the 
 mediaeval usages of the Continent, where the Barbers' Quarter was often 
 invested with special privileges, comprising an exemption from the 
 curfew in view of the contingency of calls for assistance at all hours. 
 
 The powers and franchises of the united Company were re-granted 
 4 Philip and Mary, 2 Elizabeth, i James I., 5 Charles I., 25 Charles II., 
 I James II., and 8 Anne. By the charter of James I., the radius of 
 jurisdiction was extended to London and Westminster and seven 
 miles compass, and the Company was authorized to make bye-laws, 
 and to appoint lecturers on the principles and rudiments of surgery 
 for the benefit of pupils and beginners. The last provision is of spe- 
 cial interest, and it does not occur elsewhere, in the annals of these 
 Gilds, and seems to betray the influence of some professional man of 
 more than ordinary perception. 
 
 The probability seems to be, that, the law on the subject notwith- 
 standing, the Barbers practically invaded the province of surgery in 
 conjunction with their ordinary business ; and as the Surgeons in 
 London became a more numerous and influential class, and learned from 
 the Continent many valuable lessons belonging to their profession, the 
 inconvenience and anomaly of the fellowship contracted in 1461, and
 
 TlIK liAKliliKS. p,6l 
 
 legally recognised in 1540, grew more and more conspicuous and dis- 
 tasteful. But it was not till 1745 that the Act, 18 George 11., cap. 15, 
 finally dissolved the two incongruous constituents,' the Barbers paying 
 t(i the Surgeons a capital sum of 510/. and transferring to them an 
 annuity of 16/., and being thereupon re-incorporated under the name of 
 the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Mistcry of Barbers of 
 London, with a licence in mortmain to the extent of 200/. a year. 
 
 The Barbers hereby, after the payment of 510/. and the surrender of 
 the annuity of 16/., remained in possession of the entire residue of the 
 estate, which seems to prove that, although the Surgeons were the more 
 distinguished section, the bulk of the property in 1745 was vested in 
 their colleagues. 
 
 The Act just mentioned now governs the Company, of which the 
 Executive is composed of a Master, three Wardens, and twenty Assist- 
 
 FIGUUK.S FKOM THE HOLBEIN PICTURE -AT B.\KBEK.S HAI.I,. 
 
 ants, who are periodically elected from such of the Livery as have 
 served the office of Steward or been fined for it. On the retirement of 
 a Master, it is customary to present him with his badge or jewel of 
 office. 
 
 The charter of i James I. empowered the Company to frame bye- 
 laws — a faculty which it had enjoyed since 1 376 by the authority of the 
 Court of Aldermen ; but those at present in force exist in a MS. dated 
 January 13, 1708, subject in certain instances to later resolutions of 
 the Court. In 1699 the Livery was officially returned as 195, and in 
 1724 as 299 (of whom 139 were surgeons, 113 barbers, and 47 of no 
 
 ' In some legal proceedings in 1891, the alleged dissolution of the Company of 
 Surgeons in 1796 was disputed, on the ground that the Royal College, established in 
 1800, had succeeded to the property of the lormer Society, and that there were 
 existing documents to shew that the latter had a continuous existence down to the 
 institution of the College. This point, however, was ultimately (January 27, 1892) 
 <iecided adversely to the old Society.
 
 366 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 trade). In 1882, there were 120 on the Livery/ and 149 of the Free- 
 dom, two women inckided. 
 
 The Barbers were sub-sharers of the Ironmongers' Irish Manor of 
 Lizard, and in 1880 received 196/. in respect of their interest. But, as 
 we have elsewhere stated, the property has since been sold. 
 
 Barbers' Hall no longer exists ; the site of it is occupied by ware- 
 houses ; and the existing premises are limited to the Court room, one 
 or two other apartments on the ground floor, and one or two rooms 
 reached by a broad staircase. The Couft-room holds the Holbein and 
 other pictures. The portrait of Inigo Jones, said to be by Vandyke, is 
 
 BARBER.S' HALL. THE COURT-KOOM. 
 
 more probably a replica of that in the hands of the family ; yet it is of 
 interest to the Company, since the father of the great architect was a 
 Barber-Surgeon. 
 
 The unique association with the charter of 15 12-13 suggests a few 
 words of criticism. The painting ascribed to the younger Holbein 
 represents Henry VIII., in quite middle life, delivering the grant ; it is 
 probably the only specimen of the kind on canvas, although the original 
 charters of several of the Companies exhibit a similar formality. In 
 this case, the execution of the picture is not likely to have been con- 
 
 ' In 1892, according to Whitaker, tlie Livery numbered 92.
 
 llli; BARBERK. 
 
 567 
 
 temporary, and may have been painted for the Barbers many years after 
 the event, as Holbein survived till 1554. We notice that in the policy 
 of insurance it is valued at 8000/, and the Inigo Jones at 300/. 
 
 Richard Ferris, of I'addington, who was an occasional writer in verse 
 and prose, was Barber-surgeon to Queen Elizabeth in 1563, and appears 
 to have been on terms of friendship with Thomas Gale and other 
 eminent practitioners of the time. He was probably one of the members 
 of the Compan\- who exclusively followed the art of surgery. A 
 person of both his names, possibly his son, was one of the messengers 
 
 LOVING CUP IN THE I'ubiLSblON Ul liii. BARBERS' COMPANY. 
 
 of the Queen's chamber in 1590, in which year he undertook a perilous 
 excursion from London to Bristol by sea in a wherry with two com- 
 panions. 
 
 Besides the father of the architect, the Company claims as one of its 
 members the rather famous Sir Humphrey Edwin, who became Lord 
 Mayor in 1698, and was translated to the Skinners. He signalized his 
 year of office by abandoning the usual inaugural ceremony. An 
 elaborate account of Edwin by Mr. Charles Welch is in the Dictionary of 
 National Biography. 
 
 The father of Nan Clarges, afterward Duchess of Albemarle, was a 
 blacksmith, at the right-hand corner of Little Drury Lane ; and her
 
 368 
 
 THE MINOR C0MPANIP:S. 
 
 mother is said to have been one of the five Woman Barbers, who are 
 mentioned as practising in the time of Charles 1 1. 
 
 The History of the Company by Mr. Sydney Young, which has 
 lately appeared as a sumptuous volume, will prove an honourable and 
 pleasing memorial of a time when the premises were undivided and the 
 Gild was part of the scene around it. 
 
 
 LOVING CUI> I'liliSENTKIl TO THE BAIiUKRS KV CH-\KLES II. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 
 The Tooth-Drawer : A comedy advertised at the end of If 7/ nnd Drollery, 1661 , and 
 
 of the i\'t-a' World of F.n^lish W'otds, 165S, as in the press, but not at present 
 
 known. 
 
 ^* ^ Compare Surgeons' Cumpany.
 
 Tllli BASKKT-MAKERS. 
 
 369 
 
 This Company, or Gild, claims to exist by prescription, as no trace 
 of a charter is discoverable. All the papers and property belonging to 
 it were deposited at Guildhall at the time of the Great Fire, and were 
 destroyed. It is surmised that a charter may have been among them ; 
 but this is very doubtful. This informal organization, of which we are 
 to meet with several examples, was an enlargement of the principle by 
 which a considerable proportion of the Gilds remained during centuries 
 under the simpler autonomy of Wardens or Aldermen. 
 
 The sole very ancient clue to its existence and whereabouts is in a 
 record of the time of Edward IV., which classes it with the Gold and 
 Silver Wire-Drawers, and other foreignei's, and 
 restricts the quarters of those connected with 
 it to the Manor of Blanche Appleton [or Cha- 
 pelle-ton], Fenchurch Street,' whence the infer- 
 ence may be allowable that at this remote 
 period the industry was principally in the 
 hands of persons not free of the City. But 
 from a feature in the constitutional settlement 
 of the Gild in 1569, by the Court of Alder- 
 men, we are tempted to presume that the Craft 
 was subsequently released from this disability, as the incidence of this 
 clause seems to connect its members with Christ Church. 
 
 As an ordinary Association, it was established by an order of the 
 Mayor's Court, September 22, 1569, confirmed or renewed January 10, 
 1585-6, and March 27, 1610. Under this authority the Gild was em- 
 powered to meet biennially in some convenient place within the City, 
 between the Feasts of St. James and St. Bartholomew, and elect two 
 Wardens, who should serve for two years, and be sworn before the 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 ' The locality is marked by London Street and Fenchurch Street Station. 
 
 c.c. 47
 
 0/> 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Mayor in the upper chamber of the Guildhall, to execute their functions 
 faithfully under pain of 5/., one moiety payable to the Chamber of 
 London, the other to the Common Box of the poor of Christ Church. 
 The outgoing Wardens were bound to deliver their accounts within a 
 month to their successors and a committee of five or four of the Gild 
 appointed by the same. 
 
 The recognition of the Basket-makers is demonstrated by their appear- 
 ance among the fifty-five Companies which were assessed in 1602-3 and 
 1603-4, for corn and money by the City, and which subscribed to the 
 Ulster project in 1615. They held a small sub-share in the Fishmongers' 
 Manor. 
 
 The Company consists of a Prime Warden, a Junior Warden, a Court 
 ■of Assistants, a Livery limited to thirty, and the Freedom, to which 
 women have been admitted. In 1883 four members were carrying on 
 the trade ; and the Clerk is at present doing so. The income from all 
 sources was returned in 1891 at 61/., the same amount as in 1882 ; but 
 in 1892 it had apparently risen to 102/. 
 
 The Basket-makers have no Hall ; but the Parish Clerks permit them 
 the occasional use of theirs in Silver Street, Wood Street. 
 
 XLbc Blacf^sinitbs. 
 
 In looking at this Gild we have to bear in mind that the calling, in 
 which it had at any rate its first root and basis, was formerly of much 
 greater consideration than at the present day, and the followers of it, 
 both here and abroad, were men of wider attainments and higher social 
 standing than their existing representatives. The important and almost
 
 THE BLACKSMITHS. ^■J i 
 
 fundamental change in their condition ;uh1 influence has been chiefly, of 
 course, produced by the organic alteration in the methods of locomotion 
 and the distribution of labour. The mediaeval smith was, among other 
 matters, an expert in handicraft and dentistry, if not in leechdom ; and 
 as we see in the old tale of T/ie Smitli that fors^cd him a new Dame, 
 he not unfrequently emplo)-cd a staff of assistants, and acquired landed 
 property. 
 
 The most remarkable aspect, however, in which he differed from his 
 existing namesake was his relationship to the art of horology ; and 
 under our sketch of the history of the Clockmakers we have attempted 
 to explain how, when certain pioneers, unquestionably foreigners, had 
 led the way to an acquisition of the knowledge of this mistery, the 
 Blacksmith was the person who learned the lesson and profited by it. 
 His primitive efforts have probably not survived ; but the Clockmakers' 
 and other collections enable us to trace the evolution of the modern 
 masterpiece from the archaic clepsydra and bell. 
 
 The secondary conception of enclosing the works in a ca.se resulted 
 in the maker seeking alliance with the woodmonger, and in collisions 
 with the chartered monopolist of carpentry. 
 
 From the absence of any specific reference to clocks in the bye-laws 
 and charters of the Blacksmiths we may either augur that this branch 
 of their business was included within the general category of iron-work, 
 or that it was very restricted, the finer productions 
 emanating from foreign artificers or being imported. 
 So late as 1680, nearly half a century subsequently 
 to the rise of the Clockmakers as a Gild, the " great 
 church clocks of iron " are mentioned as particu- 
 larly belonging to the older craft. 
 
 One of the early French fablimix or traditional 
 stories is a humorous anecdote of a blacksmith, 
 who exercised the calling of a toothdrawer, and 
 
 accomplished his object by attaching one end of a length of wire to 
 his anvil and the other to the tooth of the patient, whose trouble was 
 removed by the unexpected presentation of a red-hot poker. This was 
 in the thirteenth century. But in England, from a very remote date 
 and in the rural districts, down to recent times, the blacksmith usually 
 officiated as the local dentist ; and we have known persons of high social 
 position who employed no one else. 
 
 From the terms of the Act, 32 Henry VI 11., we collect that barbers 
 were at that period licensed to draw teeth, but not to exercise any other 
 department of the surgical profession. It need not be said, that the part 
 played by the blacksmith was unofficial.
 
 372 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The bye-laws of the Blacksmiths, while they yet remained unin- 
 corporated, were passed in the usual way in 1372, and seem to have 
 partly arisen out of a prevalent abuse, by which persons requiring this 
 sort of labour clandestinely employed unskilled and unlicensed opera- 
 tives. The first of the articles dealt with this subject of complaint, and 
 directed that henceforth everybody should take blacksmith's work either 
 to Gracechurch Street, to St. Nicholas Shambles, or to a place near the 
 Tun on Cornhill, under penalties. It was also provided that every 
 blacksmith on each piece of large or important fabric should place his 
 mark as a guarantee or voucher, and that no one should be admitted to 
 the trade as a journeyman until he had been approved by one of the 
 Masters or Overseers. 
 
 New articles were submitted for approval in 1394, fixing the hours of 
 labour and the season for the annual choice of Wardens, enjoining the 
 use of trade marks, and forbidding any of the trade from making any 
 key from a model thereof in the absence of the old key or the lock, and 
 from sending or taking work to any fair, until it had been warranted by 
 the Wardens. 
 
 There is not the slightest probability that the Company was endowed 
 with a charter prior to that of Queen Elizabeth, of April 20, 1571, in 
 which they were united with the Spurriers, and which was renewed and 
 extended by Charles I., February 15, 1639-40, and by James II., March 
 18, 1685-6. 
 
 In 161 5 they were sub-sharers with the Vintners in the Ulster scheme; 
 and their payment evinces the possession at that time of moderate 
 resources. 
 
 The grant of 1640 conferred the right of framing bye-laws "for the 
 good rule, governing, and correcting of the Freemen of the said arts or 
 misteries within the City of London and four miles of the said City " ; 
 and the now amalgamated Gild was clothed with " power to overlook 
 and examine the making of spurs, ironwork, or anything concerning the 
 said arts or misteries " inside the same limits. Under this code the 
 Blacksmiths naturally found themselves drawn into contact with the 
 Ironmongers. But, as we have intimated, they informally infringed on 
 the Barber-Dentist, while in their craft is to be traced the ovum of that 
 of the clock and watch maker. 
 
 The negotiation and controversy between the Blacksmiths and Clock- 
 makers commenced, so far as we are aware, in 1627, and lasted at least 
 till 1638. The original point in debate was the union of the two bodies 
 under a charter, for which the Blacksmiths entertained the idea of 
 applying in 1628 ; and when this scheme failed, and the Clockmakers 
 were incorporated in 163 1 after full inquiry, the other Company used
 
 THE BLACKSMITHS. 373 
 
 every effort to hamper its movements and even to modify its powers. 
 They did not content themselves with representations and corres- 
 pondence, but addressed formal protests to the civic authorities, and 
 engaged in legal proceedings against the rival body. This antipathy, 
 and even rancour, may be construed as a recognition of the influence 
 and success of the Clockmakcrs, and may have been partly due to 
 chagrin at the error committed in spurning their proffered fellowship. 
 Entries in the Blacksmiths' books, and in the civic archives, seem to 
 form the principal record of a feud, which lasted through so many years, 
 and from which neither party derived any practical advantage beyond 
 the concession in 1636, on the part of the Court of Aldermen, of certain 
 enlarged rights of apprenticeship to the Clockmakers. 
 
 There is still another side to the question, as between the Blacksmiths 
 and their fellow-craftsmen ; for the introduction of firearms in the form 
 of guns and pistols, and the necessity for proof of each piece before it 
 passed into the market, which was even then appreciated, prompted the 
 Blacksmiths to enter on a new branch of industry, by way of indemnity 
 for the losses in other quarters ; and the preamble to the Gunmakers' 
 <:harter, 1637, particularly recites, "that divers members of this and 
 other trades had undertaken to make, try, and prove guns to the great 
 damage of his Majesty's subjects." At the same time, in the latter 
 grant the right of search secured to the Blacksmiths in their own was 
 reserved. The multiplication of privileged bodies was beginning to 
 render cross-lines rather frequent and perplexing. 
 
 In a comedy, called The W/iore New- VaM/>ed, pedormed at the Red 
 l^ull theatre in St. John's Street, in 1639, but not printed, a justice of 
 the peace threatens to bring one of the characters before the Alderman, 
 whereupon the other, after a good deal of abuse, tells the justice that 
 he refers to Alderman the Blacksmith in Holborn — some member at 
 that period of the Company, no doubt. 
 
 This, at any rate, may indicate that at that date the Blacksmith 
 ■enjoyed a certain share of civic importance. Under an earlier year 
 {1622) we have evidence of the membership of a person who possessed 
 some literary taste. 
 
 The governing body of the Gild is composed, agreeably to the 
 ■charter, of four Wardens and twenty-one Assistants. In 1756 the 
 Blacksmiths are said to have a Livery of 220. In 1882, the Livery 
 numbered eighty-one and the Freemen eighty-three. In 1892, the 
 Livery amounted to ninety-two ; and the total income was returned 
 at 684/. 
 
 Maitland speaks of their pleasant Hall on Lambert or Lambeth Hill. 
 But the Hall was there in Stow's time. He speaks of it as being about
 
 374 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the middle of the lane, near the church of St. Mary Mounthaut. It is 
 at present a warehouse. 
 
 The Company has discontinued its relationship to the trade, alike in 
 respect to control and pursuit. 
 
 Formerly a very interesting piece of antique silver plate, now well 
 known as the Blacksmiths' Cup, belonged to the Fraternity. It was 
 sold in the earlier part of the present century, and was at one period in 
 the possession of Mr. Ralph Bernal, who is said to have paid 35/. for it, 
 equal to i/. per ounce. But it changed owners once or twice at an 
 enormoush' enhanced price, and has now, we understand, found a home 
 in the United States. 
 
 LITERARY MEMORIAL. 
 
 The Blacksmiths Dreame, written by Dennis Webster, Citizen and ISlacksmith of 
 London. Entered at Stationers' Hall, May 16, 1622. Not otherwise known. 
 
 ^he Bowvcrs.i 
 
 
 This Company rises into notice in 1371 as a voluntary and indepen- 
 dent federation, and as having entered with the Fletchers into a certain 
 compact for the maintenance of a good accord by mutual respect for 
 each others' rights and interests. The proceedings on this occasion 
 prove that on the part of some members of both crafts it had been 
 the practice to manufacture alike bows and arrows ; but the treaty of 
 1 37 1 ostensibly at least determined this irregularity, and also limited 
 
 ' Compare Stringers, supra, and Fletchers, post. The motto of the Bowyers is 
 Crecy, Poictiers, Agiiicourt-
 
 THE liOWYERS. 375 
 
 the hours of work to the day-time, " by reason that bows cannot in 
 any manner be made as well or as profitably for the King and his 
 people by night as by day." 
 
 The best and most expensive old English bows were made of foreign 
 yew. In the time of Edward IV. the price for bowstaves was fi.xed by 
 statute at ^s. 4d. each. But in 1 560 the prices had greatly risen through 
 an alteration in the law necessitated by the tariff 
 being found too low, and the best quality was 
 then ordered to go at 6s. 8il each, the second at 
 3J-. 4^/., and the third, made of English yew, at 2s. 
 
 It will be seen that not only was the manu- 
 facture of bows kept separate from that of arrows, 
 but that a different body of artificers devoted itself 
 to the supply of the strings, the Stringers or the 1,1, d arms. 
 
 Long-Bowstring Makers, a community which eventually became extinct. 
 
 This apportionment was conformable with the ancient system of 
 subdivision of labour in the hands of independent unions. 
 
 The Fletchers, as we shall find, never received a charter ; but the 
 Bowyers, on the contrary, were incorporated, May 25, 1621, and 
 ■obtained a confirmation of the grant, November 17, 1668. 
 
 In the former instrument, the Gild is described as the art or mistery 
 of making long bows, and is stated to have existed as a Fraternity in 
 the City from remote times, but to have at that juncture fallen into 
 ■decay. The King, desirous of restoring the ancient and laudable 
 exercise of archery with the long bow, allowed accordingly that all 
 such as were free of the City, and used the said trade, should be 
 hereafter one body politic and corporate under the style of the 
 Master, Wardens, and Society of the Mistery of Bowyers of the City 
 of London. 
 
 The Society was appointed to have as its government one Master, 
 two Wardens, and thirteen Assistants ; and the Master, Wardens, and 
 ten Assistants were authorized to hold office till the Thursday after 
 the Feast of St. James the Apostle, 1622, all subsequent elections to be 
 made as by the charter was prescribed. There was power given to the 
 Court to choose a clerk and a beadle, to require payment of quarter- 
 wages from freemen — Zd. a quarter or 2s. &/. a year— and to make 
 bye-laws. In 1882, there were thirty-six' on the Livery, and one free- 
 man. 
 
 The only trust or other estate, other than internal revenue and looo/. 
 stock, is mainly held under the will of James Wood, August i, 1625, 
 
 ' In 1892, according to Whitaker, twenty-seven.
 
 3/6 THE MINOR COMrY\NIE.S. 
 
 whereby he devised his manor of Isley Walton, Co. Leicester, and 
 other lands, on condition that the Company should establish and main- 
 tain certain exhibitions at Oxford and Cambridge with a preferential 
 right reserved to free Bowyers, and should perform other duties, that 
 is to say, should give to six poor brethren at Michaelmas alternately 
 30J. in money and three yards of broadcloth to make a gown at ioj-. 
 the yard ; should repair on election day annually to the parish church 
 of St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey, to hear a sermon, paying to the parson 
 30i-., to the clerk and sexton is. 6d. apiece, to the churchwardens 
 IOJ. for the use of the poor, to the beadle 2s., and to the good folks 
 whom they might meet coming and going, 15^. in twopences ; and 
 should distribute half-yearly among the yeomanry of the Company 
 c,s., and (through the churchwardens) among the poor of Isley Walton, 
 
 I OS. 
 
 In 1814 the Bowyers acquired a small property contiguous to this, 
 and obtained a licence in mortmain, which perhaps covers both. The 
 latter, however, is in their own absolute right. They now support seven 
 exhibitions of 5/. at each of the two Universities named, and a school, 
 built at their expense, and contribute to other charitable objects. The 
 total income is about 600/. ; but very little is left at the disposal of 
 the Company after the deduction of various charges. 
 
 The Company formerly possessed a Hall in Noble Street, but has 
 long ceased to do so. In early days its resources seem to have been 
 extremely straitened. Stow (edit. 1633) affords a certain clue to the 
 quarters once occupied by the Craft, where he writes : " Now betwixt the 
 South end of Ave Mary-lane, and the North end of Creed-lane, is the 
 coming out of Paul's Church-yard, on the East, and the high street, 
 called BOWYER Bow, to Ludgate, on the West, . . ." This position 
 would be at no great distance from Noble Street.
 
 TH1-; HKKWERS. 
 
 117 
 
 ITbc JGicwcrs. 
 
 The Latin races appear, at the outset, to liave uniformly confined 
 themselves, in their choice of a national stimulant, to the fermented 
 juice of the grape, as their Teutonic neighbours acquired the habit 
 of preparing and using a beverage derived from some vegetable sub- 
 stance. Germany reared vines before it learned the art of applying 
 the fruit to other purposes besides that of solid food ; but in Britain, 
 where the vine was neither indigenous nor capable of being profitably 
 cultivated in the open air, the natives, at the earliest period of their 
 known history, are found in possession of a drink brewed from the 
 honey of wild bees, or, in other words, mead. This was simply follow- 
 ing the universal rule in all parts of the world, by which populations,, 
 in the instinctive search for some tonic and exhilarating agent, resorted 
 by necessity, before the intercourse between countries was facilitated,, 
 to material close at hand. 
 
 The French and English, doubtless, owed their knowledge of the 
 fermented produce of vegetables and cereals to the inhabitants of the 
 North of England — -France to her Prankish conquerors and settlers, 
 and England to the Saxons. As the question of malt liquors in France 
 has become a rather burning one, and almost a war-cry, we do not know 
 whether it is prudent to contest the statement of a writer of that 
 country, who quotes the Greek geographers for an account of the 
 familiarity of the Gauls with beer ; but the drink which the Greek 
 geographers describe was not beer. It was mead ; and there were two 
 qualities of it, suited to the two classes into which the Gaulish com- 
 munity was divided, the rich and the poor. 
 
 C.C. 48
 
 .37^ THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 It is of the greater importance to understand what the early authori- 
 ties mean when they speak of the Gauls before Charlemagne making 
 beer, when we see how vague and weakly- founded is the testimony 
 even of such an author as Lacroix upon this point ; for he says that 
 in consequence of a great famine, while Gaul was in Roman occupation, 
 the Emperor Domitian caused all the vines to be destroyed, in order 
 to render the land available for the culture of cereals, tvJiicli ivoiild, says 
 Lacroix, render inore general there the manufacture of beer. A mere 
 unsupported hypothesis ! 
 
 He proceeds to tell us that a later Emperor allowed the vines to be 
 replanted, and that the Gauls gradually lost their taste for any beverage 
 but wine ; and this was in spite of the fact that in the time of that 
 very Emperor (Probus) the Germans were beginning to make them- 
 selves very troublesome to France, and occupied a good deal of her 
 territory, so that if the population had had any disposition to adopt 
 the beverage in use among their Northern invaders, they would have 
 done so, instead of remaining lo}'al to grape-juice. 
 
 But the truth seems to be, that the Gauls, like the French after them, 
 were essentially a wine-drinking people ; even when Charlemagne 
 established his dominion over them, and encouraged the use of beer, 
 the industry evidently made no progress. In the thirteenth century, 
 five hundred years after his time, it was almost in the same stationary 
 and languid condition. Lacroix himself admits that at that period 
 the very few brewers in Paris, notwithstanding the privileges accorded 
 to them b}' the King, deserted the capital from insufficient custom ; 
 and to this day, looking at the increased population, and the large 
 foreign element in it, it can scarcely be asserted that the French as a 
 nation have overcome their immemorial predilection for wine. 
 
 It is easier to understand how the English became habituated in a 
 similar manner to malt liquor, or, at all events, to some compound of 
 vegetable origin, for they had no grapes at hand ; but the Germans 
 were not only acquainted with viticulture at an early period through a 
 Roman medium, but were enabled by climatic conditions to cultivate 
 the plant with advantage and on a wide scale. Yet the utilization 
 of the grape was, for an immense length of time, a characteristic of 
 those populations which could lay claim to a Latin origin ; and not 
 €ven the potent influence of the Prankish rulers of Gaul could wean it 
 from its traditional taste. Nor is there, in our opinion, much probability 
 that the French of our day will ever become drinkers of beer, except in 
 those centres, like Paris, which may be regarded as cosmopolitan, and 
 in the provinces which are contiguous to the German frontier. 
 
 The Franks tried without much result, in or before the Carlovingian
 
 THK MRKWKRS. 379. 
 
 era, to naturalize beer on French soil ; and to a certain extent the 
 political and commercial relations between France and the Low Coun- 
 tries at a later period led to the introduction of Flemish beer, not as a 
 manufacture but as a rather proininent import. The very fact, how- 
 ever, that a closer intercourse with beer-drinking communities had a 
 periodical tendency to renew a fashion for the liquor, carries with it 
 indirect evidence that it was a fashion and little more ; for the demand 
 for Flemish drink seems to have shared the fate of that for the Frankish. 
 Whatever might be the feeling of a limited constituency, or the market 
 created by foreign settlers and visitors, there was never in the old daj's 
 any general or popular call for what we understand as falling under 
 the category of beer. The Gaul and the Frenchman were at one in 
 preferring the produce of the vine, in its crudest form even, to that of 
 barley or other grain ; and it may be fairly suspected that, where 
 recourse was had to a decoction of lentils, vetches, and other cognate 
 material, the explanation was to be found in the absence of the vine 
 from unsuitability of climate. 
 
 Lacroix, in his famous work, Mivurs, Usages et Costutnes an Moyen 
 Age, 1872, devotes some space to this topic ; but under the name of 
 beer he classes liquors which we should not consider as belonging to 
 that famil)'. 
 
 One indication of the Teutonic parentage of beer lies in the Teutonic 
 origin of the terms which we employ to express it, unless we include the 
 Latin word cerevisia or ceivisia, which some of the later Roman authors, 
 and after them the Germans, who wrote in the same language, apply to 
 a fermented preparation from cereals or vegetables. The French them- 
 selves appear to have no corresponding vernacular phrase, and have to 
 make use of such as are obviously mere translations — loans, like the 
 produce itself, from other regions. 
 
 Nor are we indebted to the earlier French art for any graphic views of 
 scenes and interiors illustrative of the brewing industry in its varied 
 stages and branches. The Flemings and Germans here again assert 
 their priority, and not only that, but their special and traditional asso- 
 ciation with this ancient and precious article of commerce and refresh- 
 ment. The old painters and engravers, who appealed to the tastes and 
 sentiments of those around them, transferred to canvas or to paper 
 objects and costumes which were calculated to awaken an interest in 
 the immediate spectators ; and to the woodcutters of Germany and the 
 Netherlands we are indebted for a familiarity with many industrial 
 details, which we should never otherwise have so \ividly realized, 
 including glimpses of old-world commercial activity with the operatives 
 at their daily labour.
 
 380 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In an Inquisitio post mortem into the goods left by I.aurencc le 
 Long, Brewer, of the parish of St. Martin's, Ludgate, in 1335, wc find 
 the brewhouse and three shops belonging to his heir, a minor, vahicd 
 at Aps. nett, after deducting 22s. 6d. quit-rent due to the Church of 
 St. Paul and 13J'. quit-rent due to the Abbot of Westminster The 
 plant of the departed is represented as consisting of two leaden vessels, 
 one leaden cistern, one leaden tap-trough, one old chest, one mash-vat, 
 value i?>d. ; one fining- vat, value 6d. ; one trestle for barrels, value 12c;'. ; 
 three sets of hand-mills, value 45. ; one piece of lead, value 2d. ; one 
 tun and one half-tun, value 8r/. ; one ale-vat, value i8(/. ; five kcine- 
 lynes, value \od. ; one ch'iisiug(7nciie, value 4;/. ; also one alcgiste 
 value 2d. 
 
 The stock of a City brewer at this point of time was therefore 
 humble and limited enough ; and his rent and working expenses were 
 correspondent. Yet Mother Church took her toll from him in fairly 
 bountiful measure. 
 
 At a Court of Husting of Pleas of Land, held in 1345, the brewers 
 of the City were interdicted from using the water of Cheap conduit for 
 brewing ale and making malt, as their requirements had become suffi- 
 ciently large to encroach seriously on the public supply. 
 
 In 50 Edward III. (1376), this Gild returned five members to the 
 Common Council, six being the ma.vimiiDi. 
 
 We find it stated that by an ordinance of 7 Henry IV. the freemen of 
 the mistery were bound to elect yearly eight persons, four for the district 
 east, and the same number for that west, of Walbrook, to be inspectors 
 of all matters pertaining to the trade ; but we must add that this was a 
 movement on parallel lines to that which we have recorded in the annals 
 of some of the other Gilds, and was an outcome of the demand from the 
 Yeomanry, as distinguished from the Livery and Court, for a subordinate 
 share in the executive authority. 
 
 The Brewers' books, in the first half of the fifteenth 
 century (1418-40), contain numerous entries illustra- 
 tive of the practice of offering vails or douceurs to the 
 civic authorities, from the Mayor downward, with a 
 view to secure a lenient interpretation of the law, 
 where it was a question of meeting a charge or of 
 disguising an abuse. The gift was usually accepted ; 
 EARLY arIis (from '" °^^ o^ ^wo rccorded instances it was gently refused, 
 srow, 1633). g|j(. ^g hence perceive the commencing difficulty of a 
 
 trade dealing with a peculiar industry, in avoiding collision with the 
 municipal government from a variety of causes, some of which, as the
 
 HIE liREWERS. 
 
 18.1 
 
 uncertainty of standard for measures and the dcaincss of prices, have 
 ceased to operate through legislative changes. 
 
 In 1422 the Brewers became involved in a dispute with the Court of 
 Aldermen, in consequence of an alleged breach on their part of the 
 municipal precepts against forestalling, it having been represented by 
 Sir Richard Whittington, late Ma>'or, that certain brewers, members of 
 the mistery, had ridden into the countrj', and bought up all the ale, for the 
 purpose of regrating. On July 30, 1422, the Master and twelve of the 
 Company were summoned before the Court, Whittington being present, 
 and fined 20/. on this account ; but on an exception being raised by the 
 defendants, the Master and Wardens were detained till they found the 
 money or good security, under the surveillance of the Chamberlain. 
 
 THE TUMBlill,. 
 
 The Mayor and Aldermen, however, going to their dinner, the prisoners 
 demanded of the Chamberlain what they should do ; and he bad them 
 go home, and fear not ; for this whole matter was only to pleasure Sir 
 Richard Whittington ; and we further glean that the ex-Mayor was 
 wrath with the Brewers, moreover, because at their feast on the morrow 
 of St. Martin they had had fat swans served up on the table. 
 
 The enforcement of some more efficacious principle of establishing 
 uniformity and precision in the capacity of vessels employed to hold 
 malt liquor, had been long overdue, if we may judge from the complaints 
 made during the reign of Henry IV. to the Mayor's Court ; and the evil 
 and reproach were not confined to transactions in gross, but extended 
 throughout " to the displeasure of God, and contrary to the profit of the 
 City." At this period the barrel of ale held by right twenty-seven
 
 3^2 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 gallons, the half-barrel, fourteen. The trade was therefore required 
 henceforth to retail their liquor in sealed measures only, and not in their 
 own hanaps, pottles, and tankards ; and the Chamber of I.ondon was 
 charged with marking all barrels and half-barrels with the respective 
 legal quantities to be found in them. 
 
 In 1423, under the mayoralty of Robert Chichele, ale-sellers were 
 required to retail it in pewter pots, sealed and open, and to have their 
 cups sealed ; and whoever carried ale to the buyer, bore the pot in one 
 hand and the cup in the other. 
 
 The origin of the Brewers' Compan}', like that of other similar associ- 
 ations, is doubtless to be attributed to the necessity, under which all 
 engaged in mercantile pursuits in troubled times lay, of obtaining security 
 from the Government for their property and freedom from molestation 
 in the conduct of their affairs. 
 
 The number of persons pursuing this calling in London, even in the 
 remote days to which the commencement of the Gild is referable, must 
 have been comparatively large, although no individual perhaps conducted 
 busine.ss on the scale familiar to modern observers ; but the Brewers 
 followed a sufficiently common precedent in sheltering themselves be- 
 neath the royal sign-manual when they solicited and obtained from 
 Henry VI., in the sixteenth year of his reign (1437-8), a charter conced- 
 ing to them certain important privileges, and incorporating them under 
 the title of " The Master and Keepers, or Wardens, and Commonalty of 
 the Mistery or Art of Brewers of the City of London." 
 
 There is trustworthy evidence that, at all events within a measurable 
 distance of time, the Brewers had attained a very distinguished rank 
 among the Companies ; for in 1469 their return to the muster for the 
 City Watch was 210, being the highest of all, and ten more than that of 
 the Mercers. In the settlement of precedence in 1515 they rank as 
 the fourteenth Company. 
 
 The parent charter of 1437-8 conferred on the Gild the faculty of 
 managing their internal organization, of pleading and being impleaded 
 in the Courts, and of acquiring and holding lands and hereditaments. 
 Under this instrument the Executive was directed to be four Wardens 
 cho.sen from the Commonalty. 
 
 But those of Elizabeth in i 560 and 1563 determined its constitution 
 more precisely, and, among other points, fixed what its governing body 
 was to be — viz., one Master, three Wardens, and the Commonalty ; while 
 the later one of the same sovereign, in 1579, went still further, by reason 
 of the development of the industry, and the then appreciable accession 
 to the ranks of its followers, in placing breweries under the immediate
 
 IIIK IIKKWERS. 383 
 
 supervision and control of the Masters and Wardens, not merely in the 
 Metropolis proper, but within a circuit of two miles. 
 
 On the accession of the Stuarts, in 1603-4, the Brewers do not appear 
 to have moved for a new charter ; aiul the Wardens were committed to 
 Wood Street Compter for refusin<j to pay the assessment toward the 
 expenses connected with the royal passage through the City. 
 
 The inspexivius and confirmation of Charles I., 1641, extended the 
 jurisdiction of the Court to a circuit of fuur miles (probably from Corn- 
 hill), empowered it to make rules and ordinances, and for the first time 
 sanctioned the appointment of A.ssistants, not exceeding twenty-eight 
 in number, who might hold office for life in the absence of some special 
 and valid reason to the contrary. It was, we presume, this amplification 
 of the functions and authority of the Company which led to a re-issue 
 of the code of bye-laws original!)' framed in 1580. 
 
 The Company surrendered its charter by deed in 1660 and 1684, 
 prior to re-incorporation in the first year of Charles II. and James II. 
 respectively. In the former, a Clerk is authorized. Under the latter 
 charter the radius was extended to eight miles, and the rights of search 
 and quarterage were granted. These rights are defined and regulated 
 by the bye-laws of July 13, 1739, and carry with them larger powers 
 than are practically enforced at the present date. The licence in mort- 
 main is here enlarged to 60/. a year, exclusive of all charges. 
 
 But the power of search, which was subsequently reduced to four 
 miles, as it stands in the charter of 1641, has long become a dead letter, 
 owing to a multiplicity of legislative and social changes. 
 
 The bye-laws of 1739 are still in force without material alteration, 
 except that in 1857 declarations were substituted for oaths. 
 
 The Arms of the Brewers, granted 8 Edward IV., and again 35 Henry 
 VIII., 1544, were registered at the College of Arms, August 21, 1801. 
 The grant made July 23, 1469 (8 Edward IV.), are probably identical 
 with those given in Munday's edition of Stow's Chronicle, 1633. The 
 motto, " In God is all my trust," which appears on the Arms of the 
 Company, and at which imperfectly-educated persons are apt to sneer, 
 is in strict keeping with the religious atmosphere which surrounded 
 and consecrated all our early institutions, and which carried the sanction 
 and countenance of the Church into all the occupations of life. 
 
 The present Executive is composed of a Master, three Wardens, and 
 twenty-six Assistants. The Wardens are styled the Upper, Middle, and 
 Renter Warden. In 1882 there were 320 on the Freedom^ and 75 on 
 the Livery. 
 
 The Brewers' Company is nearly the only one which admits none but 
 members of the trade or partners in brewing firms. From an early
 
 384 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 period the Company, with many others, is found trying to deal with 
 what was regarded as an inconvenience or impropriety, the fellowship 
 of persons who had no connexion with the business. It seems to have 
 prospered fairly under a maintenance of this principle ; but most of the 
 Gilds which have acquired opulence and power, have done so by a 
 directly opposite policy. 
 
 Formerly women were admitted to the Freedom of the Company, for 
 the purpose of obtaining for their sons the advantages of the Aldenham 
 Grammar School ; but this qualification is no longer necessary. 
 
 The income of the Company is in large measure held in trust, the 
 corporate revenue being comparatively small — about one-fifth of the 
 whole amount, which was returned in 1892 at 17,500/. a year. 
 
 During the reigns of James I. and his son, the Brewers appear to have 
 had a good deal of trouble in respect to the strength of the liquor 
 brewed by them, which the Board of Green Cloth in 16 17 alleged to be 
 above the Assize, that is, 12s., 14s., and \6s. a barrel, thereby promot- 
 ing drunkenness; and the trade complained on their part that the King's 
 purveyors made use of their carts, horses, and men, and did not pay for 
 the goods taken punctually or properly. The Board threatened in 1629 
 to suppress all brewers not free of the Compan)'. 
 
 The Court of Aldermen did what it could to redress matters, and 
 referred the Board to the Company's charter, praying that the beer and 
 ale ordered for his Majesty's occasions might be duly paid for. 
 
 So far as the prices charged for beer are concerned, we perceive that 
 even in 1579 the Lords of the Council called upon the City to see what 
 could be done to make the Brewers reduce their tariff. 
 
 In 1627 the erection of buildings for the manufacture of alum in the 
 parish of St. Mary Matfellon [Whitechapel], in immediate neighbour- 
 hood to certain large breweries, where the beer was brewed for the Navy 
 and others, led to a petition to the King on July 25. The aggrieved 
 parties represented that the new-comers had, ever since their first arrival, 
 boiled quantities of urine for the making of their alum, to the prejudice 
 of the health and convenience of the inhabitants ; and had further, by 
 the method of getting rid of their refuse, tended to pollute the wells 
 used for the brewing water. The Lords of the Council ordered the 
 offenders to remove elsewhere within a specified term ; but there was a 
 good deal of delay and difficulty, before the nuisance was abated. This 
 incident seems to exhibit an imperfect acquaintance with the art of pro- 
 ducing the article, which is ordinarily a sulphate of alumina and potash. 
 
 The brewers, until taverns and inns grew more numerous and frequent, 
 were also salesmen, and maintained a retail side, or brewery tap, of which
 
 THE IJRKWERS. 385 
 
 the French brasserie, so far as the word goes, is a survival. To many of 
 the minor establishments at the present day a feature of this kind is 
 attached ; and of course all the early brewing houses were of this humbler 
 complexion. 
 
 Under the civic ordinances of 137 1, hostelers, unless they were 
 common brewers at the same time, were prohibited from selling malt 
 liquor save to stranger guests — persons lodging under their roofs ; and 
 brewers on their part were not at liberty to vend ale to hucksters for 
 re-sale. The object in either case was to obviate the occurrence of 
 disorders in the streets, as well as to di.scourage the regrator. 
 
 We do not observe any indication of the Hall having been at any 
 period elsewhere than on its present site in Addle Street, a turning out 
 of Wood Street, Cheapside. 
 
 In the time of Henry IV., the governing body was charged with the 
 duty of providing a proper place for the transaction of business, to 
 which members might be summoned by the beadle. But in 1420, in the 
 mastership of Thomas Greene, the Company is described as assembling 
 at Brewers' Hall every Monday. That it was occasionally lent to other 
 Companies, which did not possess a seat, is indicated by an entry in the 
 Founders' books of a payment of ?>d. for two days' use of the room. 
 
 The election-feasts were probably more regular, when convenient 
 quarters had been provided for the accommodation of guests. The 
 wives and daughters of freemen were admitted. Brethren paid lid., 
 sisters 8c/., and a husband and wife compounded for 2od. A bill of fare 
 of 9 Henry V., gives three courses ; but the order of dishes was irrespec- 
 tive of any modern law of gastronomic or culinary fitness, as fish, soup, 
 game, fruit, and sweets were served up at random. But such a method 
 of distribution was not improbably due to the graduated arrangement 
 of the company at different tables, and a course being allotted to each. 
 
 The building in Addle Street was almost completely destroyed in the 
 Great Fire of 1666, and was rebuilt, partly by subscription, partly by 
 pawning the plate (which was never redeemed), in 1673. It is in the 
 form of a quadrangle, surrounding a courtyard, and the entrance is an 
 old-fashioned gateway, which admits the visitor into a broad corridor, 
 and which strangely contrasts with the modern warehouses on all sides. 
 The Hall itself, which is on the first floor, and is reached by an old- 
 fashioned staircase, is a spacious and lofty apartment, with a fine as- 
 sortment of oak carving and wainscot in good preservation, and portraits 
 of the principal benefactors.' The court-room, which is on the same 
 
 ' Alderman Ritchard Piatt (1528-1609), Dame Alice Owen (i 547-1613), Alderman 
 James Hickson (1607-89), .Samuel Whitbread, Esq. (1720-96), John BaUer, Esq. 
 (1737-1818), and Harry Chairington, Esq., Master in 1813. 
 
 C.C. 49
 
 .386 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 storey, is chiefly remarkable for its windows, which resemble the port- 
 holes of a ship on an enlarged scale. The basement contains the roomy 
 kitchen and other offices, with a small garden in the rear. In the 
 kitchen, which is the most ancient portion of the building,' one sees 
 the original spits attached to the large fireplace, and there is a beautiful 
 leaden cistern, dated 1671, with the arms of the Brewers' Company 
 upon it. This has been removed to its present situation of late years, 
 having been formerly, we understand, in a different part of the premises. 
 
 The house in Addle Street was, prior to i860, only in part the free- 
 hold of the Company ; but in that year the Dean and Chapter of St. 
 Paul's, through the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, sold those parcels 
 which belonged to them, for nearly 3,000/., and the whole is now the 
 property in fee of the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty. 
 
 In the cause of charity and learning, the Company has performed 
 
 CREST OK COGNIZANCE OF HICKSON. 
 
 very signal services, both within and without the precincts of the City; 
 and we ascertain from the official paper before us, as well as from the 
 account given by Stow in his Survey, 1633, how at various epochs 
 wealthy and benevolent members of the Fraternity felt an honourable 
 pride in setting apart a portion of their estates to enrich the corporate 
 fund, and to endow or assist philanthropic objects. Nor did these 
 benefactors confine themselves to the freemen of their own mystery ; 
 for we find abundant proof that they contributed to the welfare of the 
 Church and the maintenance of hospitals. 
 
 We may proceed to illustrate the eleemosynary bounties of the Gild 
 by some extracts from Stow. The first which we give refers to Broad 
 Street Ward and to the reign of Henry VII. : — 
 
 " In the year 1499, .Sir John Tate, sometime Alebrewer, then a Mercer, caused his 
 Brewhouse, called the Swan, neere adjoyning to the said Free Chappell, College, or 
 Hospital of Saint Anthony, to bee taken for the enlarging of the Church, which was 
 
 ' Mr. Higgins, the courteous and obliging Clprlc of the Gild, informs us that it 
 escaped the Fire ol 1666
 
 TUK JiRKWliRS. 
 
 587 
 
 then newly buildcd; toward the building whereof, the said Tii/i^ gave great siinimes of 
 money, and finished it in tlie yccre 1501. Sir John Tate deceased 15 14, and was there 
 bnried, under a faire Monument l)y him |ire])ared." 
 
 The next instance which we have to mention is that of Dame Alice 
 Owen ( 1 547-161 3), of whose bc-ncficcnt acts the liistorian of London 
 furnishes us with the followint^ accoiuit : — 
 
 " Mistress A/ice Elkiii, widdow to Master William Elkin, Mercer and Alderman 
 of London, was afterwards married to the learned Lawyer, Master Tliomas Owen, 
 one of the learned Judges of the Land. 
 
 [Among other gifts] 
 
 Item. The building of the Almcshouses at Isli/n^ton, and purchasing of the Land 
 laid to them, did cost her the sum of one thousand, four hundred and fifteene pounds. 
 
 To the Company of Brewers in Loiuion, to whose trust and care shee hath com- 
 mitted the government and oversight of the forenamed Almes-houses and school- 
 house at Islington ; as a gratefull remembrance of her 
 love, and that their paines should not goe altogether 
 unregarded, she hath given in plate and money, one 
 hundred pounds. 
 
 This worthy woman being borne at Islington, in the 
 time of her childhood, she hapned there to escape a o^^^ 
 great danger, by means of an Arrow shot at randome ijf 
 in the field, where shee was then sporting among other 
 children, the Arrow missing all the other, pierced quite 
 thorow the hat on her head, and (God be praised for 
 it) did not touch her with any other harme : where- 
 upon, in the Towne of her birth, and where shee 
 escaped such an expected perill, shee made choice to 
 expresse her thankfulnesse to God, upon the Altar of 
 her charitable Almes-houses and Schoole." 
 
 CREST OF OWEN. 
 
 Among the monumental inscriptions formerly existing at St. Botolph's, 
 Bishopsgate, one commemorates the charitable works of another lady: — 
 
 " Hereunder lyeth the body of Joane Wood, wife to Robert Wood, Citizen ancf 
 Brewer of London. . . . She deceased the 25. day of November, An. Dom. 1600. 
 She gave large gifts and legacies to this Parish, as hereunder is expressed : 
 
 At herburiall she gave tenne pounds to the poore. 
 
 She gave tenne shillings yeerely for a Sermon on Midsummer day. 
 
 For a friendly meeting among the neighbours, forty shillings. 
 
 In bread weekly to the poore for ever, two shillings. 
 
 Also foure load of Char-coales yeerly to the poore for ever. 
 
 To the Parson of the parish yeerely for ever, tenne shillings. 
 
 To the Two Church-wardens, tenne shillings to each in like manner. 
 
 To the Gierke 6.i-. Zd. and to the Sexton ^s. yeerely for ever. 
 
 For a friendly meeting of the Parson and the parishioners, accompanying hin> 
 yeerely in walking the bounds of the parish, thirty shillings. 
 
 To the poore of the parish, in money yeerely (for ever) to be distributed, eight 
 pounds. 
 
 And the remainder of the yeerely rents for the halfe Moone, and halfe Moone Alley, 
 to remaine in the Church Stocke, towards the repairing of the Church."
 
 388 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The name of Alderman Richard Plat is among those which the 
 Brewers' Company, as well as all friends to learning, ought to hold in 
 grateful and affectionate remembrance as that of 
 the founder of the Free Grammar School and 
 Almshouses at Aldenham, in Hertfordshire. He 
 was buried at St. James's, Garlick-Hithe, with 
 the following inscription : — 
 
 " Hire lyeth buried the body of Richard Plat, Brewer and 
 sometime chosen Sheriffe of 'LowAow. Tlie Founder of 
 a free School, and sixe Alms-houses, in Aldenham, in 
 the County of Hertford. Hee died the 28. of Novem- 
 ber, 1600. having taken to wife Alice Birtles, the 
 daugliter of John Birtles, Esquire, a}id having issue 
 foure sons and one daughter." 
 
 ARMS UF l'L.\TT. 
 
 Roger Bellow, of this Brotherhood, was another friend to humanity 
 and the poor. Stow remarks : — 
 
 " Master Roger Bellow, Brewer, hath given the Lease of an house in Moore-lane, 
 called the signe of the Cocke, the yeerely rent whereof is twenty pounds. Out of the 
 which summe, tenne pounds is yeerely to be given to the poore, at the feast of Christ- 
 mas : And the remainder (except twenty shillings, otherwise by his will disposed) is 
 yeerly to be reserved, for the purchasing of some parcell of Land, towards the reliefe 
 of the poore." 
 
 Charles Langley, Ale-brewer, who was buried at St. Giles's Cripple- 
 gate, in 1602, left money to be laid out in clothes for his indigent 
 fellow-parishioners annually for ever at All-Hallowtide. 
 
 Edward Harvest, Brewer, who died in 1610, besides giving 100/. to 
 Christ's Hospital and 50/. between Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's 
 Hospitals, and bequeathing large legacies to his kindred, vested in 
 Cripplegate parish both realty and personalty for various purposes, 
 including the repair of the road between Edgworth and Paddington. 
 Harvest, though described as " Citizen and Brewer of London," appears 
 merely to have been a freeman of the Companj', as he is called on his 
 monument, " one of his Majesty's gunners." 
 
 Two other members of this Gild, Richard Culverwell and William 
 Mascall, left to Bridewell Hospital 200/. and an annuity of g/. respec- 
 tively, and many additions might be made to this roll. No meritorious 
 recipients in the City of London went empty-handed away while the 
 local brewer lived, or when he died ; and the clergy occupied a pro- 
 minent position among the beneficiaries. 
 
 Stow's notice of ancient freemen of the Company does not seem to 
 go further back than 1403, under which year he registers the interment 
 of Benet Gerard, a Brewer, at St. Botolph's in Aldersgate Ward. 
 
 Under Downgate or Dowgate Ward, Stow's Continuator (1633)
 
 THE BKEWKRS. 389 
 
 says : " At the East end of this [All Hallows the more] Church gocth 
 down a Lane, called Hay-wharfe lane, now lately a great Brew-house, 
 builded there by one Pot ; Henry Campion Esquire, a Beer-brewer, used 
 it, and Abraham his sonne since possessed it." The Peacock Brewery 
 in VVhitecross Street was another celebrated establishment, and we 
 have already referred to those at Whitechapcl. An unique Elizabethan 
 volume by Stephen Batman, preacher, published about 1570, is dedi- 
 cated " To his moste Louing and friendly Father [in law ?], William 
 Beeston, Brewer." 
 
 In the History of Thomas Hickatlirift, a chap-book founded on earlier 
 legends or traditions, there is a curious mention of the brewer of Lynn, 
 whose servant the hero became, and who, we are told, was in the habit of 
 supplying beer to the people of the Marshlands and of Wisbeach. The 
 description in the story bespeaks a primitive cart drawn by one horse ; 
 and refers to the country thereabout as very sparsely inhabited. It is 
 probably the earliest glimpse which we have of a provincial brewer 
 going his rounds. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 Principal muniments of the Company : — 
 
 1. The original Charter of 16 Henry VI., Feb. 22, 1437-8. 
 
 2. A Pardon granted to the Company in the name of Edward IV. (during the 
 deposition of Henry VI.), Jan. 3, 1454. 
 
 3. A grant of Arms to the Company, 8 Edward IV., July 23, 1469. 
 
 4. Ordinances of the Company, granted under the hand and seal of the Lord 
 Treasurer and two of the Judges, 22 Henry VII., July 15, 1507. 
 
 5. A grant of Arms to the Company, 1544. 35 Henry VIII. 
 
 6. A Charter of 4 & 5 Philip and Mary, 1556-7. 
 
 7. „ ,, 2 Elizabeth, Nov. 11, 1560. 
 
 8. „ ,, 5 Elizabeth, Aug. 29, 1563. 
 
 9. „ ,, 21 Elizabeth, July 13, 1579. 
 
 10. „ ,, 17 James I., Oct. 2, 1620. 
 
 11. „ ,, 15 Charles I., April 6, 1641. 
 
 12. „ „ I Charles II., March 18, 1661. 
 
 13. „ „ I James II., 1685 (copy). 
 
 14. A List of Subscribers towards the erection of the new Hall, 1670. 
 
 15. Bye-Laivs 22 Elizabeth, June 23, 1580. 
 
 ,% The original code, said to have been given i6 Henry VI., does not appear to e.\ist. 
 
 16. Bye- Laws 15 Charles I., July 9, 1641. 
 
 17. „ I George I., 1714. 
 
 18. „ July 13, 1739- 
 
 19. „ Feb. 13, 1857. 
 
 20. .MSS. Records and Accounts of the Brewers, 1414-10. 
 
 Th3 Beer-brewers' Complaint against the Coopers, 1541.
 
 390 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A Proclamation for Beer and Ale from the Lorde Maiour. Entered at Stationers' 
 Hall m 1557-S. 
 
 A Jest of Bottle Ale. Entered at Stationers' Hall, 19 Aug , 1583. 
 
 A Booke howe to Brewe all sortes of Beire, &c. Entered at Stationers' Hall, 
 30 April, 1591. 
 
 A Ballad imituled Jones ale is new. Entered at .Stationers' Hall, 16 Oct. 1594. 
 
 Ihe Unthriftes adiew to Jones ale is new. Entered ibid., 15 Nov. 1594. 
 
 Warm Beere ; Or, A Treatise wherein is declared by many reasons that Beere so 
 qiialilicd is farre more wholesome then that which is drunke cold. By F. W. 
 i2mo, 1641, 1724. 
 
 A Looking-glasse for Brewers. 4to, 1641. 
 
 The Brewers Plea ; (5r, A Vindication of Strong-Beere and Ale. Wherein is de- 
 clared, the wonderful bounty and patience of God, the wicked and monstruous 
 unthankfiilnesse of man. 4to, 1647. 
 
 Cerevisaris Comes : Or, The New and True Art of Brewing. By W. Y-\Vorth. 
 l2mo, 1692. 
 
 The Natural History of Bottled Ale. 8vo, Chester, 1710. 
 
 A Proclamation concerning certaine Kilnes for the sweet and speedy drying of 
 Mault and Hops at a small charge. 8 Feb. 1636-7. 
 
 A Proclamation touching common Maulsters and Brewers. 9 July, 1637. A 
 broadside. 
 
 Mault IS a Gentleman. 
 
 A pleasant new Ballad to look upon, 
 How Mault deals with every man. 
 
 A Broadside. [About 1670.] 
 
 The Malster caught in a Trap ; Or, The Witty Ale-Wife. A ballad. [About 
 
 I6S0.] 
 
 Reasons most humbly submitted to the Wisdom of Parliament for taking off the 
 Present duty of E.xcise upon Beer and Ale, and laying the Duty upon the 
 Original Malt. 4to, 1695. 
 
 Raasons Humbly Offer'd to the Honble. House of Commons for Translating the 
 Duty of Excise from Mault- Drinks to Mault. By Robert Murray, Gent. [About 
 1720.] Large 410, 2 leaves. 
 
 Drinke and welcome : . . . with an especiall declaration of the potency, venue, 
 and operation of our English Ale. By John Taylor. 410,1637. 
 
 The Lamentable Complaint of Hop the Brewer and Kilcalfe the Butcher . . . 
 against the restraint lately set out by the Parliament, against Tapsters and 
 Cooks. . . . 4to, 1 64 1. 
 
 The Tapster's Downfall and the Drunkard's Joy. 4to, 1641. 
 
 The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster and Rvle-Rost the Cooke. 
 410, 1642. 
 
 The Ale-wives' Complaint against the Coffee-houses. 410, 1675.
 
 THE BRODERERS. 39 1 
 
 Zbc J3ro&crers. 
 
 01. 1) AliMS. 
 
 Tins Company existed at a date at least three centuries anterior to 
 its formal incorporation in I56i,and was in the time of Edward III. 
 already a body of some consequence. It may be supposed that it 
 represents the original branch of the Tclarli, distinguished as the 
 Tapestry- Weavers or Tapissers, commemorated by Chaucer. In 1469 
 the Broderers equipped twelve men-at-arms to watch the City gates, 
 an obligation which establishes a sound and respectable position at the 
 time ; and this view is supported by the circumstance that, twenty years 
 after, they obtained an Act of Parliament to restrain the abu.ses com- 
 mitted in the manufacture, weight, and package of imported Italian 
 gold-work. In 150 1-2, they are found as in the fifty- fifth in sequence 
 without a Livery ; and in the same year mention occurs of the " Queen's 
 Broderer." But they do not occur among the forty-eight Gilds, of which 
 the order of priority was determined in 151 5. The later lists do not 
 point to any material improvement in their status. 
 
 Among the bequests to superstitious uses made to the Merchant 
 Taylors was one in 1382 of ten marks a year under the will of Thomas 
 ■Carleton, Citizen and Broderer of London, arising out of his estate in 
 Ad Lane, in the parish of St. Albon, Wood Street, in order that the 
 Fraternity might find a priest to pray for his soul for ever within the 
 Taylors' Chapel at St. Paul's. 
 
 Others, not belonging to the last-mentioned Gild, but to a minor one, 
 followed the same practice ; and it may have been because the testator's 
 own Fraternity was destitute of a chantry or other religious establish- 
 ment specially attached to it. 
 
 In 5 Henry VIII. the Broderers occur as conveying property in 
 Gutter Lane to Thomas Foster or Forster, Citizen and Broderer or 
 Broyderer, who executed his will in the nineteenth year of the same 
 reign. It was probably a devise to him for the use of the Gild in the 
 absence of a licence in mortmain. This Foster was, no doubt, the 
 person who gave his name to the lane still so called, and spelled in- 
 dilferently in early records Foster, Forster, and Farster.
 
 592' THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The charter of 3 Elizabeth, October 25, 1561, established the Gild 
 under the name of the Keepers or Wardens and Society of the Art or 
 Mistery of the Broderers of the City of London, with perpetual suc- 
 cession, a common seal, a licence in mortmain to 30/. a year, and the 
 power of pleading and being impleaded. It also conferred the right of 
 search within the City of London and its suburbs, the City of West- 
 minster, St. Katherine's in Middlesex, and the Borough of Southwark, 
 and that of making bye-laws. 
 
 This grant was confirmed by inspexiuius of 7 James I. 20 April 
 1609, and was revoked by Quo Warranto in 1684. In 1686 James II. 
 ratified a new one with the usual political and religious clauses ; but by 
 the Act 2 William and Mary, sect, i, cap. 8, declaring all the pro- 
 ceedings in relation to the City Gilds void, the Broderers fell back on 
 their original charter. 
 
 There are bye-laws made in 1562, 1582, 1609, and 1710. They 
 greatly vary in number and character, the first containing 35 articles, 
 the second, 12 ; the third, 13 ; and the fourth, 3 only ; and the difference 
 in their tenor and object appears to entitle the three later codes to rank 
 as supplementary to the first, rather than as independent series. 
 
 At the period of the negotiation between the Crown and the Com- 
 panies, in 161 3-17, for the purchase of the Ulster Plantation, the Bro- 
 derers were sufficiently thriving to subscribe between 150/. and 200/. 
 for a sub-share of the Mercers' manor. 
 
 But it appears from a petition to Charles I. in 1634 that the trade 
 was then "so much decayed and grown out of use, that a great part of 
 the Company, for want of employment, are so much impoverished that 
 they are constrained to become porters, water-bearers, and the like." 
 The sole fruit of this prayer appears to have been, that the licence in 
 mortmain was augmented from 30/. to loa/. a year. 
 
 The later annals of the Broderers are destitute of general interest. 
 Their control over the trade was called in question in or before 1707 
 for breaches of discipline and regulations, and eminent counsels' opinion 
 condemned some of the penal bye-laws as invalid save only against 
 freemen. 
 
 The Executive consists of a Master, Warden, Renter Warden, two 
 Auditors, and seven Assistants, elected on each Trinity Monday by the 
 Livery. In 1882, the numbers of the Company were returned as 4 
 Freemen, 3 1 Liverymen,* and the Court, as just described, or an aggre- 
 gate of 47. In 1699, the numbers were 135, and in 1724, 116; but 
 the returns do not specify whether the Court is included. The 
 
 ' According to Whitaker, the Livery in 1892 amounted to 39.
 
 THE BRODERERS. 395. 
 
 total expenditure, exclusively of the cost of three Livery dinners and 
 occasional donations to charities of moderate amount, appears to be 
 about 280/. a year, paid in fees and salaries; in 1874 the Company 
 gave a Scholarship of 50/. a year, tenable by a pupil of the City of 
 London School at Oxford or Cambridge. Under the bye-laws of 1609 
 provision was made for five Livery dinners annually ; but shortly after 
 that date the affairs had begun to decline. 
 
 From entries in the minutes in 1874 and 1879 it is to be collected 
 that the Broderers at that time possessed funded property in addition 
 to the product of internal revenue in the shape of fines, and a collection 
 of plate of some value, as a loan of it was solicited by the Education 
 Department for the purpose of making casts for the use of students. 
 
 The Company in the last century still preserved their small Mall in 
 Gutter Lane, which they had acquired early in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 It was sometimes let, however, wholly or in part. From 1696 to 1709 
 the Gold and Silver VVyre Drawers, who were closely associated in 
 business with the present body, continuously occupied it. 
 
 The connection with the trade has long ceased ; and embroiderers 
 do not seek membership. 
 
 It is tolerably evident that the palmy days of this exceedingly in- 
 teresting craft preceded its accession to the dignity of a chartered body, 
 in 1 56 1. The best work was perhaps produced between the middle of 
 the fourteenth and the first quarter of the following century. But this 
 industrial art flourished long before the earlier date cited, and its intro- 
 duction may be assigned with confidence to the eleventh century and to 
 Flemish influence and taste. 
 
 The importance and costliness of early embroidered work may be 
 judged from a case which came before the Court of Aldermen in 1304, 
 in which 300 marks sterling are stated to be the \'alue of a cloth, em- 
 broidered with divers works in gold and silk, sold to Henry de Lacy, 
 Earl of Lincoln, and another. But we do not hear whether this was of 
 English or of foreign execution. 
 
 A charge of fraud preferred in 1374 before the Court of Aldermen by 
 the Wardens of the Tapissers,' who in fact preceded the Broderers, de- 
 monstrates that the London school of embroidery then aimed at copying 
 the style and texture of the goods of the same class produced at Arras. 
 For it was stated that Katherine Duchewoman, the defendant, had in her 
 house in Finch Lane wrought upon the loom a coster " after the manner 
 of work of Arras," but made of linen thread beneath, and only covered 
 with wool above. The Court ordered that the article should be burned ; 
 
 ' See p. 147 supra for some account of this Gild. 
 
 c.c. 50
 
 394 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 but the plaintiffs seem to have interceded for the woman, and saved her 
 piece of handicraft. She was probably warned not to do it again. 
 
 One branch of the Broderers' business was the production of the 
 superb palls which some of the Companies still possess, and which were 
 formerly in regular use at funerals. The Merchant Taylors, Fish- 
 mongers, Saddlers, Vintners, Brewers, Coopers, Leathersellers, and 
 Founders have very fine specimens belonging to the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries ; and there is very slight room for doubt that they 
 were in general use. Under date of October 21, 1547, the Goldsmiths 
 paid 30X to a Broderer to amend the hearse-cloth, or pall. Herbert 
 suggests that the object may have been to remove any superstitious 
 emblems ; but these appliances survive from a far earlier period in an 
 unsophisticated state, even where they have undergone necessary repairs. 
 
 Some idea of the cost of these palls may be formed from an entry in 
 the Carpenters' books under 15 13, whence it appears that that Company 
 had at one time a cloth of this kind. For the cloth of gold at 2/. 3^-. A^. 
 the yard, 4/. 145. Cjd. were paid ; for three yards of black velvet, at 1 2s. 6d. 
 a yard, i/. ijs. 6d. ; for seven yards and a quarter of buckram, 3^'. \od. ; 
 for the fringe, 10^.40^.; and for the riband, \s. 8d. The Broderer, for 
 his workmanship, received 8/. The pall, therefore, cost altogether, 
 15/. 6j-. 5^/., besides a gratuity of is. ^d. to the maker, 2s. 8d. to the 
 herald of arms, who certified to the accuracy of the coat worked on the 
 pall, and 8d. to a scrivener for overseeing the bill, or a gross total of 
 15/. I2s. gd. But this was not by any means an extravagant total by 
 comparison. 
 
 The Coopers had at least two hearse-cloths, although of the earlier 
 
 one our knowledge is restricted to the circumstance that in 1 563 the 
 
 Accounts are charged with about 57/. for a new one, presumably to 
 
 replace it. The particulars are as follow : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 2 lbs. of gold and silver at 54J-. the lb 580 
 
 2 lbs. of Venice gold and silver . . . . . . 5 S o 
 
 9 oz. of gold and silver 200 
 
 I oz. of silver . . . . . . . . .052 
 
 1 lb. of Venice gold 2140 
 
 5 lb. of silver . . . . . . . . .1110 
 
 2 oz. of gold and silver o 10 S 
 
 \ oz. of gold 030 
 
 Yellow and white silk, 4 ozs 0610 
 
 Silks of divers colours 138 
 
 1 oz. black ferret silk 0010 
 
 2 oz. yellow silk . . . . . . . .034 
 
 I oz. Bruges silk . . . . . . . .016 
 
 1 oz. ferret silk . . . . . . . . .0010 
 
 2 oz. yellow and white silk 034 
 
 I oz. white silk .018
 
 THE URODERERS. 395 
 
 L s- d. 
 
 14 oz. purple silk 180 
 
 \ oz. black silk 009 
 
 Purple and yellow silk 008 
 
 1 oz. yellow silk 018 
 
 si yards of purple velvet, at 26J. id. the yard . . .768 
 Pearls 160 
 
 2 oz. of purple silk . . . . . . . .0120 
 
 Working 14 oz. of purple silk in fringes . . . .060 
 
 White thread, and thread in colours o 4 1 1 
 
 I and I oz. of fringe that was lacking . . . .019 
 Yellow cotton made fit for the cloth to keep it from fret- 
 ting 036 
 
 Canvas . . . . . . . . . .050 
 
 A quartern of yellow kersey 007 
 
 Paper, flour, etc. 080 
 
 Candles for night-work 090 
 
 Paid to the Broderers for their workmanship in the 
 making of the said hearse-cloth in great, with 2os. in 
 
 reward by consent of the Court 24 10 4 
 
 For their bedding for seven months . . . . .044 
 To the painter for drawing the crest and arms for the clolh 034 
 
 i n II 'o 
 
 It is explicitly stated that the pall of the Founders' Gild, described in 
 the registers as " the Old Hearse Cloth embroydered with Gould and 
 Popish images," was destroyed in 1646 by direction of the Court, pur- 
 suant to the Ordinance of Parliament ; and the same fate possibly 
 overtook those possessed by the Goldsmiths and other bodies. The 
 Great Fire has not to answer for all. 
 
 For these sumptuous articles the London Livery Companies were 
 not, of course, the only customers. They were in demand for all 
 occasions of funeral solemnity, and formed an indispensable feature at 
 the obsequies of every personage of high social standing. The parish 
 church at Dunstable has lately acquired by gift a relic of this de- 
 scription, which was presented about 15 16 to the Fraternity of St. 
 John the Baptist at that place by Henry Fayrer and Agnes his wife. 
 
 The Broderers enjoyed, besides, a regular custom for ceremonial, 
 festive, and professional habits worn by both sexes, and often worked 
 with rich materials and in elaborate patterns ; as well as for the appoint- 
 ments of churches, the vestments of the clergy, and the decorations of 
 the house. Thej' supplied the ornamental garlands worn on special 
 occasions by the Masters and Wardens of the Gilds, caparisons, ham- 
 mercloths, court-dresses, and hangings, as well as the hilts of swords 
 and daggers, gold and silver lace, fringes, and cords and tassels. 
 
 The production of these articles of ornament or use appears to have 
 been particularly expensive. In 1705, the Founders, a poor Company^
 
 596 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 paid 14/. 14s. 6d. for a table-cloth with embroidery, inclusive of a fur- 
 ther charge for lengthening it and embroidering the arms. 
 
 Stow, in his account of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, enumerates the 
 munificent donations of a widow named Price in 1614 to the pulpit 
 and communion-table of that church ; and adds that Humphrey Swan, 
 Embroiderer of the same parish, embroidered without charge the King's 
 arms upon the pulpit-cloth so given by Mistress Price. 
 
 According to Chaucer, even in ordinary civil life gentlemen adopted 
 this luxurious and costly class of attire ; for, in the Canterbury Tales, 
 he says of the Squire : — 
 
 "Embrovvded was he as it were a meade, 
 As ful of fresshe flouers, white and reede." 
 
 The present Lord Mayor (Alderman Evans) belongs to the Broderers, 
 and on New Year's Day, 1892, the Court waited upon his lordship at 
 the Mansion House, and presented him with a congratulatory address 
 in a silver casket of antique pattern. 
 
 New and Singular Patternes and Workes of Linnen, seruing for patteines to 
 make all sortes of lace, edginges, and cut-vvorkes. 4to, 1591. Two editions same 
 year. 
 
 Certaine Patternes of Cut-workes. . . . Also sundry sorts of Spots, as 
 flowers. Birds, and Fishes, etc., and will fitly serve to be wrought, some with Gould, 
 some with Silke, and some with Crewell, . . . 4to, 1632, and n. d. 
 
 ^be JButcbers. 
 
 The Butchers enjoy the distinction of proved antiquity, as one of 
 ■eighteen so-called Adulterine Gilds, which were required to pay their 
 fines or licences in 1 180 in token and recognition of their allegiance to 
 the Crown. Their Master, in common with those of other ancient 
 Brotherhoods, was termed the Alderman ; and at this time the bearer of 
 the ofifice was William La Feite. 
 
 The Butchers' Gild next occurs as the immediate object of an Act
 
 THE KUTCHERS. 397 
 
 of Parliament (1266, 51 Henry III.) passed, after many ineflectual 
 attempts to stay the evil, to prevent and punish the exposure for sale of 
 putrid or diseased meat. In 1 319, butchers convicted of selling meat 
 unfit for human food stood in the pillory, and saw the condemned 
 carcasses burnt beneath them. On the other hand, per.sons preferring 
 false charges underwent a similar punishment. 
 
 In remote days there were two principal markets for meat and 
 poultry in the City : East-Cheap,' which comprised occasional attend- 
 ance at the Stocks in the Poultry ; and Newgate 
 Street, or St. Nicholas' Shambles, from the spacious 
 monastic church of St. Nicholas, of which Christ 
 Church marks only a portion of the site. The selec- 
 tion of these two localities was probably due, at the 
 outset, to different causes. East-Cheap, from a period 
 of very great antiquity, was, with the whole remain- 
 ing area to the water's edge, the busiest of all London oi-" '^'*"''- 
 centres, by reason of the great and constant trade which the Thames, 
 the Tower, Smithfield, and the ordinary wants of the citizens, alike 
 created around that quarter. It was to the Middlesex side of the 
 river what the Borough was to the opposite one. In the days of Fitz- 
 stephen the most striking and characteristic scenes might have been 
 witnessed hereabout. 
 
 On the contrary, the more westerly colony may not unreasonably be 
 supposed to have originally emanated from a settlement by leave or 
 sufferance outside the walls of the Grey Friars in Newgate Street, and 
 to have been fostered by the steady growth of the demand for produce 
 until its members, long after the disappearance of the old monastery, 
 usurped by degrees the entire quarter, and left only a narrow causeway 
 •down the centre of the thoroughfare for vehicles and passengers. 
 
 There was a natural drift toward the stealthy growth of stalls and 
 selling rights elsewhere than within the prescribed bounds ; apparently 
 with a view to intercept the supplies and catch the custom of South- 
 wark, the East-Cheap men tried to establish stalls on London Bridge. 
 In 1277 a municipal ordinance had restricted the butchers to the ap- 
 pointed localities; and in 1345 the complaint of obstruction on the 
 King's highway was so general, that butchers and fishmongers were 
 ordered to confine themselves to the enclosure called the Stocks on 
 flesh and fish days respectively. 
 
 ' East-Cheap was anciently divided into Great and Little East-Cheap, and ex- 
 tended much further westward, being separated from West-Cheap, or Cheapside, 
 ■only by the Stocks Market and its precincts.
 
 398 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A curious petition of 1331 exhibits the successful opposition of the 
 butchers of the Stocks Market to sales by retail on the part of 
 foreigners, and at the same time procured the assent of the trade 
 generally and the Corporation to the suspension of any who had been 
 bankrupt once or twice, until he had paid his debts in full, and the 
 renewal of the regulation obliging all butchers to reside within the City ; 
 whereas many had houses at Stratford, and neglected their duties as 
 craftsmen and citizens. 
 
 A pleasant state of affairs is revealed as existing, when, in 1369, a 
 royal order called upon the Corporation to remove Butchers' Bridge, 
 and to have the slaughtering of animals discontinued at St. Nicholas' 
 Shambles, near Baynard's Castle. It appears that the animals were^ 
 slaughtered at the Shambles, and the offal carried through the lanes 
 and streets to the jetty called Butchers' Bridge, where it was thrown 
 into the river ; and the Crown was prayed by many prelates and others 
 of quality to stay such a flagrant nuisance. 
 
 Stow says that in ancient times the vicinity of St. Michael's, Crooked 
 Lane, was an ill-favoured spot, where the butchers of East-Cheap kept 
 their stalls. 
 
 By an order of later date (1371) the slaughtering of all large animals 
 was directed to be carried out at Stratford or in the village of Knights- 
 bridge — perhaps the earliest mention of this place; and in 1372 we 
 first hear of precautions against the pollution of the Thames. 
 
 But the scheme seems never to have been carried out, although an 
 Act was passed 4 Henry VII. to forbid slaughtering within the City ;. 
 and in the reign of Elizabeth the nuisance and danger to health still 
 prevailed. So great a distance was between the letter of the law and 
 its execution in practice. 
 
 Further westward was Butchers' Row, facing St. Clement's Church 
 in the Strand, and at no great distance from Clare Market in the rear. 
 As it lay within the one mile radius specified by the charter of the 
 Company, it is not unlikely that Clare Market was an offshoot from St. 
 Nicholas' Shambles, as Leadenhall was from East-Cheap, and alike 
 subject to the Butchers' Ordinances. 
 
 Butchers' Row, which had its namesake in many of our provincial 
 towns, was not exclusively devoted to the Craft, however ; for it was 
 at the Bear and Harrow there that Nathaniel Lee the dramatist drank 
 his last potation. 
 
 Leadenhall Market, which became a general depot for all sorts of 
 goods and a weigh-house, after awhile received the butchers — a detach- 
 ment from the adjacent centre of the trade — and afforded a partial relief 
 to the congestion of the thoroughfare and traffic. The original building,.
 
 TIIK liUTClIKKS. 399 
 
 Leaden Hall, itself had been given to the Corporation by Sir Richard 
 Whittington in his third mayoralty (1409), and the City exercised a 
 certain jurisdiction over the market. The complex tenure of property, 
 even in i 595, is shown by a letter, addressed by two ladies-in-waiting 
 on the Queen on behalf of the daughter of a bone-setter, who had be- 
 queathed to her fourteen butchers' stalls in Leadenhall, whereof she was 
 debarred from the enjoyment by the municipal authorities. 
 
 An inquisition was panelled in 1414-15 (March 14), to delimit the 
 area within which these folks might set up stalls and pent-houses ; and 
 the verdict or award was, that by custom they were entitled to sell 
 and stand on both sides of the said street of East-Cheap from north to 
 south, from the Pye on the Hoop to the Saracen's Head, and in length, 
 east and west, from the eastern corner of Crooked Lane to the tene- 
 ment occupied by William Ivor. 
 
 It has been thought that the salesmen of Newgate Street conveyed 
 their offal by the Foss of Houndsditch (part of the City moat) into the 
 Fleet, those of the Stocks Market similarly by Walbrook, and those 
 at East-Cheap down Katherine, subsequentlj' Rothcr, and eventually 
 Pudding, Lane. The latest denomination of Katherine Lane was due, 
 no doubt, to the existence at one period of emporia for the sale of 
 black-puddings. 
 
 In 1343 a piece of land in Sea-Coal Lane, contiguous to the Fleet 
 river, had been granted to the butchers of St. Nicholas' Shambles, on 
 condition that they should keep certain buildings thereon in repair, and 
 send the Lord Mayor a boar's head annually on Christmas Day.' This 
 was to provide the Craft with a legal riparian easement. A similar 
 privilege was conceded in 1402 in consideration of a yearly payment of 
 1 3^. 4c?'. to the East-Cheap dealers. But in both cases the operation was 
 to be conducted only at the turn of the tide, in conformity with the 
 statute of Winchester. 
 
 At a somewhat later epoch, the transportation of this garbage was 
 limited by order to the night-time, and two Barrow-houses were 
 erected on the banks of the river, at the two points where the Company 
 had ground, for accommodating the noisome matter till the state of the 
 current allowed its committal to the Thames. Each free butcher 
 subscribed toward the maintenance of these receptacles. 
 
 No vocation was more amenable to the Statutes of the Streets against 
 Annoyances'^ and accordingly several clauses refer to the City butchers. 
 They were forbidden to scald hogs save in the common scalding-house, 
 
 ' Riley's Memorials, 1868, p. 214. 
 
 ^ Stovv's Survey, 1633, pp. 665 et scqq.
 
 400 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 or to sell any measly or otherwise unwholesome pork, to sell any flesh 
 which had been killed above three days in the winter or two in the 
 summer, to cast out the offal of beasts into the public way, and to drive 
 the pudding-cart of the shambles through the streets before nine at night 
 or after five in the morning. 
 
 Butchers not free of the City were not allowed to cut any meat for 
 sale at the Stocks market after the hour of noon, and such as they had 
 cut before noon they might sell till vespers ; but they might carry none 
 away. No shop, whether that of a freeman or foreigner, was to be open 
 after daylight. 
 
 They are prohibited in the Liber Albits from selling the skins before- 
 hand on the living animals ; they are required to bring the carcasses 
 with the hides, and sell them both in the King's market after prime. 
 They were also forbidden to sell tallow or lard for export, in view of 
 the enhancement thereby of the price to home-buyers. 
 
 In 1363 the price of best carcass of mutton was 2s. ; best quality of 
 loin of pork, 3^^. ; of beef, ^d. ; of leg of beef, 30'. ; a sucking pig was 
 valued at "^d. In 2 Richard II. (1378), the maximum price for a lamb 
 was bd., and forestalling was unlawful. Nor was any trader at liberty, 
 between November and the ensuing Lent, to discommend other men's 
 meat. 
 
 The butchers in the old days suffered, as the fishmongers profited, 
 from the extraordinary frequency of public fasts, and from the dis- 
 continuance during Lent, even in Protestant reigns, of the use of flesh. 
 They were required, as we have noticed, to give place to the fishmongers 
 in the market-places on fast-days. 
 
 The Company was, nevertheless, in an undoubtedly prosperous con- 
 dition in the reign of Edward III., in whose 37th year the three 
 branches of the trade made gifts to the King of 9/., 8/., and 61. re- 
 spectively ; in the 50th of the same King the Company was represented 
 on the Common Council by four members, none sending more than 
 six, many only two. 
 
 In 1474 the Butchers made certain Ordinances, and put the same in 
 force, without consulting the Corporation, and were condemned to pay 
 40/. fine, eventually reduced to 20/. The act was an offence against the 
 liberty of the City, as interpreted and laid down by a statute of '15 
 Henry VI., which was subsequently confirmed by the more generally 
 known one of 19 Henry VII., safeguarding the prerogative of the Crown 
 against all rights and exemptions claimed by local bodies. 
 
 Altogether, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the Company 
 had, with or without licence (it existed illegally in 1180), assumed, — at 
 least in the middle of the sixteenth centur)', when it acquired its Hall
 
 THE BUTCHERS. 4OI 
 
 on a long lease/ — a regular system of internal government, including 
 a Livery, which the Court of Aldermen was entitled to grant, but of 
 course, not such corporate privileges and powers as it lay with the 
 Crown alone to bestow. The lost archives might have elucidated this 
 point ; the earliest remaining volume combines with all the surrounding 
 circumstances and auxiliary testimony to support the view that an older 
 charter or patent has perished. Yet, on the other hand, certain Gilds 
 remained without any specific title derived from the Crown during an 
 equally long period, or even a longer one ; the Clockmakers were not 
 incorporated till 1632, and had no Livery till 1766; the authority for 
 the Coopers' and Leathersellers' Livery could not be supplied to Parlia- 
 ment in 1725 ; and the Basket-makers stand purely and entirely on 
 prescription. It transpires that in 1573 affairs were still progressing 
 favourably ; for in a levy of the corn-tax for laying up stores in the 
 Bridge-house according to an usage and law then in force, the Butchers 
 were assessed at 25/. io.f., the lowest contribution being 6/. ^s. 
 
 So far as our existing information goes, it was not till September 16, 
 1606, however, after a substantial duration of centuries, and the 
 lengthened ownership of a Hall, that the Company applied for a 
 charter, which embodied all the freemen of the art or mistery of 
 Butchers of the City of London, with the customary privileges and a 
 control over the trade in the metropolis and one mile compass. This 
 charter was confirmed in 1608 ; but in 1638, it being found that the 
 jurisdiction was insufficient, it was amplified ; and it was renewed (with 
 modifications) in 1685 and 1749. 
 
 The governing body is a Master, five Wardens, and fifteen Assistants. 
 The two grades below the Court are, as usual, the Livery and Yeomanry; 
 under which title it is explicitly stipulated by the bye-laws of 1752 that 
 freemen are to be entered on the books. In 1699, the Livery is given 
 as 218; in 1724, as 130. Since 1834, when the Company numbered 
 1,600, including women-traders, the ranks have considerably shrunk. 
 The figures in 1882 were : Livery (Court inclusive), 145 ;^ Freemen, 228. 
 
 The Company long carried on its executive government under the 
 guidance of a set of Ordinances drawn up about 1638 ; but these were 
 superseded by a long series of Articles dated as recently as 1752. 
 
 The Ordinances of 1752 embrace, amid an assortment of customary 
 provisions, certain special clauses in regard to the respective duties of 
 officers and Yeomen, the holding of Courts, the inspection of slaughter- 
 
 ' The possession of a Hall is mentioned in some of the charters as a matter subject 
 to royal licence. 
 
 " In 1892, according to Whitaker, the figures were 137. 
 
 c.c. 51
 
 402 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 houses and weights, the levy of fines and forfeits for non-attendance, 
 refusal to serve office, combination, the binding of apprentices to none 
 but the true master, and other points ; the observance of a close time 
 for pork between April 20 and August 24, the killing of mainlings and 
 calves under five weeks, the sale of ewe or wether for lamb, and the 
 punishment of hawkers. 
 
 Rut by successive Acts of Parliament in 1824, 1855, and 1863, its 
 autiiority over the trade was gradually abrogated. The statute repealed 
 in 1824, and known as the Flaying Act, vested joint powers in the 
 Butchers, Cordvvainers, and Curriers, as the three representative bodies 
 severally interested to prevent the unskilful removal of hides, which 
 constitutes one of the Articles in the Ordinances of 1752. 
 
 In 1548, in the mayoralty of Sir John Gresham, the Company had 
 secured, on a lease for eighty years, a regular place of meeting in New- 
 gate Street, by a tripartite indenture between the Governors of St. 
 Bartholomew's Hospital, the Wardens of the Company, and the Yeo- 
 manry of the same. The premises were to the north of the church of 
 St. Nicholas, and were described as "all that the mansion-house, with 
 cellars, solars, and all other appurtenances, called the parsonage or 
 dwelling-house of late belonging to the prior of the late parish church 
 of St. Nicholas in the Flesh-Shambles, being near unto the late dissolved 
 house sometimes called the Grey Friars, now called Christ Church 
 within Newgate." The rent was fixed at 61. a year, and the lessees were 
 at liberty to restore or rebuild. The house was a quadrangle, surround- 
 ing a courtyard or garden, and remained much in its original state when 
 -Agas published his map, in or about 1560. 
 
 The eighty years' lease expired in 1628; but it was evidently renewed, 
 and doubtless for twenty-one years, at the same rent and for a fine, since 
 on June 22, 1650, the governing body of the Hospital, as we know 
 from an extant minute, again extended the term for a similar period 
 at 70/. fine.i The basement of the Hall, perhaps that fronting what 
 was once nicknamed Stinking, and subsequently known as Butcher Hall, 
 Lane, had been sub-let prior to 1655, as in that year the Company 
 granted a new term of fifteen years to one Michael Shipway. 
 
 But the place was swept away, before either lease or sub-lease expired, 
 by the ravages of the Great Fire, which must have equally destroyed 
 the whole of the Company's property in East-Cheap ; and the Butchers 
 were reduced to such straits, that they surrendered their tenure, and 
 prayed to be excused from paying arrears of rent accrued since the 
 calamity. The Hospital, having secured another tenant at a higher 
 
 ' The parcliment was dated September 2, 165 1.
 
 THK BUTCHERS. 403 
 
 rate (9/.), and tlic latter having undertaken to rebuild at his own charge, 
 forgave the debt under a minute, dated January 22, 1668-9. 
 
 The Butchers rallied from their heavy losses, and determined to erect 
 a new Hall by subscription on the land belonging to them in Scalding 
 Yard on the east side of Pudding Lane, in Billingsgate Ward. This 
 is the edifice of which Maitland (1739) speaks as a very neat and con- 
 venient one, and as containing an upper and lower hall, a parlour, 
 and three handsome rooms adorned with fretwork and wainscot. The 
 outlay incurred was still in course of liquidation in 1688. But the Com- 
 pany, owing to the sweeping changes in the vicinity of East-Cheap of 
 recent years, was dispossessed of its second Hall, and has returned to 
 its former haunts in the outskirts of Newgate Street. 
 
 It was at a Court held in Pudding Lane on January 12, 1687-8, that 
 Daniel Foe, son of James Foe, Citizen and Butcher, of Fore Street, 
 Cripplegate, attended to apply for his admission by patrimony, and 
 was admitted accordingly, and paid, in discharge of serving all offices, 
 10/. 15J'. This, of course, refers to the illustrious author of Robinson 
 Crusoi', whose connection with the Gild sheds upon it greater glory 
 than an entire catalogue of inarticulate and fugitive names. 
 
 Subsequently to the Fire, the Corporation, finding it necessary 
 perhaps to study the public convenience to some greater extent, en- 
 deavoured to restrict the butchers and other traders to markets and 
 shops, and even to reform the arrangements for holding markets, so 
 that they might be limited to statutory or usual times. But the re- 
 sistance to improvement was very strenuous; and even in 1711 we find 
 the City agreeing to enforce its regulations, provided that aggrieved 
 persons would pay the expense ; or, in other words, arbitrary com- 
 pulsion had by this date begun to grow less possible and efficacious. 
 
 The Butchers suffered the common misfortune and disadvantage of 
 losing nearly all their papers and muniments in the Fire, and are thus 
 much crippled in any effort to produce a connected and complete record 
 of their Gild. One of their manuscript books of entries, being that 
 which cont9.ins the accounts from 1592 to December, 1646, has, however, 
 been fortunately preserved. It includes a great variety of details 
 common to this and other Companies, as payments of fines and charges 
 to or by the Wardens, and receipts under sundry heads, while, of course, 
 many items concern the special craft, such as the cost of wood for 
 scalding hogs, and the repairs of the barrow-houses, where the offal was 
 deposited, and of the furnaces where the scalding was carried out. No 
 barge-money was collected in i 592-3, because, by reason of the plague, 
 the Court of Exchequer was not sitting, and the Mayor was sworn at 
 the Tower-gate.
 
 404 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The receipts of 1 592-1646 are arranged under, — 
 
 Quarterages of the Wardens and Assistants. 
 
 Livery. 
 
 Yeomanry. 
 
 Journeymen in the Shambles. 
 East Cheap. 
 Arrears of Quarterage and Barge-money. 
 Presentments of Indentures. 
 Ingress money. 
 Scantling money. 
 Rentayne. 
 
 On all public occasions the Companies were expected to set up their 
 own stands in the line of procession, and attend there betimes. In 1697, 
 when William III. returned from Holland, the Butchers received a 
 precept to be at their station by 9 a.m. The outlay involved in these 
 matters of ceremony was considerable. In 1714, the entry of George I. 
 into London cost 69/. 17^. 6^d. In 1726, Lord Mayor's Day is charged 
 with disbursements of nearly the same amount. For Lord Mayor's 
 Day, 1763, the stand was repaired and re-upholstered, at an expense of 
 60/., of which the greater part was subscribed among members ; and it 
 served the purpose till 1805, when it realized 20/. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A Proclamation Concernynge Bouchers. A broadside, printed by Thomas 
 Berthelet, about 1540. 
 
 Reasons tendered by the Free Butchers of London against the Bill in Parlia- 
 ment to restrain Butchers from Grazing of Cattle. A broadside. [1624.]
 
 11 IK CAKl'ENTERS. 405 
 
 Ubc Carpenters. 
 
 KARLY ARMS. PRESENT ARMS. 
 
 The original or early associates of the Carpenters' Company be- 
 longed to a class which, as a separate and independent body, no longer 
 exists. He was, like the bricklayer, a contractor on his own account, 
 who furnished directly to the employer the estimated cost of work, 
 great or small, from the erection of a cathedral or a palace to that of a 
 ■cottage, so far as the carpentry was concerned. 
 
 The carpenter of ancient times was, in short, a master ; and the 
 operative or journeyman carpenter was classed as a labourer. In 1271, 
 the City of London already possessed two Master Carpenters, who were 
 charged with the function of surveying buildings, and who almost 
 beyond doubt were members of what Chaucer in or about 1388 terms 
 " a great fraternity," with its constitution and distinguishing attire. 
 
 Under 1303 the name seems to have been on the border-land of a 
 craft and a patronymic, as we meet with such forms as Williebnus filiiis 
 Wilhebni de Soiithiuarke Carpentar, Philip le Carpenter, and Adam 
 le Carpenter ; and we know from the excellent Town Clerk, whose 
 biography Mr. Brewer gave us, that in the next hundred years it was 
 an established family name. From the nature of things, the vocation 
 must have had a pronounced existence in the earliest annals of civilized 
 society ; and fraternal union long remained an inevitable corollary of 
 industrial vigour and progress. 
 
 Among Riley's Memorials, 186S, is inserted the account of William 
 Sunnynge, Carpenter, of moneys expended by him in 1359 as trustee, 
 on the repairs of a house in the parish of St. Michael, Cornhill. 
 Sunnynge in this matter employed not only tilers, paviours, plumbers, 
 daubers, and other operatives, but journeymen of his own craft, to 
 whom he gave 'S>\d. a day. 
 
 In the provinces, as well as in London and its suburbs, the Master- 
 Carpenter from a very early period occupied a highly responsible and
 
 40J THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 dignified position, as the controller, under the eye of the architect, of the 
 whole business within his own department. There is still extant a very 
 curious document relating to the erection of a house in High Street, 
 Bristol, by Stephen Morgan, for Alice Chester, widow of Henry Chester, 
 of that city, draper ; and as it seems to precede in date anything of the 
 kind known, we append it entire. It belongs to the year 1472 : — 
 
 " This indenture made between Alice Chester of Bristol, widow, some time the wife 
 of Harry Chester of Bristol, draper, on the one party, and Stephen Morgan of Bristol, 
 carpenter, on the other party, witnesseth that the said Stephen hath covenanted 
 with the same Alice and him bindeth by these presents to make well, workmanly, and 
 surely of good timber and boards, a new House, in the High Street of Bristol, with 
 floors, windows, doors and partitions and all other things of timber work belonging- 
 to the same house except laths and lattices, which said new house shall be set between 
 the tenement called the Bull on the one party, and the tenement in which one John a 
 Cork, Corviser [cordwainer or shoemaker] now dwelleth in, on the other party, con- 
 taining in length 19 feet and 5 inches of size, and in wideness 10 feet and 4 inches ; 
 and the said Stephen shall make in the said a shop, a hall above the same with an oriel 
 [bay window], a chamber above the hall with an oriel, and another chamber above 
 that by the feast of the Annunciation of our Lady next coming for which house so to 
 be made by the same Stephen the said Alice granteth and her bindeth by this present 
 [writing] to pay unto the said Stephen 6/. 18s. 6,d. sterling, that is to say, at the feast 
 of the Nativity of our Lord next coming 3/., at flooring of the said house 33^. 4^., and 
 at end of tlie same work 40^. Also it is accorded that it shall be lawful to the same 
 Stephen to have and take as his own all the old timber of the said old house without 
 any gainsaying of the same Alice or any other for her or in her name. In witness 
 thereof the parties aforesaid to these indentures interchangeably have set their seals. 
 Given the 17th day of the month of November, in the 12th year of the reign of King- 
 Edward the fourth. — Hardyng."' 
 
 This indenture, subscribed by the attorney or scrivener, has' the seal 
 with the impression of a sword and a Gothic capital I in perfect 
 preservation. 
 
 It was not many }'ears subsequently to this curious glimpse into the 
 subject, that we hear of the place of Master Carpenter to the Crown 
 being a Patent office, and being conferred in 1484 on Edward Graveley 
 for life at a stipend of i.e. a day.' His successor was probably the 
 Thomas Mauncy, whose name presents itself as King's Carpenter in the 
 household-book of Henry VII., under 1491 and following years ; and 
 there was a continuous series of these functionaries, till the post was 
 apparently merged in that of Surveyor of Works. 
 
 The Master Carpenter employed on the timber-work of the Savoy 
 Hospital, toward the close of his life, was Humphrey Coke, who served 
 the office of Warden of the Company in the years 1507-8 and 1511, and 
 
 ' This was the scale allowed in 1356 to William of \V\kehain as Surveyor of the 
 King's Works and Park at Windsor ; but when he was employed elsewhere, he was 
 entitled to 2^. Tlie amount, however, was relatively higher.
 
 THE CARPENTERS. 
 
 407 
 
 who is commemorated by \VaIi)ole in his Anecdotes of Painting. In 
 1540, John Malyn, a carpenter of foreign extraction, residing at Farnham, 
 was employed by the Goldsmiths to erect a new building in Friday 
 Street ; and the Carpenters' Wardens waited on the Goldsmiths to com- 
 plain of the proceeding, and demand compensation for the breach of 
 their charter. The Goldsmiths' Wardens were instructed to arrange the 
 business, as best they could. 
 
 Again, the name of Mr. John Haines is associated with the works 
 undertaken at Goldsmiths' Hall after the Fire, the completion of which 
 occupied three or four years, and involved for the carpentry alone no 
 less than 1,600/. Haines received the order, October i, 1667, and was 
 
 WILLIAM I'OKTINGTON, ESQUIRF, M.\STER CAKPENTER IN THE OFFICE 
 
 OF HIS majesty's buildings, OB. 1628. 
 
 Front an engraving hy Fairholt. 
 
 to complete his share by the 24th June following. But various causes 
 delayed the matter. 
 
 Among the entries in the Brewers' books from 141 8 to 1440 is a 
 catalogue of 1 12 Crafts or Craft-Gilds which existed in London 9 Henry 
 v., I42i-2,and the Carpenters are here the thirty-ninth in order, coming 
 between the Masons and the Pewterers. But this enumeration was 
 probably quite unofficial, as no definite understanding on the precedence 
 of these bodies was reached till the reign of Henry VHI. 
 
 That the Carpenters formed a distinct and important Association 
 long prior to 1422, is a proposition at once not easily contested and not 
 easily proved. The late Mr. Jupp held that the Company might be 
 referred back, as a voluntary fellowship, to the middle of the fourteenth
 
 4o8 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 century; and when Maitlaud speaks of its incorporation in 1344, we 
 apprehend that we should at most interpret the statement as applying 
 to the grant of a royal licence, rather than a charter. In the absence of 
 the former it was not permissible, under the old system at all events, 
 for a Gild to organize itself and assemble in conference ; but with a 
 charter several dispensed for centuries or altogether. It became a 
 question of the measure of jurisdiction and immunity desired. 
 
 Nor is it by any means improbable that such a licence may have been 
 accorded anterior to 1344, if we consider the apparent condition of the 
 trade nearly a century earlier on the one hand, and on the other weigh 
 the retrospective significance of the erection of a Hall in 1429, on ground 
 acquired (as usual/ through members of the Gild, the arrival in 1438 at 
 a regular official machinery, with books of accounts, and the draft of 
 Ordinances in 1455. The impression produced on the mind of Chaucer, 
 writing in the reign of Richard II., evidently was, that the Carpenters 
 were an established and conspicuous element in the municipal system of 
 the day ; and analogy and arguable likelihood support the few known 
 facts in allowing the claim to high antiquity. 
 
 A certain amount of obscurity even hangs over the circumstances 
 under which a charter was ultimately obtained in 1477. For as early as 
 1466 the Company received permission to use a common seal, and had a 
 grant of arms from Clarencieu.x,^ and, nevertheless, payment for the 
 former was not made till 147S, the year succeeding incorporation, so 
 that it may be the case, that the matter was in treaty some years before 
 it was finally settled, and that, as Mr. Jupp suggests, the postponement 
 was due to financial reasons. 
 
 The instrument bore date July 7, 1477, and conceded to Certain Men 
 of the Mistery of Carpenters of the City of London the right and 
 power of establishing a Brotherhood or Gild, to be a perpetual com- 
 monalty, and to consist of a Master, three Wardens and the Freemen and 
 Freewomen of the said Gild, by the name of the Master, Wardens, and 
 Commonalty of the Mistery of Freemen of the Carpentry of the City 
 of London. The Company so instituted was authorized to elect its 
 officers, who were entitled to make ordinances for the good government 
 of the Society. 
 
 The expenses attendant on this enfranchisement amounted, with the 
 cost of the seal, to upwards of 26/., which sum was partly contributed 
 by no fewer than thirty of the brethren. It seems that the funds down 
 
 ' Perhaps these bearings might have been identical with the coat in distemper, 
 which was lound in 1845 concurrently with the paintings hereafter described, and 
 which had for supporters two naked boys in a recumbent posture. The motto of the 
 Company, Honoii>- God, was of much later origin.
 
 THE CARPENTERS. 4C9 
 
 to the present time had always been very inconsiderable, but tliat in 
 1477 there was a surplus of 12/., possibly arising out of the Warham 
 benefaction in that year ; and the subscriptions probably made up the 
 requisite total. As far back as 1455 the Carpenters had had tlieir 
 Ordinances ; but these were now formally exhibited at Guildhall, the 
 eminent scrivener Clifford receiving 13J. 6d. for making a fair cop)-. 
 The charter was not enrolled till 1486-7, and we connect with this pro- 
 ceeding a visit paid to the Company's Hall by two officials, Master Tate 
 and Master White, " to see the wrytyng that longeth to the Craft," or, 
 perhaps, in other words, to satisfy themselves that everything was in 
 order. At the same time a new set of Ordinances was drawn up, and 
 submitted to the Court of Aldermen for approval. 
 
 The charter so secured, not without appreciable difficulty, was 
 renewed by iiispeximus of Philip and Mary and Elizabeth'; and 15 July, 
 5 James i, a new grant on an ampler basis was substituted, conferring 
 on the Company very large powers of search and control. Charles I. 
 in his i6th year, July 17, sanctioned for the first time a Court of Assist- 
 ants to the number of twelve or more, the Master and three Wardens 
 inclusive ; and in 26 Charles II., October 20, the Company obtained a 
 confirmation and continuance of its powers, with an extension of the 
 faculty of supervision to a radius of four miles from Cornhill. 
 
 The normal incidence of the writ of Quo Warranto (1684-5) resulted 
 in a re-constitution with one Master, four Wardens, and twenty-two 
 Assistants, under the name and style of the Master, Keepers or Wardens 
 of the Freemen of the Mistery or Art of Carpentry of the City of 
 London ; but this change was, as usual, annulled by the Act 2 William 
 and Mary. The present governing body therefore follows the antecedent 
 grant of Charles II. A licence in mortmain was separately procured 32 
 Charles II. enabling the Company to purchase lands to the extent of 
 200/. a year. 
 
 In the returns of 1 501-2, the Livery (by prescription) is given as 
 30, and the Company comes twentieth. In 1509 it is placed twcnt)-- 
 first, and is allowed fourteen yards for its stand; and in 15 15 the 
 Corporation made it the twenty-fifth in order. 
 
 In 1699, there were 98 liverymen, in 1724, 102. In 18S2 the Liver}- 
 numbered 1 34, and the freemen were conjecturally estimated at between 
 150 and 200. In 1892, the Livery was returned as 150. 
 
 The greater part of the estate seems to have accrued in and after 
 1587 ; and for a lengthened term the Carpenters' corporate income was 
 unusually modest. We have seen that some years elapsed before the 
 negotiation for the first charter was closed. Whenever any extraordi- 
 nary outlay was incurred, it invariably involved embarrassment ; even 
 
 c.c. 52
 
 4IO THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 in 1664 the expense of certain important additions to the Hall was 
 defrayed by a loan ; and the period of greatest pecuniary prosperity 
 commenced precisely when, owing to the replacement of timber by 
 brick after the Fire, the practical cesser of the jurisdiction over mem- 
 bers by the Building Act of 1774, and the disappearance of apprentice- 
 ship, the trade began to languish ; and the body, which had once 
 influentially and usefully represented it, was in effect transformed, like 
 most other institutions of the same origin and nature, into a benevolent 
 Society, enabled by the artificial expansion of many of its early acqui- 
 sitions to dispense with a generous hand both charity and hospitality. 
 Such a rise, development, and climax are not without their moral. 
 
 During the years 183 1-4 the average income of the Carpenters was 
 officially returned at 2,200/. In 1871, the aggregate had reached nearly 
 6,coo/., and in 1880 it had nearly doubled, being given at 11,318/.' This 
 remarkable expansion was due to the development of the London 
 Wall and Lime Street estates. As sub-sharers to the extent of a 
 i-i6th share in the Ironmongers' Irish estate, they received from 1871 
 to 1880 an annual sum varying from 168/. to 270/, the iiuniinuin occur- 
 ring in the last-mentioned year. But this property has of course partici- 
 pated in the destiny of the whole, and has passed from the hands 
 of the original owners by sale. 
 
 Such a rent-roll affords a splendid opportunity for philanthropic work, 
 which is now generally recognised as the best justifying ground for the 
 unmolested continuance of these Associations in the presence of new 
 conditions and ideas. Vast internal changes have wrought a revolution 
 in the City beyond all power of prevision and discernment ; and modern 
 opinion prescribes that resources and responsibility shall move in a 
 parallel ratio. The Carpenters pay due homage to this feeling and call, 
 and are doing much in the direction of promoting the trade with which 
 their name and existence are identified. Lectures on architectural 
 sanitation and other subjects calculated to improve our buildings are 
 periodically delivered by eminent specialists in the Hall ; and it is in 
 contemplation to hold there an Exhibition of Carpentry and Joinery. 
 
 The history of Carpenters' Hall from its first humble genesis in 1428-9, 
 on a plot of ground without Bishopsgate, leased for 98 years at a rent of 
 20J'. from the Prior of the Hospital and Convent of St. Mary, is a rather 
 long, though not a very eventful one, and e.xhibits a constant ambition 
 on the part of the government of the Company to enlarge and embellish 
 the mansion-house without a sufficient regard to the claims of antiquity 
 on the one hand and those of harmony on the other. A succession of 
 
 ' In 1892, the figures were 11,638/., of which only 956/ were in trust.
 
 THE CARPENTERS. 4 I 1 
 
 architects with confliclint^ tastes ^radiialK- obh'tcrated all that was 
 sacred and intercstiiiLj both within and witliout ; and the building, al- 
 though it escaped the Great Fire, has suffered perhaps more se\crcly 
 at the hands of man. 
 
 The original site consisted of a piece of waste and of five cottages in the 
 parish of All Hallows on the Wall ; and, the lease having been formally 
 assigned to twenty-nine members of the Company, the tenements were 
 removed in 1429, and the necessary steps taken to erect the Hall, 
 Almshouses, and outbuildings on a portion of the ground, the rest being 
 reserved for a garden. It is quite clear from the account-books that 
 many years elapsed before the place was rendered complete ; nor can 
 there be any reasonable doubt that the Hall, as it was first designed, 
 was of a very rudimentary model. In 1500, a new parlour was con- 
 structed at a cost of 23/. 2s. i id., the odd pence being for bread, ale, and 
 cheese consumed, presumably when the work was finished ; and Ss. id. 
 of the amount went in improving the garden, which seems to have been 
 laid out in knots, and to have been partly devoted to the growth of 
 kitchen-herbs. 
 
 The Accounts comprise repeated charges for seeds, plants, gra\-el, and 
 labour. We hear of a vine, two walnut-trees, a camomile-bank, roses, 
 a sun-dial, and an arbour. The distribution of these areas was formerl}- 
 different, and the kitchen and flower gardens, shrubbery and plantation, 
 usually formed one unassorted whole. In the time of Henry VIII., the 
 Carpenters' garden seems to have been kept in order by the Beadle's 
 wife, or under her direction ; and to the same period (1548) is referred 
 the formation of a bowling alley within the precincts. 
 
 Under 1561 and 1572 further entries occur relevant to alterations 
 introduced, in some measure at the charge of the Yeomanry ; and in 
 '579 the Tudor parlour was superseded by a new one, in the wainscot of 
 which were carved panels, one containing the arms, a second the date and 
 Master's name, and the third the names of the Wardens. Yet we must 
 not be quite sure that the old room did not become what is termed 
 below tlie little parlour. In 15S8 a gallery was built on the south side of 
 the Hall ; and in 1595 an e.xtension was carried out at the east end, at 
 the unusually heavy charge of 121/. \os., which appears to indicate an 
 advance in the \-alue of the corporate estate. At or about this period 
 the block, which was approached through an outer court, is ascertained 
 to have consisted of a refectory, a great parlour, a little parlour, a 
 gallery, a kitchen, pastery and buttery, a Clerk's house, and the alms- 
 houses, besides the u.sual offices, and perhaps an armoury for the 
 weapons and other stores used on public occasions, as we have observed 
 in the account of the Ironmongers. Considerable expense was in-
 
 414 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 curred in 160S in glazing the whole of the premises. The bill for this 
 service shews cither that there had been, as at Merchant Taylors' Hall, no 
 systematic attempt to introduce glass, or that some special cause had 
 occasioned damage to the windows. It was the year of the great frost. 
 The fairly spacious garden lay in the rear toward Drapers' Hall. 
 
 The upper part of the Hall was in 1656 paved, partly at the cost of 
 the Master for the time being, with Purbeck and Dunkirk stone, and in 
 1664 the last memorable stroke was given to the work of more than two 
 centuries by the addition of a gallery on the west side of the garden, 
 extending to the wall of the Drapers' premises. 
 
 The latter perished in the Fire two years later ; but the Carpenters 
 escaped, and in 1666 the Court of the Goldsmiths, whose Hall had been 
 badly injured, met here, while their provisional quarters in Grub Street 
 were being prepared, to discuss the business arising out of the loss of 
 their house-property in the flames. 
 
 It was on the western side of the Hall that the series of paintings in 
 distemper, three feet in height, twenty-three in length, and nine feet 
 from the ground, was brought to light in 1845, through the casual 
 removal of the canvas, by which they had been screened from view. 
 These admirable works of art appear to belong to the first half of the 
 sixteenth century, and delineate scenes in biblical history, illustrative of 
 the carpenter's craft, the figures being, as usual, arrayed in contemporary 
 European costume. The object of concealment is not clear, unless it was 
 to preserve them from Puritanical fanaticism. Careful drawings of 
 them from the pencil of the late Mr. Fairholt were engraved in Mr. Jupp's 
 book in 1848 ; and three of the original compartments were transferred 
 by very delicate manipulation to the new Hall. 
 
 But the process of alteration, arising from a corporate cacoetlies 
 edificaiidi, a chronic passion for bricks and mortar and their customary 
 appurtenances, never slackened, until, in August, 1876, the first stone 
 was laid of a new edifice of a palatial type, and all association with the 
 past was dissolved. The Carpenters of course only followed, after all,, 
 the example of other Companies in this last respect. What they did, 
 the Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Drapers, and Cloth workers had already 
 done ; and the Cutlers have since obeyed the same precedent. Yet, 
 while the existing pile was still perfectly sound, perhaps Carpenters' 
 Hall, from its heterogeneous admixture of all schools of architecture and 
 decoration from time to time, might be said to have parted with nearly 
 every feature of archaeological value, when it ultimately disappeared, to- 
 make room for the splendid structure w hich now abuts on Throgmorton 
 Avenue. The building, as it stood in 1664, and the present one, com- 
 pleted in 1880, are figured in Mr. Jupp's monograph ; and no person of
 
 THE CARPENTERS. 415 
 
 taste can hesitate to pronounce for the former, of which reduced repre- 
 sentations are here given by permission. All strikes the eye as crude, 
 naked, and raw. The ancient almshou.ses have been transplanted to 
 Godalming. 
 
 I n 1 500 some feeling had been shown for the garden, which was at 
 that time open, like that of the Drapers, to the country northward, 
 although the landscape between London Wall, and Higligate was, down 
 to the earliest effort made to improve Moorfields (1609),* far from 
 picturesque. But in 1644 the whole area seems to have been in grass, 
 and the Assistants were allowed to dry their clothes there, and, by 
 themselves or their servants, to enjoy free ingress and egress for the 
 purpose at all seasons. A considerable portion of the .space was in 1664 
 appropriated to the formation of the additional gallery ; and changed 
 conditions have effaced this attractive feature in many quarters of the 
 City within a measurable period. 
 
 The Carpenters played their part manfully and loyally in the old days 
 in contributing to burdens and calls of every description, whether 
 optional or otherwise. As far back as 1455 the Company is found 
 paying barge-money. In 1461 there are items in the accounts for 
 meeting Edward IV. ; in 1470, Henry VI. ; and in 1476, Edward IV. 
 again on his return from France. The Mayor and Aldermen were on the 
 last occasion clad in scarlet, and the rest in murrey ; there were between 
 500 and 600 altogether. The same thing occurs when Henry VII. 
 enters London, and when his queen is crowned. In 1502-3 the Car- 
 penters take part in the setting out of the Midsummer Watch on the 
 Eve of St. John the Baptist, a civic custom observed with great pomp 
 and solemnity by the Corporation and Gilds. It was to obtain a 
 stealthy view of this imposing pageant, that Henry VIII., at the 
 beginning of his reign, repaired incognito to Cheapside, disguised as one 
 of his guard. The observance was last kept in Sir Thomas Gresham's 
 mayoralty in 1 548. The Carpenters' share cost between 3/. and 4/. 
 The equipment of the representative body sent to meet James I. in 
 1617 at Knightsbridge on his return from Scotland, amounted to nearly 
 as much ; it included eight whifflers or fifers. 
 
 In 1618, after declining to embark any capital in the settlement of 
 Virginia, the Company gave a small sum toward the emigration move- 
 ment to that country. In 1620, they were amerced in 30/. in aid of the 
 abortive Palatine cause ; and in 1643 the sale of plate to the extent 
 of 95/. 5j. was necessitated by demands for the purposes of the Civil 
 War. In 1650 the arms of the Commonwealth were set up in Car- 
 penters' Hall and the royal insignia removed and destroyed ; and ten 
 years later the Restoration brought back the old regime with its own
 
 41 6 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 special incidence. The historical connection of the Carpenters with the 
 Crown and its transactions closed with the fall of the Stuarts in 1688. 
 
 The troubles of the Company were not limited to the exactions of 
 princes in all their various forms ; for at intervals they were embroiled 
 with other Gilds on points touching the interests and rights of the trade. 
 In 1605-6 a rupture arose with the Woodmongers, b}' reason of an 
 alleged attempt to draw certain freemen from their allegiance ; and 
 other differences were created between them and the Bricklayers and 
 Joiners through the closeness of the lines on which these craftsmen 
 severally worked, and mutual jealousy of encroachment. But, on the 
 other hand, the Carpenters and Joiners made common cause, and took 
 concerted and successful action, to resist the incorporation of the yeomen 
 or journeymen Saw )-ers, then in debate. 
 
 The exercise of the power of Search and Presentment under the charter 
 has become a mere matter of history ; but during the active life of the 
 Company the right was very stringently enforced, alike internally and 
 externally ; and so long as a despotic regime was feasible, it was carried 
 out in a manner and to an extent which reflected the prevalent notions 
 of relationship between rulers and those whom they ruled. The Car- 
 penters may be said, from the group of nearly allied crafts whose sphere 
 was so intimately connected with their own, to have been more than 
 commonly liable to trespass. 
 
 Their worst enemies as a working Gild and as an industry were, 
 however, the gradual abandonment of timber from the reign of James I. 
 as a main ingredient in architecture, and the tendency of commercial 
 policy toward liberalism ; and then the same operating causes, again, 
 favoured the Company as a proprietary fellowship, b\- developing general 
 wealth and enhancing the value of central sites within the civic 
 boundaries. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A Table of Boord and Timber measure. By Richard Norwood. [About 1620.] 
 A broadside. 
 
 A Table of the several! Scantlings and sorts of Tymber that shall be used in y 
 future building of all Edifices within the Citty of London and Liberties thereof. 
 26 Nov. 1666. A broadside. 
 
 The Art of Fair Building E.xperienced in the Figures of Several Uprights of 
 Houses, with their Ground Plots Fitting for Persons of all Qualities. Wherein 
 is divided each Room and Office, according to their most convenient Occasion. 
 With their Heighths, Depths, and Bredths, according to Proportion. With Rules 
 and Directions for the Placing of the Dome, windows, . . . Also A Descrip- 
 tion of the Names and Properties of the Members belonging to the framing of the 
 Timber- Work, . . . By Piene Le Muet, Architect in Ordinary to the French
 
 TIIK CLOCKMAKERS. 
 
 417 
 
 King, and Surveyor of his Dcsigncs and I'orti ic.nlons in the I'rovince of I'icardy. 
 Reviewed and Augmented, in this second Edition, with many Figures of the 
 Choicest lUiildings and Edifices, . . . Piibhsbi.-d by Robert I'ricke, for the 
 benefit of all Persons that arc contented or take delight in the famous Art of 
 Building. . . . Folio, 1675. 
 
 ^bc ClocUmahers. 
 
 The knowledge and application of clockwork was not much posterior 
 to the discover)' or revival of the art of tempering metal ; but it seems 
 to have been primaril)- confined to the construction of mechanical ap- 
 l')liances, such as the famous apparatus fashioned by the necromancer 
 Virgilius, to debar ingress into his castle, in the romance, stated to be of 
 Dutch origin, and printed in the beginning of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Tradition refers back the manufacture of clcpsydne. or water-clocks, to 
 the third century, and of instruments with metallic works and an index- 
 acting with a striking-bell to the eleventh, or even the ninth. The art 
 of horology, known to the Greeks, was brought by modern Europeans 
 to perfection verj- slowly and gradually. Clocks of primitive fabric were 
 to be seen in the fourteenth century in various parts of England, France, 
 Italy, and Germany ; thej- were automatous, but soon ran down, and 
 entailed great trouble and expense. About 1364 the King of France 
 appointed a Governor of the Palace Clock at Paris. As early as 1393, a 
 sitnilar office existed at Venice, and large sums were laid out in the 
 manufacture and repair of chronometers. These appear to have worked 
 with the bell ; and the day was divided into so many bells. The old 
 c.c. 53
 
 41 8 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 clock of San Giacomo di Rialto at this period weighed 600 lbs., and was 
 very inefficient. Timepieces of the same character are noted as having 
 existed at Westminster, Dover, and Peterborough in England, and at 
 Bologna.' 
 
 These ancient horological monuments were doubtless constructed and 
 superintended by special experts in mechanism ; and it remained for 
 another craft than the Clockmakers, when the art became more generally 
 diffused, and the demand for timepieces increased in a parallel ratio, to 
 take the initiative in supplying these commodities to such persons or 
 institutions as could afford to defray the relatively large cost. The 
 germ and prima stamina of the Gild before us are to be found in the 
 muniments of the Blacksmiths who, both here and on the Continent, 
 once and long occupied a station importantly differing from the work- 
 men of the same denomination familiar to ourselves and our immediate 
 predecessors. Under our account of that Company we have shown the 
 wide scope of labour and enterprise which its members in their varied 
 functions embraced, and have produced ample evidence to establish 
 that the Clockmakers can be considered of recent origin only so far 
 as concerns their existence in an independent form. During many 
 centuries the sun-dial, the hour-glass, and the water-clock sufficed the 
 limited requirements, as they represented the gauge of the mechanical 
 ingenuity, of the nation ; and the first departure toward a more intelli- 
 gent and trustworthy principle came from the worker in metals, who 
 gradually discerned in the malleability and pliability of iron by fire, 
 and in the use of the screw, the means of producing an apparatus for 
 the less troublesome registration of time. We cannot suppose that we 
 possess the most rudimentary efforts of the inventor of clocks with 
 metallic works ; but it is sufficient for our present purpose to state that, 
 when the Clockmakers' Company was constituted, in 1631, the science 
 had already made very considerable progress, and the Coffin-Clock was 
 an established fact of some standing. The earliest manufactures of this 
 type were, no doubt, tentative in their construction, and destitute of 
 external embellishment ; and the richly decorated cases, which are to 
 be seen in European museums, belong to a later period. The extensive 
 employment of wood for the coffin-clock brought the Blacksmiths into 
 contact with the Woodmongers, just as their long command of the trade 
 in the works not merely postponed the institution of the Clockmakers 
 as a separate Gild, but retarded its development, when it had been 
 actually incorporated, by retaining a share of the commerce in the old- 
 fashioned school of clock and a certain proportion of the operative skill. 
 
 ' Hazlitt's Venetian Republic, i860, iv. 344-7.
 
 THE CLOCKMAKERS. 
 
 419 
 
 ARMS, 1739. 
 
 Ill spite of charters, the different crafts traversed each other more or 
 less in early times ; and such cross-trading was an everlasting source 
 of friction and discord. 
 
 We are enabled by the records of the Court of Aldermen and the 
 Blacksmiths' Company from 1627 to 163 1 to judge the combination of 
 agencies which eventuated in the establish- 
 ment of the Gild at present under notice. At 
 the first-mentioned date, the foreign competi- 
 tion in the English clock trade had become 
 a topic of anxiety and discussion ; and alien 
 manufacturers and artisans were, it is distinctly 
 said, protected by a warrant under the privj- 
 seal. The aggrieved freemen of the Black- 
 smiths' Company, being clockmakers by craft, 
 sought redress, but do not appear to have 
 succeeded ; and the next step taken was an 
 endeavour in 1628 to persuade the Black- 
 smiths to arrange an amalgamation. This 
 alliance the latter declined in January, 1628-9, after a somewhat pro- 
 tracted negotiation ; and the Clockmakers, as the best and perhaps sole 
 means left of improving their position, decided on applj-ing for a 
 charter. During the years 1629-30, several meetings of the trade 
 were held, to consider how the petition should be framed, and in what 
 manner the attendant outlay was to be subscribed. In the course of 
 1630 72/. were guaranteed in writing by sixteen persons, of whom the 
 largest contributor, Roger Johnson, agreed to find 10/. ; and the Com- 
 missioners for Suits having referred the petition to the Court of Alder- 
 men, and a favourable report having been returned, the process was in 
 due time brought to completion. 
 
 The charter was dated August 22, 163 1, and founded the Association 
 under the style of " The Master, Wardens, and Fellowship of the Art or 
 Mistery of Clockmaking of the City of London." The tenor of the 
 instrument was unusually comprehensive ; for it admitted to the advan- 
 tages of the concession all clockmakers within the City, its liberties and 
 suburbs, or residing near the same, whether freemen of the City, or 
 foreigners, or other persons using the art. The chief aim and end of 
 the measure were, therefore, precisely what the petitioners had solicited, 
 surveillance and protection. No one was excluded ; but all were to be 
 under control. 
 
 The Company acquired the right of using a common seal, of electing 
 annually from the general body of freemen two or more Assistants, to 
 co-operate with the Master and Wardens, and of making b}-e-laws for
 
 420 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the government and guidance of members, with the power of search and 
 presentment within the City and its liberties, and over ten miles compass. 
 
 Its jurisdiction ex- 
 tended to watchmakers 
 and mathematical-in- 
 strument makers. 
 There was the usual 
 licence to hold lands 
 and hereditaments in 
 free burgage. But we 
 miss some of the pro- 
 visions, which occur in 
 other charters, and 
 especially we note the 
 absence of any allusion 
 to the Clothing or 
 Livery, which was not 
 obtained till 1766, not- 
 withstanding the fact 
 that it is made one of 
 the original bye-laws 
 of 1632. In 1652, the 
 Committee for Cor- 
 porations demanded an 
 inspection of the charter, which was handed back again without comment. 
 The failure of the treaty with the Blacksmiths had so far, then, borne 
 unexpectedly good fruit ; and if the new organization was not in a 
 position to exclude aliens, it was at full liberty to utilize its privileges 
 for the promotion of discipline and efficiency. 
 
 The bye-laws, drawn up as a natural sequel, bear date August 11, 
 1632, and comprise no fewer than sixty-two Articles, to which the only 
 addition was a sixty-third, made in 1796, thirty years posterior to the 
 grant of a Livery, in reference to the refusal of a Freeman to serve on 
 his election as Liveryman. 
 
 The authority vested in the Company proved, after all, inadequate to 
 the repression of irregularity and fraud. But the attempt to obtain 
 legislation in furtherance of the object failed from the insufficiency of 
 funds. One source of the weakness of the new Corporation was the 
 absence of a place of meeting and of a properly constituted Livery. It 
 was a Craft Gild, established on a popular basis, and was unprovided 
 with the necessary accommodation for receiving anything approaching 
 a full complement of members ; and at the very outset its executive 
 
 INITI.\L ORN.^MENT OF CH.^RTER.
 
 THE CLOCKMAKERS. 
 
 421 
 
 was assailed by hostile criticism and action, whicli embarrassed the 
 Company year after year. 
 
 A serious dispute indeed arose between the Court of Assistants and 
 the copimonalty in 1656, relative to the deficiency of a Hall. A 
 section of the freemen complained, among other points, on which they 
 held that the Court did not perform its duty, that there was no proper 
 provision for general assemblies, agreeably to the charter and bye-laws, 
 and that they were often summoned to alehouses and taverns, to the 
 great disparagement of them all ; while the means of supplying this 
 
 t^ > 
 
 WARDEN S B.\DGE. 
 
 ,M.\STER S B.^DGE OK JEWEL. 
 
 capital want had been otherwise applied. It was further alleged, that 
 apprentices were multiplied beyond reasonable measure, that too much 
 freedom was allowed to aliens, and that the power of search was negli- 
 gently exercised. This censure was not unanimous, and the Court drew 
 up a vindication of its policy. But the matter ultimately dropped. 
 
 The agitation was not resuscitated, and it may under actual circum- 
 stances be of insignificant relevance ; but the contention that no proper 
 and reasonable facilities were afforded for the assembly of the freemen 
 of the Gild by the appointment of a common Hall, seeing that the 
 charter was directed to them, both denizens and foreigners, might at one
 
 424 TIIF, MINOR CClMrAMKS. 
 
 time, had it been pressed at law, have invalidated the constitution in 
 this, as well as in many other analogous, cases. For here, as elsewhere, 
 the entire commonalty was the electoral bod}- down to the approval of 
 a Liver}', and was entitled to a voice in all questions outside general 
 administrative details ; and moreover, under one of the bye-laws of 
 1632, every freeman was to be summoned to attend the quarter!}' meet- 
 ings, and to pay a fine on default. 
 
 The reproach of convening the members in taverns and such places 
 was perhaps met b}- the hire from other Companies of their Halls for 
 special occasions. In the Founders' books under August 2, 1702, we 
 meet with this entry, for instance : " The Clockmakers' Company to have 
 use of the parlour for their meetings, at a rental of ten pounds per 
 annum;" and in 1706 the arrangement was still in force, and the 
 Founders were asking for higher terms. 
 
 The annals of the Company from the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 down to the point of time when it ceased to exert an}- interference with 
 the trade, are a somewhat monotonous narrative of the incessant and 
 unavailing correspondence with the Cit}' and the Government, in order 
 to procure support in encouraging the native manufacture against the 
 destructive competition of Germany and Switzerland. The Gild had 
 entered on its career in 163 1 as the champion of the product of English 
 labour against the undue preponderance of that of strangers ; but, as we 
 have signified, the terms of the charter were too wide to favour a mono- 
 poly ; and to the foreign resident, with his at least equal proficiency and 
 greater thrift, was superadded, in process of time, the foreign importer. 
 These two elements of disintegration, against which the Clockmakers 
 vainly essa}'ed to induce the authorities to proceed, by statute or other- 
 wise, proved in the highest degree injurious to their corporate and 
 individual interests, and deprived the Company of its expected influence 
 and sincere aspirations for good. In common with its ancient foemen 
 the Blacksmiths and the majorit}' of the trading fellowships, which had 
 their daybreak in wholly different conditions of society and feeling, it has 
 found itself reduced to the position of a charitable and hospitable com- 
 munity, with a rather checkered and comparatively brief historical retro- 
 spect. It forms one of the group of Gilds whose charter was never 
 renewed. It had its own sorrows ; but it avoided the less favourable 
 incidence of notoriety and wealth. 
 
 The government of the Company consists of the Master, Wardens, 
 and Court of Assistants, the members of which have, since 1766, been 
 selected from the Livery by show of hands. But although freemen are 
 qualified by the charter and by law, they are never in practice chosen. 
 Therefore the government is here again not strictly in accordance with the
 
 THE CLOCKMAKERS. 425 
 
 constitution. Under the Act of Common Council, tiiosc made free of 
 this body were disqualified from joining any other, and a case occurred in 
 1772, where a clockmaker (Mr. LotallJ who had paid his fees to the 
 I'ounders in ignorance of this fact, was obliged to apply for release and 
 the reimbursement of his money. 
 
 In IcS8j the Livery was said to number se\ent}-thrcc,' and the free- 
 men were roughlj' computed at one hundred. 
 
 The estimated aggregate income of the Company from all sources 
 is probably about 1,100/. a year, the bulk of which is fiduciary. It is 
 believed that the trusts arc lo)ally carried out ; but the accounts are not 
 published. We understand that a statement of the receipts and expen- 
 diture is in preparation for the use of the Court. The particulars fur- 
 nished in the History, a handsome volume printed in 188 1, of which we 
 have been favoured with the loan, are not very full, and do not include 
 the corporate propertj'. 
 
 The Clockmakers count on their roll of members nearly all the most 
 distinguished masters of the art, from David Ramsey, the first Master 
 of the Company, to William James Frodsham, F".R.S. The names which 
 are perhaps most deserving of commemoration arc those of David 
 Ramse}-, Edward East, Ahasuerus Fromantel, father and son, Thomas 
 Tompion, George Graham, F.R.S., John Harris, John Pepis or Pepys, 
 Daniel Ouare, and Thomas Earnshaw. Of these and others a sufficiently 
 copious notice will be found in the History of the Compan}-. Charles I. 
 when Prince, is said to have been fond of playing at tennis for an 
 Edwardus East, or a watch of East's fabric. Ramsey was a friend of 
 George Heriot, the eminent jeweller of Edinburgh. Pepis, w^ho was 
 Master in 1707, was apprenticed to John Harris. A watch made by him 
 for Lord Baltimore, and in w-hich his name is spelled in two different 
 ways, is stated to be in the possession of a descendant. In the ac- 
 counts of the Founders' Company, under 1694 is the following : — " Paid 
 Mr. Newton for an eight-da}' clock . . . ;^I0 O o." 
 
 But a peculiar interest is attached to Tompion and Graham, inasmuch 
 as they were both interred in Westminster Abbey, and a slab placed 
 in the nave to perpetuate the circumstance. This monument remained 
 111 situ till 1838, or thereabout, when it disappeared; but, a great stir 
 being made in the papers at the time. Dean Stanley, one of the very few 
 sensible men connected with the Church, caused the missing stone to be 
 found and restored. Its removal was a piece of t)-pical stupidity, bigotry, 
 and insolence. 
 
 The Company enjoys the particular, and indeed almost unique, dis- 
 
 ' In 1S92, seventy-four. 
 
 c.c. 54
 
 426 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 tinction of possessing by purchase and gift a most valuable and repre- 
 sentative assemblage of clocks, watches, and other cognate objects, 
 besides a library of printed books illustrative of the craft. These collec- 
 tions, in the absence of any other depository, are preserved at Guildhall, 
 and of the books there is a special catalogue.^ 
 
 Of the corporate plate, and of a few other characteristic items, we 
 have been enabled by the politeness of the members of the Court to 
 furnish representations. The original coat of arms, granted by Cla- 
 rencieux in 1671, exhibits as one of the supporters the Wild Man, who 
 occurs so frequently on foreign coins, and who has recently become the 
 object of archaeological research ; but in the bearings now used he is 
 replaced by a winged figure of Time. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 
 The Artificial Clock-maker. A Treatise of Watch and Clockwork. By W. D., M.A. 
 The Second Edition, enlarged. i2mo, 1700. 
 
 Zbc Coacb anJ> (rcacb*1barness Rafters. 
 
 The evolution of the carriage in its various types from the cart took 
 place when the use of a covered and more commodious vehicle for loco- 
 motion than either a horse or a waggon suggested itself on a more 
 frequent and systematic resort to ceremonial progresses or the transit 
 from place to place of aged or delicate persons. Even when, in the 
 sixteenth century, travelling and hunting equipages came into employ- 
 ment here and abroad, the origin of the fashion long remained per- 
 ceptible in the forms of the new conveyances ; and the most elegant 
 and costly carriage designed for ladies following the chase betrayed its 
 parentage alike in the body and the wheels. 
 
 ' Compare the account of the Coachmakers' Library, infra.
 
 THE COACH AND COACH-HARNESS MAK?:RS. 427 
 
 As early as 1485, ncarl)- a ccntur)- prior U> the rci)utcd iiitruductioii 
 of such a hixury by the Karl of Arundel, Henry VII. entered London 
 after his victory at Bosworth in a close chariot, probably of large dimen- 
 sions, and drawn bj- several horses. ]5ul it is evident that at or about 
 this date the vehicle so called was in more or less general employment ; 
 for in the City Ordinance of 1517, uniting the I'ouchmakers with the 
 Leathersellers, the former are said to have among other articles on sale 
 coverings for chariots, or, in the words of the document, " barehid}-s for 
 covcr}'ng of chariettes." 
 
 The institution of coaches and the installation of the Dutchman, 
 Wilhelm Boonen, as coachman to Queen Elizabeth in 1 564, soon spread 
 the fashion among the aristocracy of rank and wealth, and made coach- 
 building a profitable and prominent trade; in 1598, a popular writer 
 of the day affects to represent the fashion as an actual economy, by 
 reason of the great expense which used to be previously incurred for 
 riding equipages. He tells us that a lady of rank, with her gentle- 
 women, maid, and children, could be accommodated, it was reckoned, 
 in a coach at less cost and with more credit, as, in place of a single 
 coachman she required six or eight ser\-ing-men to attend her ; and in 
 1605, according to Stow's Continuator, caroaches or carriages came into 
 ordinary use. The latter, at all events, grew plentiful in James the First's 
 reign, and were viewed bj- the watermen and chairmen with considerable 
 jealousy. 
 
 The present Company was incorporated bj- charter, dated May 31, 
 1677, and was appointed to consist of a Master, three Wardens, and a 
 Court of Assistants, chosen from the commonaltj- or freemen. But, in 
 1687 and 1694, the Court of Aldermen gave a Livery, which has since 
 continued. The bye-laws, issued in 1677, are with slight variations still 
 in force. 
 
 In 1882, the Court consisted of twenty-three Assistants, the Senior, 
 Renter, and Junior Wardens, and the Master. The charter conferred 
 a licence in mortmain, not exceeding 300/. a year, exclusively of the 
 Hall, and the power of search, the latter subject to a warrant of the Court 
 of King's Bench. This right is no longer exercised ; but it originally 
 extended to the Cities of London and Westminster and their suburbs, 
 and over twenty miles' compass. The area under jurisdiction was 
 divided into four Walks : the Middle Walk, Piccadilly Walk, Out Walk, 
 and Low Land Walk, each of which was visited at quarterlj- intervals, 
 and all shops and factories entered and inspected. 
 
 In September, 1881, the numbers were returned at 127, and in 1892 
 at 117, inclusive. Although the estate is of moderate extent, and yields 
 an amount which fluctuated in the course of ten \-ears between 2,025/.
 
 428 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 and 1,279/. with an apparent tendency to shrinkage, there seems by 
 careful management to have been a surplus in each of the ten years, 
 1871-80; and these accumulations the executive is evidently disposed 
 to apply to public and practical purposes. 
 
 The Company at one period chose year by year Stewards, who were 
 under an obligation to defray the cost of the Court breakfasts and 
 dinners ; but this usage fell into desuetude, and the entertainments given 
 both to the Court and Livery are charged to the general fund. 
 
 The present Hall in Noble Street, of which the Coachmakers have, 
 since 1878, let the basement,' formerly belonged to the Scriveners, of 
 whom it was purchased, May 13, 1703, with four tenements in Oat Lane, 
 for 1,600/. This sum was raised by voluntary subscriptions among 
 109 members of the Court and Livery, who contributed altogether 
 2,030/. "js. 6d. In a sufficiently uneventful career, the only incident of 
 a public character was the meeting in 1780 of the Protestant Associa- 
 tion, which led the way to the Gordon No Popery riots. 
 
 The Hall was refurnished in 1843 by a second subscription of 
 257/. IO.S-. The wording of the charter of 1677, which excepts the 
 Hall from the aggregate annual amount acquirable in real property, 
 might favour the presumption that there had been an anterior one ; but 
 to this there is no explicit reference. In 1864, the Operative Coach- 
 makers' Industrial Exhibition was held in Noble Street ; and the Com- 
 pany has subsequently exerted itself to promote technical knowledge 
 among members of the trade, and to support charities. In the eight 
 years, 1873-80, the former object absorbed out of a limited income 
 668/. IS. lit, and the latter 437/. 15J. Special attention may be directed 
 to the details set out in the Parliamentary Returns of 1882 under the 
 head of Education. 
 
 In 1867, a resolution was formed to rebuild the Hall, which entailed 
 a loan of 3,000/., on the security of the building and the Oat Lane 
 ground rents ; and in the following year the first grant of money was 
 made toward the formation of a Library of Reference, which is now 
 open on Saturdays, and contains, besides books, drawings and photo- 
 graphs of the objects on view at the International Exhibition of Car- 
 riages in 1873. With the single exception of the Clockmakers, no other 
 Company has made an attempt of this kind. 
 
 ' The practice of appropriating the basement and upper storey of valuable City 
 frontages to different objects was of very ancient origin. The original St. Paul's 
 School (not Colet's), was kept over the Black Eagle in St. Paul's Churchyard ; and 
 when William Hobson, the rich and famous Haberdasher, purchased at the Reforma- 
 tion some religious buildings in the Poultry, the rooms over his store were let as 
 chambers.
 
 THE COACH AND COACH-HAKNESS MAKERS. 429- 
 
 In 1S79, an exhibition of drawings, books, and models was held at 
 the Mansion House ; and the Lord Mayor distributed prizes, given by 
 the Coachmakers, to competitors as well as to the pupils of its own Art 
 and Technical School. 
 
 Quite recently (1891), there has been a new movement set on foot, 
 under the same courageous auspices, for improving the vehicles of 
 different kinds employed in this country, and the particulars have been 
 published of a competition open to all l^ritish subjects resident within 
 the United Kingdom, and of the prizes to be awarded.' 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 A Proclamation for tlie restraint of the multitude, and promiscuous vse of Coaches, 
 
 about London and Westminster. 19 Jan. 1634-5. A broadside. 
 The Coaches' Overthrow. Or, a Jovial Exaltation of divers Tradesmen, and others,. 
 
 for the suppression of troublesome Hackney Coaches. [1636.] A ballad. 
 Coach and Sedan, I'lcasanlly disputing for Place and Precedence. The Brewer's 
 
 Cart being Moderator. [By Henry Peacham.] 4to, 1636. With an engraving 
 
 on the title, representing a coach, a sedan, and a brewer's cart. 
 To the Right Honble. the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, The 
 
 humble Petition of the auntient Hackney-Coachmen of London and Westminster. 
 
 [About 1645.] A broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation to repress the Abuses of Hackney Coaches in the Cities of London 
 and Westminster, and the Suburbs thereof. 1660. A broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation ... to repress the e.-ccess of Gilding of Coaches and Chariots. 
 1661. .\ broadside. 
 
 A Copy of a Printed Letter from J. C. to a Post-master in the Country, with 
 Directions about the Management of the Designe for putting down Stage- 
 Coaches. Folio, 1672. 
 
 Stage-Coaches Vindicated : or. Certain Animadversions and Reflections upon several 
 Papers writ bv J. C. of the Inner Temple, Gent., against Stage-Coaches. Folio, 
 [1672]. 
 
 ' All drawings and models must be delivered by the end of April. Detailed par- 
 ticulars of the competitions may be obtained from Mr. P. de Lande Long, the clerk 
 of the Coachmakers' Company, Noble Street. 
 
 In the first class a prize of 30/. by Mr. G. N. Hooper, and others of 20/. by Mr. A. A. 
 Clark, and 10/. by the Company are offered for the three best models of an improved 
 four-wheel cab suited to the traffic of London, or a four-wheel close cab body with a 
 single or double Victoria body with the same under-carriage and wheels, available for 
 both bodies, so as to provide close carriages for winter use and open ones for summer. 
 In the second class, Mr. G. A. Thrupp offers a prize 6/. 6s., to be competed for by 
 technical drawing classes, for the best set of three drawings of the side elevation of 
 any sort of carriage. The third competition is for working drawings of a pair-horse 
 body brake ; and the fourth for working drawings of an omnibus for private use to 
 carry si.t inside. In the fifth competition, Lady Wallace offers lo/. las. among former 
 prize winners only, for a fully-coloured drawing of a Victoria on perch carriage and 
 C springs ; and in a sixth competition Mr. Boulnois, M.P., offers 10/. for the model 
 of a gig body. The prize winners will have the freedom of the Company conferred 
 on them if their drawings or models deserve it. '
 
 43° THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A Proclamation for restraining the number and abuses of Hackney Coaches in and 
 about the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Suburbs thereof, and 
 Parishes comprised within the Bills of Mortality. Whitehall, 25 Nov., 16S7. A 
 broadside. 
 
 Reasons to augment the Number of Hackney Coaches, within tlie Bills of Mor- 
 tality, from Four Hundred to Six or Eight Hundred ; most humbly tendred to 
 the consideration of Both Houses of Parliament. Folio [about 1690]. 
 
 Xlbe Coof?s. 
 
 The Cooks appear to have been originally associated with the Pie- 
 Bakers or Pastelers ; and a common scale or tariff for articles on sale by 
 them was framed and approv-ed in 1350 and 1378. The prices are of 
 course very curious, and all deal with roast dishes, except that eggs, ten 
 for a penny, are included. A charge was made for the paste, pie, and 
 trouble, where the customer found his material. 
 
 This was the community, no doubt, which is mentioned by Fitz- 
 stephen, Leland, and Stow, as clustering about Thames Street and East 
 Cheap in the time of Henrj- II. 
 
 In 28 Edward I. (i 299-1 300) the pjihlic(B coqumce, as Leland calls 
 them, appear to have multiplied so inconveniently in the neighbourhood 
 ■of the wharves, where the wine was unshipped from the Continent, that 
 the Corporation, on receipt of a royal writ, undertook to remove a 
 portion of what was popularly known as Cooks' Row, and to erect on 
 the site warehouses, with vaults and cellars, for the merchants of Bor- 
 deaux. 
 
 In 1379 regulations were made, prohibiting cooks and pie-bakers from 
 buying and selling any victuals before ten o'clock in the morning, lest 
 thej' might regrate them ; from baking rabbits in pasties, from putting 
 the offal of poultry in the same, from selling beef-pasties as venison, and 
 from using whole geese, halves, or quarters for this purpose. 
 
 The term Pasteler occurs in Stow and elsewhere without any very 
 definite or clear meaning. The term seems to have been originall)'
 
 THE COOKS. 431 
 
 applied to a ])ic-baker, as distinguished from the ordinary cook ; but he 
 made meat or t:;ame pasties, not our modern pastry. The confections 
 sold at a later period by the grocer were sweetmeats. 
 
 The Cooks of London were incorporated, as we learn only from an 
 inspexiuius of George III., by a charter of 27 Edward IV., directed to 
 his wcU-belovcd subjects the honest and free men of the Mistery of 
 Cooks of the City of London, that they, and all of them, should be in 
 substance and name one body and one commonalty perpetual, with 
 power to make two Masters or Governors, two Wardens, and a Court 
 of Assistants to govern the affairs of the Mistery, to have a common 
 seal, and to frame bye-laws and vary the same. A power of search and 
 jurisdiction was conferred over the Cities of London and Westminster, 
 their suburbs and liberties, and a radius of four miles. 
 
 In a list of the City Companies, drawn up in 1 501-2, the Cooks do 
 not occur ; but the Pastekrs rank fifty-ninth in the roll, and are classed 
 with those which had no Livery. We take this to be an entry of the 
 Cooks under an informal title. 
 
 We are able to collect very little of the early history of the Gild, 
 whose records have been lost, till we arrive at a much later reign, and 
 find that in 1614 the governing body applied for a new charter, and 
 obtained it. But the civic authorities came forward to shew cause 
 against its validity, so soon as it was made known that it had been 
 sealed. 
 
 It was alleged by the Court of Aldermen (21 May, 1614), that this 
 charter had been obtained by the Cooks " secretly and surreptitiously," 
 with a dispensing non obstante, and on their complaint the Commis- 
 sioners for Suits referred the question to the Lord Chief Justice Coke,, 
 who was further authorized by the Lords of the Council to suspend the 
 execution of the charter till further orders. 
 
 The Chief Justice reported that the charter was against the common 
 law and the charters of the City, and that it was exceptionable as- 
 giving an unlimited power of search, which might lead to abuse. It 
 traversed, moreover, an Order in Council of the 26th March, 1614, as to- 
 the limit to be put on the storage of barrels in any one house ; and 
 Coke disliked the no7i obstante clause. 
 
 The result was, that for the time the charter stood in abeyance, and 
 it probably lapsed, as there is no further trace of it ; and the Cooks, as- 
 we have mentioned, are not in possession of an)- of their papers, which 
 perished in the Fire, the original charter inclusive. 
 
 The present government of the Company is composed of two Masters,, 
 two Wardens, and twenty-four Assistants. The Masters, Wardens, and 
 eight Assistants make a Court. In 1882, the number of freemen, in-
 
 432 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 eluding 98 on the Livery, was 249.' During the ten years 1871-80, 
 thirt)' joined the Livery on their own application. 
 
 The Cooks took a sub-share of the Mercers' Manor at the time of the 
 Plantation of Ulster in 1609-15, and have received of late years a fair 
 annual return for their outlay, but with a tendency to shrinkage. In 
 1S82, the Company, whose general income from all sources had then 
 increased through the lapse of a City ground-lease, entertained a fear 
 that its corporate resources would ultimately diminish in consequence of 
 the depression of agricultural rents. From this portion of its revenue 
 it has long been accustomed to apply a considerable yearly sum in pen- 
 sions to poor freemen and unfortunate members of the Livery, in dona- 
 tions to the National School of Cookery, in the gratuitous instruction 
 of female pupils belonging to the City ward schools in the culinary art, 
 and in supplementing the allowances distributed under various trusts. 
 
 One of the sources of charitable endowment is a yearh' rent-charge 
 •of 28/. on the City estate of the Clothvvorkers' Company, arising out of 
 500/. paid b)- John Shield to the latter in 1616, and assigned by his will 
 ('161 7) to the Cooks for certain eleemosynary purposes at the testator's 
 birthplace, East AUandale, within the royalty of Hexham, in the county 
 of York. 
 
 The Hall used to be in Aldersgate Street, and escaped the Great 
 Fire. The Saddlers, Stationers, and Painter-Stainers met there, while 
 their own Halls were being rebuilt (1668-70), and Maitland mentions it 
 in 1756. The freehold still belongs to the Company ; but it has been 
 converted to other purposes, and at present swells the corporate receipts. 
 Numbers 10-12, Aldersgate Street, occupy the site, and in 1875 were 
 let on an eighty years' lease at 800/. a year. 
 
 The participation of the Company in historical events, and its vicissi- 
 tudes of fortune, are only ascertainable, owing to the loss of its archives, 
 from casual or collateral references. From such material we have 
 already furnished a few notices of its early condition as an unincor- 
 porated Fellowship, and there seems to be little more to add. The 
 purely accidental preservation of some of the particulars of a general 
 lottery in i 567 partly helps to shew that many other such social traits 
 have failed to survive. We see from a unique series of printed docu- 
 ments in an old private library, that the City Gilds embarked in the 
 venture, and that Richard Tomson drew No. 268,094 with a motto more 
 commendable for its practical spirit than its metrical accuracy : — 
 "We Cooks of London, which work early and late. 
 If anything be left, God send us part.'' 
 
 For the Brewers, Armourers, Haberdashers, and other Companies 
 ' In 1892, according to Whitaker, the Livery numbered 69 only.
 
 THK COOI'KRS. 
 
 433 
 
 tlicie were tickets with similar verses. The balance of money remaining 
 after the [)rovision of the 400,000 prizes (for there were to be no blanks) 
 was stated to be applicable to public works. 
 
 LITER.'KRY NOTICES. 
 This is the Boke of Cokery. 410, R. Pynson, 1500. 
 
 ,*, .V MS. of this work in the Iil)rary M Holkham was editeJ by Mrs. Napier, 410, i83i. But the 
 ladv w.as not aware that it had been previously printed. 
 
 A Noble Booke of Feastes Royall and of Cookcrie for Princes Housliolds or any 
 other estate. 4to, John Byddell [about 1530]. 
 
 #•# .A reprint of the edition of 1500. 
 
 A New Boke of Cokery. 8vo, T. Raynald, [about 1545]- 
 
 #*^f Krerpiently reprinted. 
 
 A Booke of Cookery. i2mo, 1584, 1591, 1594, 1620, 1629, 1634, 1650. 
 Cookerye for all manner of Dutch Vyctuall. Entered at Stationers' Hall in 1590. 
 The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented. By Joseph Cooper. i2mo, 1654. 
 Archimagirus Anglo- Gallicus ; or, Excellent and Approved Receipts and Experi- 
 ments in Cookery. By Sir Theodore Mayerne, Knight. 8vo, 1658. 
 
 The Compleat Cook. 8vo, 1662. 
 
 The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected. By Will Rabisha. 8vo, 1661, 1673. 
 
 The Accomplist Cook ; or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery. By Robert May. 
 
 8vo, 1660. Fifth Edition, 8vo, 1685. 
 The Art of Cookery, In Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. By Dr. William King. 
 
 8vo [about 1 720]. 
 ,*, Copious notices of Cookery-books will be found in Ha/.litt's Old Cookery Books and Ancient 
 Cuisine, 1886, and in his Collections and No/es, 1876-92. 
 
 tCbc Coopers. 
 
 In common with many, if not most, of the other Civic Corporations,, 
 this Company existed as a prescriptive body from a period legally 
 almost " beyond the memory of man," inasmuch as they seem to be 
 traceable back to the reign of Edward II., and to have been at that 
 period under certain obligations and exemptions, cognate to those 
 belonging to all similar Fraternities in London, and emanating equally 
 from the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen. 
 
 CC. 55
 
 434 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 As the records of disagreement among members of the Crafts fre- 
 quently form the source of valuable and interesting disclosures in 
 relation to their history, so cases of misfortune and misdemeanour admit 
 us behind the scenes, where in the ordinary course of affairs we should 
 have heard and known nothing. The earliest trace of the London 
 cooper is associated with the seizure of two small stocks for debt in 
 1 310. The insolvents were Robert le Cuver and Alice le Cuver, relict 
 of Walter le Cuver ; they were probably relatives ; and the character of 
 the patronymic shews how close we are to the border-land, where the 
 surname still retained its practical significance. The account sets forth 
 
 AN ANCIENT COOPERAGE. 
 
 that from the former party were taken two great cuves or tubs, value 
 igs., one lathe and one lathestock, value iSd., one ale-tun, value i8d., 
 nine hoops, value ^d. ; while the female debtor or partner possessed 
 goods estimated only at js. 2d. The estate was worth about 12/. of 
 our money. 
 
 In 1396 the Court of Aldermen agreed to proposed Articles for the 
 better government of the Coopers' trade, and particularly for the sup- 
 pression of a noxious usage by which oil and soap barrels were sold 
 to brewers and others for holding ale and other liquor. The Coopers 
 therefore sought hereby leave to appoint overseers to inspect places of 
 business, so that all unlawful barrels and vessels might be seized, and
 
 THE COOPERS. 435 
 
 the holders fined, " for the avoiding of such deceits, for the love of God, 
 and as a work of charity." A renewal of these ordinances in 1409' 
 testifies to the chronic proneness of such provisions to oblivion and 
 neglect, especially where the temptation was powerful. 
 
 The Coopers encountered difficulties analogous to those suffered by 
 the Saddlers, in the manufacture by unauthorized persons of tubs and 
 barrels made of unsound or green wood. In 141 3, 
 the case occurred, for instance, of a fishmonger, 
 who had had clandestinely constructed in his own 
 dwelling-house as many as 260 vessels, namely 
 barrels and firkins, of wood that was not pure, 
 and was sawn from the middle, and were of untrue 
 measure, the barrels which should have contained 
 thirty gallons holding twenty-eight only, and the 
 firkins 6^ in lieu of ~\. The 260 vessels were 
 
 taken by order to Guildhall, and after being viewed and certified to be 
 false were burned. 
 
 The practice of marking casks, in order to protect buyers of ale and 
 beer against untrue measures, as well as unwholesome vessels, was there- 
 fore clearly no superfluous precaution. The delinquent, in the case just 
 reported, may be reasonably suspected of having converted disused fish- 
 casks to the purpose, as the soap-makers applied those which had held 
 soap or oil ; and the development of the foreign wine trade opened 
 an additional channel for fraud, by inducing the brewers to purchase 
 for their own purposes casks which did not follow the English standard. 
 The movement in the direction of reform was due to the influence and 
 representations of Sir Richard Whittington, who, as we have demon- 
 strated under the account of the Brewers, had in the later portion of his 
 official career paid far greater attention to these details than some 
 persons at that time found agreeable. 
 
 In 9 Henry IV. (1407-8) a decree of the Court of Aldermen made 
 it obligatory on the part of all coopers to bring their goods into the 
 Chamber of London to be marked, prior to output, under certain penal- 
 ties ; and, as a means in each case of verifying the maker, a duplicate 
 of his mark, with his name annexed, was entered on record. But in 
 1420, 1428, and 1440 the renewal of these regulations told the common 
 tale of lax observance and stealthy infringement. Dishonest artisans 
 or their masters, both freemen and foreigners, were still relying on 
 impunity in employing unseasoned wood and giving short measure, 
 independently of fabricating the official stamp. 
 
 This form of security was accounted of sufficient consequence to the 
 trade and the community to become the subject of legislation in later
 
 436 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 reigns. But the primitive constitution was limited to the authority and 
 protection of the Court of Aldermen, before which the early Wardens, 
 two in number, were sworn. The applications for support in the ex- 
 ercise of their acknowledged jurisdiction were periodical, and denoted 
 the necessity for enlarged powers, which the Corporation never failed to 
 concede. 
 
 COOPERS MARKS, A. D. I420. 
 
 But the extension of the demand for Coopers' work for a wide variety 
 of commercial objects rendered it evident to the overseers of the Craft 
 that the real course was to follow the precedent of other bodies, and 
 place themselves under royal as well as municipal shelter. 
 
 As recently as 1488 we find that the Wardens had once more appealed 
 to Guildhall for additional privileges, which were duly accorded with 
 a presumable knowledge of the merits of the case, when, in 16 Henry 
 VII., the momentous step was at length taken of petitioning for a charter.
 
 THE COOPERS. 437 
 
 to which a powerful inducement existed, as we shall subsequently learn 
 more at large, in the shape of valuable consideration thereupon con- 
 tingent. This grant, by writ of Privy Seal, dated April 29th, 1501, and 
 b)' authority of Parliament, erected the Coopers into a perpetual com- 
 monalty under the style of The Master and Wardens of the Commonalty 
 of the Freemen of the Mistery of Coopers of the City of London and the 
 Suburbs thereof, with the usual powers, so far as it lay with the King 
 to bestow them {quantum in nobis est), including a faculty of acquiring, 
 holding, and alienating real property for the support of the poor men 
 and women of the Craft, provided that the same was not already held 
 of the Crown in capitc, the right of pleading and being impleaded, and 
 liberty to elect officers and to make ordinances. 
 
 The special features of this Tudor charter were its limitation to the 
 royal prerogative and its claim to parliamentary sanction ; and the 
 second and governing one of Charles II., under writ of privy .seal, 
 August 30, 1662, preserved the saving clause without the former consti- 
 tutional stipulation. But the later grant created a Court of Assistants, 
 seventeen in number, and appointed the members in the first instance 
 according to the usual practice. 
 
 A grant of arms was made by Thomas VVrythe or Wriothesley, 
 Garter, September 27, 1509: Gyronny of eight gules and sable, on a 
 chevron, between three annulets or, a royne between two adzes azure, 
 on a chief vert, three lilies slipped, stalked, and leaved, argent. Cre.ST : 
 On a wreath a heath-cock, with wings expanded azure, powdered with 
 annulets or, in the beak a lily argent. Supporters : Two camels gules, 
 bridled or, powdered with annulets of the last. The ancient motto was : 
 Gaude Maria Virgo ; the modern one is : Love as Brethren. 
 
 The Coopers received only three charters, that of 1685, pursuant to 
 the Quo Warranto, included ; but various Acts of Parliament affected 
 and controlled them. The 23 Henry VI 1 1., cap. 4, vested in the War- 
 dens jointly with one of the Mayor's sergeants, a right to view and gauge 
 all casks within the City of London and its suburbs, and over two miles 
 radius from Cornhill, and to affix a mark to each ; and 3 1 Elizabeth, cap. 
 8, directed that " for the true gauging of vessels brought from beyond 
 the seas, converted by brewers for the utterance and sale of ale and 
 beer," the brewers should not employ any such vessels, before they have 
 been seen and passed by the Coopers. 
 
 The bye-laws of the Company are more numerous than its charters, 
 and range in date between 1396 and 1741. They were originally 
 framed in the first-named year, long before the date of incorporation, 
 to place a check on certain practices affecting the welfare and credit of 
 the industry ; in 1407-8, 1409, 1420, 1428, 1440, and 1488, they were
 
 438 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 renewed and amplified to meet continued irregularities and frauds in 
 cooperage ; but subsequently to the first charter, when their operation 
 was to a certain extent superseded by a more definite government, 
 they were far less frequently multiplied, and we find only four issues of 
 them in nearly as many centuries, namely, 22 Henry VII. (May 9th, 
 1507), 3 Elizabeth (June loth, 1561), 14 Charles II. (May 8th, 1663), 
 and 14 George II. (March 3rd, 1740-1). The last is the governing code. 
 
 The Executive at present consists, under the charter of 1662, of a 
 Master, three Wardens, of whom one is Renter Warden, and sixteen 
 Assistants. The Upper and Under Wardens are elected by the whole 
 Livery, the Renter by the Court. This is quite an exceptional practice, 
 and confers on the main body an interest and estate in the Company, 
 which, it is believed, have not proved disadvantageous. 
 
 It was not until 1654 that the question of changing election-day 
 from Whit-Sunday to the day following was formally mooted ; and the 
 alteration was not made before 1658. In the latter year, instead of 
 a potation and cakes after the proceedings, a dinner (not a feast) was 
 instituted at the cost of the Masters and Wardens, each subscribing 405. 
 
 In 1S82 the Livery was said to number about 170, and in 1892 it is 
 given as 200, whereas in 1848 it is stated to amount to 318, and the 
 number of freemen was not known. In the old lists, where the order of 
 precedence is generally unofficial and arbitrary, the Company is variously 
 placed; in i 501-2 it is thirty-seventh, and is said to have a Livery of 
 17. In 1439, 40 paid quarterage ; in 1440, 43 ; in 1442, 46 ; in 1443, 51 ; 
 but the figures fluctuated from year to year. In 1 547, they stood at 
 152 ; in 1699, at 126. In 1725 the return to Parliament was 203. 
 
 At what date the Company obtained leave to assume a Livery, how- 
 ever, does not seem to be ascertainable ; but it is most likely that it 
 did so, with or without permission, immediately after incorporation. 
 In 1725, during the debate on the Act for Regulating Elections within 
 the City of London (i i George I., c. 18), all the Companies were required 
 to make certified returns of their respective Liveries, and a declara- 
 tion of the circumstances of the grant ; and the Coopers were unable to 
 state the origin of theirs, merely pleading that it had existed time out 
 of mind, and was specified in the bye-laws of 1507. They might have 
 gone a little further back, as we have seen, so far as the usage was 
 concerned ; but it is clear that no previous documentary voucher was 
 then, or is at present, forthcoming. In 1523 the goodman Charley gave 
 8/. to the use of the "Suit." In 1540, an annual dinner, whereof the 
 cost was not to exceed 2Ss. 6d., was ordered for the members of the 
 Livery who attended the Lord Mayor to Westminster or elsewhere to 
 be sworn.
 
 THE COOPERS. 439 
 
 There is a notice in the Accounts, under 1557, of seven young men 
 taken up into the Livery, antl paying 2s. each "for their samples." Their 
 proficiency in the Craft was tested by the Wardens prior to admission, 
 and a fee charged. 
 
 The fees payable on taking up the freedom by patrimony or .servitude 
 are 4/. i6j-. ; by purchase, 15/. 13J. 6d. Admission to the Livery by 
 patrimony or servitude costs 22I. is. 6d., by purchase, 28/. is. 6d. On 
 election to the Court, liverymen have to pay 42/. 
 
 Coopers' Hall, in Basinghall Street, was originally erected on a free- 
 hold site granted by John Baker, Citizen and Cooper, under his will, 
 April 13, 1490, with all his lands and tenements and their appurten- 
 ances in the parish of St. Michael Bassishaw, to the Wardens and 
 Fellowship of the Gild, so soon as it should receive incorporation, and 
 subject to certain religious observances on behalf of the testator. These 
 dispositions in favour of the Coopers naturally stimulated, — concurrently 
 with the recognised need for a more stable and authoritative govern- 
 ment, — the desire to secure the charter, which did not, however, come till 
 1 501. That step at once entitled the Company to the property; but 
 some years evidently elapsed before any definite plan was formed for 
 utilizing a portion of it as a place of meeting and business, in lieu of 
 the inconvenient and undignified practice of assembling at taverns, and 
 of being beholden to the Wardens for the safe custody of the archives. 
 
 As in other instances, the Company was indebted to a particular 
 individual, John Heith, Upper Warden in 1543, for initiating, and sup- 
 porting from his private resources, this most important measure of 
 reform. Heith in fact subsidized the undertaking both in money and 
 material, supplying the principal share of the timber, besides weekly 
 payments toward the wages, and other gifts, and, as the contemporary 
 narrative quaintly and prettily puts it, "praying God to send many more 
 such benefactors to the said Craft." 
 
 The building, which was of timber, was not even substantially 
 finished till 1547, when a feast celebrated the eventful occasion, and 
 Heith contributed the venison. The total cost was under 50^. 
 
 Those were the days when the street consisted of little more than a 
 few detached mansions or tenements, including Basing Hall, to which 
 it owed its name, and which is associated with some tradition about a 
 dead man and his song, as handed down to us in a popular ballad, 
 although there should by right belong to the house a curious history 
 in connection with its original owners and name-givers, the ancient 
 municipal family of Basing. 
 
 The records establish the existence at that time of a refectory, a 
 parlour, a buttery, a pantr\-, and a kitchen and offices. But the cu.s-
 
 440 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 tomary experience was here repeated to some extent. In 1588, the sum 
 of 11/. 8s. was paid out of voluntary contributions for gilding the 
 Queen's arms in the hall, and fitting up the Company's. The next two 
 years witnessed additions of some consequence in a little parlour and 
 cellars, with a house for the Clerk over them. These new premises must 
 have been of considerable extent, as the bill for their construction was 
 125/. i^s. Once more, so late as 1649, 20 dozen spoons, weighing 
 349^ ozs., were sold to meet the charge of enlarging the Court parlour. 
 
 Within a short time of the nominal completion of the Hall, an in- 
 ventory of the principal contents introduces us to the knowledge of an 
 armoury similar in character and object to those maintained by some 
 other Companies. It is tolerably evident that the schedule can only 
 represent what was considered to be of more particular value, as there 
 is no reference to the muniments, plate, or furniture ; or the paper may 
 be no more than a portion of the specification. The armour forms the 
 most conspicuous feature ; and it is stated in the margin of the document 
 that at that time (1570) a portion of it was in use for Her Majesty's 
 service in Flanders, or in other words, for the equipment of the soldiers 
 supplied by precept. In fact, the only other articles deemed worth 
 particularizing were : — 
 
 " A wafer with a band and a bosse of silver gilt. 
 Three garlands, to choose Master and Wardens, with red ribbon. 
 A bearing cloth of blue velvet, embroidered with gold and silver and set with 
 
 pearls, and yellow cloth to lie between it. 
 A box or case to lay the same bearing cloth in. 
 Two tables with the pictures of Sir Anthony Knyvett and Dame Avyce his wife." 
 
 The bearing cloth was the pall, which replaced an earlier one in 1563, 
 and of which the details are furnished under the account of the Broderers. 
 It perished, with many other treasures, a few years after the alterations 
 of 1649, in the disastrous conflagration, which reduced the Baker site 
 to a heap of ruins. 
 
 The Great Fire desolated the City ; but the Company saved a large 
 portion of its effects, including its records, plate, pictures, linen, and 
 pewter. Pending the restoration of the Hall, the meetings were held, 
 first at the Queen's Head in Bishopsgate Street, and then at the Tylers' 
 and Bricklayers' Hall in Leadenhall Street. Subscriptions from mem- 
 bers and calls to the Livery were forborne, until the charge for rebuild- 
 ing the premises in Basinghall Street had been completed. The residue 
 of the plate, special gifts excepted, was sold for 195/. los., of which 70/. 
 went toward the levy for constructing the " London " from the designs 
 of Mr. Wildgoose. 
 
 Between 1669 and 1678 the new Hall was erected, at a total outlay of
 
 THE COOPERS, 441 
 
 more than 5,000/., gradually collected in the course of the years 1668-71 
 from the Court and Livery in sums of varying amount. In 1671, the 
 King's arms were presented by the Master, and placed between the two 
 great windows at the upper end of the Hall. The rooms over the 
 great parlour, with convenient cellarage, were assigned to the Clerk, and 
 reckoned as 20/. in his salary. 
 
 But the financial position obliged the Company to let the Hall for 
 some time as a Sunday meeting-house, for weddings and funerals, and 
 on any other public or other occasion. In 1672 the accommodation 
 available on Lord Mayor's day continued to be so insufficient, that some 
 of the Livery were obliged to dine at a victualling-house in Thames 
 Street, whither the Company sent the wine and cakes. 
 
 Not including the structure, probably John Baker's own place of 
 business, which seems to have occupied the spot in 1490, the existing 
 premises form the third possessed by the Company since its entrance 
 on the bequest in 1501. It is a modern building, which covers only a 
 portion of the area taken for its predecessor, some of the land having 
 been alienated, whereas the second Hall was more spacious than the 
 first to the extent of a plot acquired after the Fire for enlarging the 
 accommodation. 
 
 Looking at the price of material and labour about 1670, and the large 
 outlay incurred in replacing the original house, we have not much room 
 for doubt that it surpassed both that which went before and that which 
 succeeded it. Nevertheless, as an impressive monument of energy and 
 piety the timber pile of 1547 stands pre-eminent ; for there the beginning 
 was within the memory of the father or the grandfather, and all the 
 external and internal environments, and all the ingoers and outcomers, 
 were of one vesture. 
 
 It may be worth noting, that the last licensed lottery in Great Britain 
 was drawn, in connection with the Glasgow Improvement scheme, at 
 Coopers' Hall, August 28, 1837, just before the passage of the Act 
 4 Will. IV. c. 37. 
 
 The records and accounts of the Coopers have been preserved with 
 unusual care from 1439-40, and depict in a very vivid and interesting 
 manner the progress and growth of the Company itself and the general 
 costume of the successive political systems, under which it has maintained 
 its independence and achieved prosperity. We have merely to glance over 
 the pages of the registers belonging to certain critical stages in our annals, 
 to convince ourselves that it bore quite its full share of oppressive and 
 despotic rule on the part alike of the Corporation and Crown ; but the 
 Revolution of 1688 and a wise husbandry of its resources ever since has 
 enabled the Court to shew a steadily increasing rent-roll, pari passu 
 C.C. 56
 
 442 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 with a constant expansion of the educational and charitable trusts and 
 disbursments. In this respect the Coopers claim precedence even over 
 some of the Great Companies ; and it is the noblest of all pretensions. 
 
 KAfSIMILE FROM BOOK OF ACCOUNTS, 1576. 
 
 The records between 1439 and 1834, and the Accounts from 1440 to 
 1 598, calendared by Mr. Firth, exhibit a curious and instructive picture 
 in little of the doings and fortunes during three or four centuries, and
 
 THE COOl'KRS. 443 
 
 admit us to an acquaintance with certain facts which wc do not other- 
 wise reach. From an entry under 1440, it follows that at that time the 
 Fraternity, obeying the general precedent, had already founded a chapel 
 at St. Paul's, to which one of the Wardens by his will leaves 20s. sterling; 
 and in the next year a deceased member left " to the support of the 
 Fraternity," a gown striped with silver, probably for the priest. In 1448, 
 Richard Samborne paid for admittance by redemption 26.?. 8^. In 
 1455, the outgoing Wardens delivered to their successors one chest with 
 two keys, one box with a key, a harness girdle, a board cloth, and ready 
 money amounting to 16/. 13J. 4^/. Under 1458, there is an early men- 
 tion of the mash-tun as a " mashfat ; " but it had been long in use. 
 
 The Coopers supplied, with nine other Companies, at the obsequies of 
 Henry VII. in 1509, two of the Fellowship to walk in the procession, 
 clothed in black gowns and tippets, besides certain poor men of the Craft 
 or otherwise in white gowns and hoods, with torches and beads in their 
 hands. 
 
 The practice of calling on every freeman at his admission to present 
 the Company with a gold noble {6s. 8d) or a silver spoon of equal value 
 was inaugurated, it seems, in 1547 ; it was a not uncommon usage, and 
 led to a large accumulation of plate of this kind, as the newcomers 
 appear to have generally given the spoon in preference to the coin ; and 
 periodical sales took place of the surplus stores. 
 
 To the Irish Colonization scheme of 1609-13, the Coopers subscribed 
 140/., and associated themselves with the Ironmongers. The collection 
 of this sum occupied two or three years. The Company's arms were 
 set up in 1636 in a glass window of the parish church of St. Albon, 
 Wood Street. Seven years later the plate, valued at between 1 50/. and 
 200/., was sold to defray the share of a levy of 50,000/. on the Com- 
 panies. 
 
 In the year of the Restoration, the Brazil staff was mounted in silver 
 with the Company's arms, and a cloth gown provided for the Beadle. 
 Three years afterward a barge was purchased by subscription at a cost 
 of 154/. loj-., or upward; and a subsequent entry apprises us that the 
 vessel had a master, mate, and fourteen watermen. In 1664, the sum 
 of 600/. was found for the ininiinuin quota of a loan of 600,000/. to 
 the King, and another sale of plate to the extent of 142/ 14^-. id. was 
 necessitated. 
 
 We find that in 1675 the Common Serjeant was appointed standing 
 counsel to the Company. A very unusual proceeding is registered in 1671 
 and again in 1682 ; an Assistant in each case was removed for habitual 
 neglect and absence. 
 
 The only other noteworthy item upon which time has set its mellow-
 
 444 THE MINOR COMrANIES. 
 
 ing impress, is the loyal and generous conduct of Sir Robert Willimott, 
 Citizen and Cooper, who, upon being elected Lord Mayor in 1743, instead 
 of translating himself, agreeably to the custom of London, to one of the 
 Great Companies, set the precedent of remaining true to his own brethren, 
 who put forth their whole strength on the day, both by land and water, 
 to shew him honour, elected him Master, and excused him from ail fines. 
 A prior Mayor, Sir John Fleet, Citizen and Cooper, elected in 1692, had 
 in the usual way joined the Grocers. 
 
 Turning to the Accounts, so far as they illustrate circumstances and 
 customs for a century and a half (1440-1 598), a majority of the entries 
 are of a normal or common character ; but here and there we encounter 
 an allusion which still has its direct or indirect interest. In 15 13, the 
 sum of i6s. 2d. was spent on a supper at the Boar's Head in Cheap, 
 probably for the Court ; and a further ^s. id. was disbursed at the 
 Dagger for bread and drink soon after. The Sumner at Paul's is an 
 occasional recipient of gratuities in connection with the Company's 
 chapel or chantry there about the same time ; and periodical payments 
 are made to the priest for the funeral obits, under the will of John 
 Baker (1490), at St. Michael Bassishaw. Wine is furnished on many 
 occasions and for persons of all ranks ; there is a disbursement of 2s. 4c/. 
 for a gallon and a pottle of muscadel for my Lord Fiennes, and of lod. 
 for a bottle of the same for the Lord Chief Baron ; but in 1535 a hogs- 
 head of wine offered to the Lord Chancellor, cost i/. 3^. 6d., and a pipe 
 of Gascony for the Speaker, 3/. 6s. 8d. Altogether, legal charges are 
 constant and relatively heavy, and the vails constitute a standing feature 
 in the outgoings for each year. Nor was the tribute invariably in these 
 graceful forms. In 1576 the Lord Mayor accepts 3/., and in 1584,6/., 
 and the Recorder, the Judges, the Attorney-General, and others, both 
 principals and subordinates, come in their turn. When the Company 
 dined at Guildhall, they and the rest paid their quota of the e.xperise. 
 Even when we arrive at 1667, we find the Lord Mayor accepting a 
 hogshead of wine for his parliamentary services in opposing the Vintners' 
 monopoly of buying and selling wines in gross. 
 
 A clue to the Coopers' possession of an ancient funeral pall, similar 
 to those still or formerly held by the Fishmongers and other bodies, 
 only occurs in 1 563, when we have the details set forth of the purchase 
 of a new one, of which the material and workmanship amounted to 
 about 57/.' 
 
 There is an odd charge in 1531 of iS^d. for the Dutch coopers' break- 
 fast at the Checker tavern, when they attended as witnesses against 
 
 ' See the items under the Broderers' Company, supra.
 
 THE COOPERS. 445 
 
 their own countrymen in the trade, who had established themselves in 
 the City as householders and shopkeepers. 
 
 The sale of Old Wool Quay for 400/. is recorded under 1558, and the 
 contribution of 8/. ioj. by four members toward the construction of the 
 Ko)-al IC.xchangc in 1566. 
 
 A not unusual incident presents itself in 15S7, when the Company 
 pays 5/. 2s. 6d. for lands concealed from the Crown. The registration of 
 the arms at Heralds' College costs \os. in 1590. A chain for the Bible 
 is bought in 1591 for sixpence, and in the following year a new Bible 
 and Prayer-book for the chapel or chantry at St. Paul's for l/. 2S. 4*/. 
 There is an interesting memorial in 1593, in the shape of a charge of 
 I2i-. by a painter for painting the arms in books given by Master 
 Swa\-ne ; they were inserted on a spare leaf at the commencement of 
 the volume. 
 
 The expenditure on pageants, except in 1743, when the Coopers 
 returned the Mayor, was steadily recurrent, but tolerably frugal. When 
 Queen Elizabeth came to the City in 1570, to dine with Sir Thomas 
 Gresham, the incidental outlay did not exceed \2s. lod. But the May- 
 day celebration at Greenwich in I57i,and the expenses attendant on 
 the King's coronation in 1 603-4 proved far more costly. 
 
 . The calls from the Crown for ship-money and equipment of troopers 
 were the most serious in amount, and were usually met by a requisition 
 on the private resources of members of the Livery or Court. 
 
 While some of the Companies have unfortunately suffered a more or 
 less serious shrinkage in their resources from the circumstance that the 
 description of property left to or acquired by them has declined in 
 value, others, as we know, have enjoyed a corresponding expansion, 
 owing to the situation of their estates in the City itself or in other urban 
 and central localities. The Coopers' Company belongs to the latter 
 category, because its governing body has seen fit for a lengthened 
 period to apply any available funds to the purchase of City groundrents; 
 these have in some cases vastly grown in their returns ; and the owners 
 have not hesitated to devote the increment to public purposes. 
 
 For the ten years — ^1870-9 — the receipts from estates in the City 
 of London and the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, and Kent 
 amounted to 6,493/. i-*"- 9<-^- The almshouses and schools at Ratcliff 
 and Egham are included in this estimate. The property consists of 
 rents and stock ; but unfortunately, in a certain sense, the bulk is in 
 trust. In 1882 and 1892 the corporate possessions represented only 
 2,400/. out of 7,120/ and 7,400/ respectively. 
 
 Freemen at the age of fifty-five are eligible for a pension of 10/ a 
 year, and at sixty to one of 1 5/ or an almshouse. Liverymen are
 
 446 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 entitled, in addition, to 20/. a year, and also possess the right of voting 
 at the elections of Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and of the Parliamentary 
 representatives of the City. The average annual amount paid in pen- 
 sions or eleemosynary gratuities to needy members is 1,545/. 
 
 The charitable estate of the Company within the meaning of the 
 Act of Parliament for Chantries Collegiate, i Edward VI., cap. 12, was 
 exceedingly limited, insomuch that at this time, in order to redeem the 
 interest in the Baker Estate, and to discharge the whole liability con- 
 nected with the Obit, Dirige, and Requiem prescribed under the will in 
 1490, the claim of the Committee sitting at Skiimers' Hall amounted 
 altogether only to g/. 2s. lod. The estate had certainly been a pro- 
 fitable accession ; for during the years when the superstitious covenant 
 of the will was fulfilled, the out-payments do not appear to have 
 annually much exceeded 40s. 
 
 The almshouses and school at Ratcliff St. Mary were originally 
 founded under the will of Nicholas Gibson, Citizen and Grocer (Sheriff 
 in 1538), Sept. 23, 1540 (after the decease of his relict), for fourteen poor 
 men or women, seven to be taken from the parish of Stepney, and seven 
 from the mistery of Coopers or their wives. But this scheme was en- 
 larged by the benefactions of Henry Cloker, 1573, Toby Wood, 1611, 
 and Henry Strode, 1703 ; and it now provides for eight widows of 
 Stepney, eight widows of freemen, and six poor men of the Company ; 
 the men receive a pension of 30/. yearly, and the women, 26/. ; they 
 cannot be admitted under sixty years of age. The school, which is situ- 
 ated in School House Lane, Ratcliff, and which had been restored a 
 few years prior, perished in the terrible fire of July 1794, which de- 
 stroyed about 500 dwellings and warehouses, but was rebuilt in 1795, 
 and enlarged in 1870; it accommodates 300 boys belonging to the 
 parish of Stepney. 
 
 It was not until the passing of the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, 
 that public attention was drawn to the justice of allowing girls to par- 
 ticipate in educational endowments ; and this Company was amongst 
 the first to give effect to the Act in this respect, by establishing, in 1878, 
 a middle-class Girls' School, which has been successfully conducted at 
 Bow, and now receives over 200 pupils. 
 
 By a Scheme of the Charity Commissioners which was approved by 
 Her Majesty in Council on July 30, 1891, the educational endowments 
 of the Ratcliff charity have been amalgamated, however, with that of 
 the Prisca Coborn charity, under the title of " The Stepney and Bow 
 Foundation." The scheme provides for the removal of the boys' school 
 to the premises of the Prisca Coborn Schools in Tredegar Square, Bow, 
 for boys and girls ; and the management is vested in the hands of
 
 THE COOPERS. 447 
 
 sixteen Governors, appointed by the following electing bodies : eight by 
 the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Coopers' Company ; one by 
 the London County Council ; one by the School Board for London ; 
 one by the Council of King's College, London ; one by the Council of 
 University College, London ; one by the Vestry of the parish of Bow ; 
 one by the Incumbent and Churchwardens of the same parish ; one 
 by the Incumbent and Churchwardens of the Parish of Bromley in 
 the county of Middlesex ; one by the Incumbent and Churchwardens 
 of the Parish of Stepney. 
 
 Seven years after its original endowment by Gibson, but before the 
 Company had, by the remarriage of Mrs. Gibson in 1552 to Sir Anthony 
 Knyvett, and her assignment of the estate thereupon, come into posses- 
 sion, the annual dinner was held at Ratcliff; and although in the 
 accounts it is styled "the great dinner day of the Company," and was 
 various enough in its character, the aggregate cost was little more than 
 14/., chiefly defrayed by members out of their own pockets. The prices 
 of some of the constituent items help to explain the modest total : for 
 instance, 18 capons, iSs.; 12 rabbits, 2s. 8d. ; 12 geese, 16^.; 8 pigs, 
 SJ. 4d. ; 2 gallons of butter, 4^. 8d. ; 400 eggs, 8s. ; a whole sheep, 
 4f. 8d. ; a sirloin of beef, is. lod. ; 20 lbs. of suet, 3^. 4^. ; while here 
 and there the figures are almost higher than they would be at present,, 
 more particularly spices and sugar. The cook and his man received 
 I IS. ; but the minstrels were satisfied with 2s. 
 
 The almshouses and school at Egham were founded by Henry Strode, 
 Esq., Cooper, in 1703, for the benefit of the parishioners of Egham. 
 There are twelve houses and a school for upward of 100 children. The 
 building was re-constructed in 182S. The inmates of the almshouses 
 have 6s. weekly, besides coals, clothing, and medical attendance. 
 
 In 1725, William Alexander left to the Company in trust for its poor 
 his freehold estate of Woodham Mortimer, Essex, which at present yields 
 300/. a year, and gives pensions of 10/. to thirty members of this Gild. 
 
 Stow, speaking of the benefactors to Cripplegate Ward, says : — 
 
 " Master Thomas Busby, Cooper, gave forty dozen of Wheaten Bread, and foure 
 Loads of Charcoales, to be distributed yeerely forever unto the poore of this Parish, in 
 manner following : The weeke before Alhallowtide, one load of Char-coales, and 
 tenne dozen of bread ; the weeke before Christmas ; the weeke before the five and 
 twentieth day of January ; and the weeke before Easter, the foresaid proportion of 
 bread and coales." 
 
 The same authority has transcribed his epitaph in the church, which 
 ran as follows : —
 
 448 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 "A Remembrance of Tho. Busbie, 
 
 Citizen and Cooper of London, who 
 
 departed this life in the yeere 
 
 1575, and was buried 
 
 the II. day of 
 
 July- 
 
 This Busbie, willing to relieve the poore, with fire and with bread, 
 
 Did give the house wherein he dwelt then called the Queenes Head. 
 
 Foure full Loads of the best Charcoales he would have bought each yeere 
 
 And forty dozen of VVheaten Bread, for poore Householders here. 
 
 To see these things distributed, this Busbie put in trust 
 
 The Vicar and Church-wardens, thinking them to be just. 
 
 God grant that poore Householders here, may thankful! be for such ; 
 
 So God will move the minds of more, to doe for them as much. 
 
 And let this good example move such men as God hath blest, 
 
 To doe the like before, they goe with Busbie to their rest. 
 
 Within this Chappell, Busbies bones, in dust a while must stay. 
 
 Till He that made them, raise them up, to live with Christ for aye." 
 
 Besides the lustre shed on the Company by so niany philanthropic 
 personages and by those who have been chosen to discharge the duties 
 of the Mayoralty, especially Sir Robert Willimott, it had the distinguished' 
 honour of sending to the Court of Aldermen in 1848, in the person of 
 Mr. David Salomons, the first Jew elected to that dignity ; and a banquet 
 was given by the Coopers, to commemorate the occasion, at the London 
 Tavern on the ist of February in that year, the Master, Mr. James F. 
 Firth, being supported by the Lord Mayor and Mr. John Masterman, 
 M.P. 
 
 The Company held an E.xhibition in 1888 of Coopers' work at the 
 People's Palace, and published a small catalogue descriptive of the 
 various objects. It possesses a few last-century models and several 
 pictures, chiefly likenesses of distinguished members or benefactors of 
 the Gild ; among these are portraits of Sir Felix Booth and Sir David 
 Salomons. But the most interesting in an historical respect is that of 
 Dame Avisia Knyvett, relict of Nicholas Gibson above mentioned, after 
 whose death she re-married ; the collection includes the original large 
 painting and a reduced copy dated 1 540, both part of the salvage in 1666.
 
 THE CORUWAINEKS. 
 
 449 
 
 Ube (Ior^^valncl•5. 
 
 The origin of the Cordwainers is one of those questions which it is 
 ahiiost useless to discuss, and of which one can merely say, that the 
 earliest vestiges disclose a more or less lengthened establishment. But 
 we do not agree with the view, that the Shoemakers' Gild was the 
 parent-body, whence the Curriers and others branched off in course of 
 time, since we hold the present one to have been essentially a com- 
 munity of craftsmen who purchased their material at first of the tanner 
 {A/lutariits), and subsequently of the leather-seller. In very primitive 
 times, the deficiency of special markets brought the manufacturer, — in 
 this case the tanner, — into direct contact with the retail buyer ; and such 
 relation continued so long as the opportunities for commercial inter- 
 course between the members of the Craft and Merchant Gilds remained 
 more or less limited and difficult. 
 
 We therefore deem it a misapprehension to suppose that the Cord- 
 wainers were anciently identical with the Alliitarii, unless we go so 
 far back into the past or principia reriim, as to reach a perfectly rudi- 
 mentary method or system, when the shoemaker may have flayed the 
 beast and tanned the hide. Ordinances for their better government 
 were, so far as we at present are aware, first drawn up and approved by 
 the Lord Mayor in 127 1-2, 56 Henry III. They embrace safeguards 
 against the employment of spurious or defective material, the conditions 
 of apprenticeship, the terms on which strangers might be admitted 
 to work at the Craft, and to make sales of goods, and the rule as to 
 the admission of skinners {corerarii) to the Fraternity. But the most 
 
 c-c. 57
 
 450 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 noticeable feature is, that throughout this parent-code there is no 
 reference to any governing body of the Cordwainers, who appear at this 
 date to have been obliged to hold themselves in direct touch with the 
 Corporation. 
 
 Further bye-laws, sanctioned in 1375, touch the ordinary and usual 
 points, as to the attempts of ill-disposed and unqualified persons to 
 impose on the common people, more especially in this case by sell- 
 ing shoes of bazen as cordwaine or Cordovan leather, and of calf- 
 leather for o.x-leather. The Articles also provided for the occurrence of 
 disputes, which were to be settled, if practicable, by the good folk of 
 the trade, and limited the sale of goods to the time between prime and 
 noon, and to a certain spot between Soper Lane and the Conduit. 
 Cordwainers were not permitted to open on Sundays, but might serve 
 the common people within their own premises. 
 
 In 1395 the Court of Aldermen, in consequence of a dissension between 
 the Cordwainers of London and the Cobblers from beyond sea, estab- 
 lished a modus vivendi by limiting each of these 
 vocations to its own strict province. The proceed- 
 ings assumed the form of an inquisition of twelve 
 members of each community, and the settlement 
 was by sealed indentures. 
 
 In 1409 the Cordwainers and Cobblers re- 
 appeared at Guildhall to procure authoritative 
 sanction to a more elaborate and defined rule of 
 practice for preventing mutual trespass. The most 
 singular feature in this case is the survival of a letter of Henry IV. 
 under the Privy Seal, inclosing a petition addressed to him by the 
 Cordwainers, and praying the attention of the Corporation thereto, in 
 consequence whereof an inquisition was held on the matter. But, the 
 absolute inhibition of the use of new leather to the Cobblers having 
 been found inoperative and unfeasible, they were now left at liberty 
 to employ it for their purposes under certain peremptory restrictions. 
 
 The Cordwainers and Cobblers were at this time distinguished as the 
 workers in new and old leather respectively. They seem to have been 
 among the most litigious of the industries, and to have indifferently 
 merited the designation of the Gentle Craft. 
 
 A foreign element had thus introduced itself into the trade in the 
 time of Richard II. ; but the strangers seem to have been obliged in the 
 first instance to content themselves with the execution of repairs. 
 Looking forward, as they could not do, we see how in important respects 
 the Continental artificer gradually outstripped and supplanted the 
 English operative. 
 
 OLD ARMS.
 
 THK CORD WAIN ERS. 45 I 
 
 Returnint^ to the Ordinances of 1272, it becomes manifest, — from a 
 clause which appoints twelve members of the Craft to be overseers for 
 the due preservation of discipline and the enforcement of penalties 
 against defaulters, — that the Gild down to this period had been destitute 
 of any fixed system of government ; and wc are unable to assent to the 
 vague proposition, that it was coeval with the Norman dynasty of kings. 
 Even in 1272 the funds arising from amercements and otherwise were 
 made receivable by the Chamber of London, to the use of the com- 
 monalty, so that there was still no regular I'lxecutivc or methodical 
 organization beyond this Committee of twelve persons with stated and 
 narrow functions ; and the Cobblers appear to have possessed, with or 
 without licence, a similar administration. 
 
 Two circumstances, which, judging from analogy, ma}' have been con- 
 nected with each other, happened not many years after the intervention 
 of Henry IV. in 1409 in the feud between the Cordwainers and Cobblers ; 
 for in 1439, April 26 (17 Henry VI.), in consideration of 50 marks 
 (32/. i6s. 41/.), the King, doubtless at the instance of the twelve, conferred 
 a charter on the freemen of the Mistery of Cordwainers of the City of 
 London, whereby they became one body and one Commonalty for ever, 
 with perpetual succession, a common seal, the power of pleading and 
 being impleaded, and a licence in mortmain to the extent of 10/. a year. 
 The new Company was invested with the right of annually electing one 
 Master and four Wardens to govern the Mistery, and with a power of 
 search and control over all workers in black and red tanned leather 
 and new boots and shoes within the City of London and a radius of two 
 miles from Cornhill. 
 
 This grant does not seem to have been submitted for approval or 
 recognition till the 4-5 Philip and Mary, when it was duly exemplified 
 and confirmed (June 17, 1557). But a patent of 4 Elizabeth (August 
 24, 1562) includes a provision which demands special notice; for there, 
 in authorizing a Court of twelve Assistants, these officers are described 
 as twelve discreet and honest persons, chosen according to the ancient 
 custom of London ; and we may reasonably doubt whether this faculty 
 actually went beyond a formal approbation of the Committee of Twelve, 
 which was organized in 1272, and which still existed in 1409 with the 
 same jurisdiction. 
 
 The Elizabethan grant likewise extended the title to hold real 
 property to 20/. and the radius of search and supervision to three miles, 
 and vested in the Court and Commonalty the power of choosing a Clerk 
 and Beadle, and of drawing up ordinances. The instrument was not 
 enrolled at Guildhall till March 9, 6 Elizabeth. 
 
 The Cordwainers succeeded in 10 James I. in securing a considerable
 
 452 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 amplification of their privileges and immunities. The Court of Assist- 
 ants was raised to sixteen, the licence in mortmain to 200/. a year ; and 
 all the lands thus far acquired were confirmed to the Company. 
 
 The only other experience of this character was under the Quo 
 Warranto ; but the charter accorded i James II. was, as usual, revoked 
 by the general terms and operation of the Act of William and Mary, 
 so that that of 161 2-1 3 at present governs the constitution. 
 
 The second point, to which we now have to advert, is the nature of the 
 means which enabled the Company to consummate the act of incorpora- 
 tion by the foundation of a common Hall. In the j-ear immediately 
 following the concession of the first charter, John Yong, a prominent 
 member of the government of twelve, presented to his brethren a parcel 
 of land In Great Distaff Lane for the express purpose of facilitating the 
 periodical assembly of the freemen in council. Although a gift of land 
 was not at that period the most serious part of such a transaction, 
 and the building-material and labour were more costly in proportion 
 than the site, the possession of a freehold with this specific object 
 doubtless encouraged an exertion to accomplish the rest. But the 
 liberality of the donor did not probably come as a surprise on the 
 Brotherhood ; and the prayer for a charter in 1439 was influenced by a 
 confidence in the willingness of John Yong to do his part toward 
 rendering other conditions suitable and commensurate. 
 
 The ancient ordinances, which were in force from the 13th to the 
 1 6th century, both while the Gild remained a voluntary Society and 
 during the earlier period of incorporated life, were finally superseded by 
 the code of bye-laws made, in pursuance of the charter of 1562, ten 
 years later ; and these Articles successively gave place to others framed 
 and approved by the Judges in 161 2 and 1749. 
 
 The acting charter and bye-laws are those of 1612-13 and 1749 
 respectively. Under 1876, the Return made to Parliament mentions "a 
 Common Hall " as assenting to an augmentation of the fees payable to 
 the Court ; this was what may be perhaps termed a Grand or General 
 Committee, of which the Livery, but not " the free men of the Mistery " 
 specified in 1439, formed part, and which is convened on the last 
 Thursday in July of each year, for the election of the Clerk and Beadle 
 and for other current objects, on which the Court is not competent 
 to adjudicate. Here we discern, as in the Company last noticed, a 
 certain, and indeed an important, survival of popular government, which 
 tends to preserve the constitution from hardening into an oligarchy. 
 In 1882, the Livery was stated to amount to 96, exclusive of the 
 Court ; of the Yeomanry, or freemen, no statistics were forthcoming or 
 procurable. It is worthy of note that the Livery had not fluctuated
 
 THE COKDWAINERS. 453 
 
 much since 1699 and 1724, when it was 100 and 102 ; while in 1892 it 
 was returned as 100. 
 
 An ordinary sequel to a charter, sometimes a precursor of it, was the 
 grant of arms, which was made to the Cordwainers by Robert Cooke, 
 Clarencieux, June 25, 1579, and exempHfied by Henry St. George, Rich- 
 mond Herald, at the Visitation of London in 1634. 
 
 Some of the later history of the Company is associated, as may 
 be supposed, with the crafts which pursued various branches of the 
 leather trade ; and even at a point of time much posterior to the early 
 differences and altercations with the Cobblers, occasional glimpses occur 
 of a survival of the old trouble and spirit. 
 
 As at present, a good deal existed and was done in the City on suffer- 
 ance, until the abuse or irregularity was pointed out. In 1580 a repre- 
 sentation was made to the municipal authorities, that by assent of the 
 Free Cordwainers, and on payment to them of a certain quartervvage, the 
 Foreign Cordwainers were left at liberty to buy leather at Leadenhall 
 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but that the civic authorities 
 had lately limited this right to Mondays. The Lord Mayor, however, 
 shewed that the Company was not entitled to grant the privilege, and 
 besides, that the Foreigners could, if they chose, make purchases on the 
 other days in Southwark. 
 
 The tendency of modern legislation, which almost uniformly and 
 inevitably traverses and effaces the lines on which the Gilds worked 
 and throve, has been to divest the Cordwainers of all practical authority 
 over that industry ; and they share the lot of all such communities in 
 continuing to live among traders and thinkers of a wholly different type, 
 with a part to play and a mission to discharge as dispensers of alms' 
 and hospitality, but on an entirely different basis from their original and 
 true locus standi, as they present themselves to our view and criticism in 
 1439, in the days of Master John Yong. 
 
 Nevertheless, in 1 882, one-third of the Liverymen is said to have been 
 practically connected with the business ; and in surveying the accounts 
 of expenditure to charitable uses beyond the fulfilment of early trusts, 
 we become satisfied that the Company exercises its discretion with 
 commendable justice and liberality. 
 
 The City Regulations of 1350 allowed 6d. for a pair of shoes of 
 cordwain, and the same price for one of cow-leather, and for a pair of 
 boots of the two materials mixed, y. 6d. ; and the same ordinances 
 forbad the removal of any cordwain or bazen out of the civic bounds 
 on pain of forfeiture, half the value to go to an informer. 
 
 Shoes made of improper material were open to confiscation, when
 
 454 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the supervisors detected the offence. In 1320, Richard Le Cordwainer 
 and his fellow-officers took possession of a large number of pairs manu- 
 factured from bazen or sheep-skin and cordwain, or tawed leather, the 
 latter being a cheap imitation of the Cordovan, which was costly. 
 
 From a passage in the tolerably well-known ballad of The King and 
 the Taiuier of Tamtuortli, written in the 14th century, we glean that it 
 was the usage of the heads of great families to purchase their own leather, 
 at all events for the repair of the boots and shoes of the establishment 
 and its feudal surroundings, and inferably to employ a cordwainer or 
 cobbler to do the work required. The tanner in the story, speaking of 
 Lord Basset (Ralph, fifth Lord Basset of Drayton, 1 299-1 343) says to 
 the disguised monarch, his companion : — 
 
 " I know hem not, . . . with hem y h.ife lytyll to don ; 
 Wolde he never bey of me clot lather to clowt with his schoyn." ' 
 
 In France the Tanners and the Shoemakers were closely associated, as 
 Paul Lacroix shews in his Histoire de la Chaiissitre, 1862. 
 
 In the matter of appointments for the feet, we see that in 1639 
 Londoners and others possessed, in addition to shoes and boots, pumps 
 and slippers, of which the latter is commemorated in the last of Shak- 
 spear's Seven Ages of Man. 
 
 At what time galoches of leather were introduced, is uncertain ; but 
 we have observed that in 1400 the Pouchmakers secured a monopoly 
 for wooden galoches, which were then represented to be a novelty in 
 London. 
 
 The Company acquired the ground for a Hall in 1440 through the 
 generosity of John Yong; it was a locality identified since the thirteenth 
 century with the Craft, whose followers congregated in Corveysers' Street 
 and Soper Lane, with the Curriers, after the abandonment of the former 
 by the Sopers and Pepperers in turn. The Cordwainers are found there 
 in 56 Henry III. and in 9 Henry IV., and Cordwainer Street Ward per- 
 petuates the memory of this colony, which occupied the quarter. But 
 how soon after that date steps were taken to utilize the site in Great 
 Distaff Lane we are without further information than the fact recorded 
 in Harleian MS. 541, where this Company is the twenty-first of twenty- 
 five City Gilds possessing Halls in 1483. As in other similar cases, 
 such an undertaking required much study and courage. The land was 
 only an item ; and the outlay on the charter had been relatively large. 
 The truth is, however, that those most concerned know nothing about 
 the matter, except that the building, doubtless a timber structure, was 
 erected, and in 1577 was replaced by a second with funds supplied by 
 Thomas Nicholson, a Master of the Company. 
 
 ' Hazlitt's Popular Poetry, 1864, i. 7.
 
 THE CORUWAINERS. 455 
 
 Stow (1633), speaking of the Cordwainers, says : — 
 
 " In tliis Distar Lane, on the North side thereof, is the Cordwayners or Shoo- 
 maliers Hall, ... Of these Cordwayners I reade, that since the fifth of Richard 
 the second, (when he tooke to wife Anne, daiii,diter to Wenceslaiis, King of Bohemia) 
 by her example the English people had used piked Shooes, tyed to their knees witli 
 Silken Laces, or Chaines of Silver and Gilt : Wherfore in the fourth of Edward the 
 fourth it was ordained and proclaimed, that IJeakes of Shooue and Bootes should not 
 passe the length of two inches, upon paine of cursing by the Clergie, and by Parlia- 
 ment to pay 20.f. for every paire. And every Cordwayner that shod any man or 
 woman on the Sunday, to pay 30.;." 
 
 The Nicholson Hall, again, was lost in the h'ire of 1666 with the 
 entire contents (except the charters and plate), and nearly all the house- 
 property in the neighbourhood. The pecuniary distress involved in this 
 calamity obliged the Company to part with forty-four pieces of plate, 
 including that bought with a legacy of 12/. left for the purpose by the 
 illustrious Camden in 1623, and with their sub-share of the Ulster estate, 
 which passed to the Goldsmiths, the tenants-in-chief, themselves sadly 
 crippled and impoverished. 
 
 The Hall was eventually reconstructed at the expense of members of 
 the Company, and completed in 1670 ; but the present one is an eigh- 
 teenth century building, and covers only part of the original area. It 
 was described by Maitland in 1739, and even by Cunningham in 1850, 
 as being in Great Distaff Lane ; the extensive changes, a few years later, 
 have given it a frontage in Cannon Street ; and since 1883 a consider- 
 able sum has been expended, out of corporate savings, in alterations and 
 improvements. 
 
 The Cordwainers still retain the warehouses to the east of their 
 Hall ; and very possibly at one time their estate in the City was 
 much larger. The old Cordwainer Street is lost in Hosier and Bow 
 Lanes ; and the property of the Company inay have formerly extended 
 to that point eastward. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Acts of Parliament 
 
 affecting 
 
 the Compar 
 
 y :— 
 
 
 
 25 Edward III. 
 
 cap. 4. 
 
 
 5 Elizabeth 
 
 
 cap. 8. 
 
 13 Richard II. 
 
 cap. 12. 
 
 
 2 James I. 
 
 
 cap. 22. 
 
 4 Henry IV. 
 
 cap. 5. 
 
 
 2 William and 
 
 Mary 
 
 , cap. 8. 
 
 2 Henry VI. 
 
 cap. 7. 
 
 
 9 Anne, 
 
 
 cap. 1 1. 
 
 4 Edward IV. 
 
 cap. 7. 
 
 
 9 George III. 
 
 
 cap. 39. 
 
 19 Henry VII. 
 
 cap. 19. 
 
 
 39-40 „ 
 
 
 cap. 66. 
 
 3 Henry VIII. 
 
 cap. 10. 
 
 
 4' )) >i 
 
 
 cap. 53. 
 
 14-15 -, 
 
 cap. 19. 
 
 
 43 
 
 
 cap. 106. 
 
 
 cap. 6. 
 
 
 48 „ „ 
 
 
 cap. 71. 
 
 2-3 Edward VI 
 
 caps. 9 
 
 and 1 1. 
 
 5 George IV. 
 
 
 cap SI. 
 
 I Elizabeth 
 
 caps. 8 
 
 and 9. 
 
 36-37 Victoria 
 
 
 cap. 91.
 
 456 
 
 THE iMINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The Gentle Craft. A most merry and pleasant Historic. By Thomas Deloney. 
 4to, 1598. 
 #*# There were numerous editions of the original work relating to the Shoemakers' Craft, as well as 
 abridgments, and narratives founded upon it. Of one of the latter, an edition of 1725 relates to the 
 exploits of a shoemaker called the Green King of St. Martin's. 
 
 The Shoemakers' Holiday. Or, The Gentle Craft : With the humorous life 6{ 
 Simon Eyre, Shoemaker, and Lord Mayor of London. As it was acted before 
 the Queen's most excellent Majesty by the right honourable the Earl of Notting- 
 ham, Lord High Admiral, his Servants. By Thomas Dekker. 410,1600, 1610, 
 1618, 1631, 1657. 
 The story is also taken from the above-mentioned novel. Henslosve, in his Diarv, July 15. 1559, 
 
 notes the loan of 3/. to Thomas Downton and Samuel Rowley to buy this play from Dekker. 
 
 A Merry and Pleasant Comedy, Never before Printed, Called a Shoemaker, a 
 Gentleman: As it hath been sundry times acted at the Red Bull and other 
 Theatres with a general and good Applause. By William Rowley. 410, 1638. 
 It was afterwards revived at the Theatre in Dorset Gardens. The plot of this play is founded on 
 Deloney's History of the Gentle Craft, first ]5rinted in 1598. 
 
 A Discourse between Upright the Shoemaker, and Master Pattent the Smith, 
 
 both meeting on the Horse E.xchange, in Smithfield, now lately. By A. J. Svo, 
 1640. 
 
 Crispin and Crispianus: An old popular drama frequently played by the Shoe- 
 makers' Gilds before 1643. 
 
 It is mentioned by Dr. William King (Works, 1776, i. 180). 
 
 XCbe Curriers. 
 
 The first tangible evidence of the status and localization of this body 
 belongs to the fourteenth century, when the Curriers, on the abandon- 
 ment of Soper or Sopers' Lane by the Fepperers, settled there by the 
 side of the Cordwainers. The industry was in a fairly prosperous con- 
 dition when, in 1363, the little colony subscribed five marks (3/. 6s. 8d.) 
 toward the French wars of Edward III. But the archives appear to be 
 destitute of any information contributing to illustrate or trace the pro- 
 gress of the Gild during the next half-century, beyond the fact that in 
 1376 it was authorized to depute two members to the Common Council.
 
 THE CURRIERS. 457 
 
 liut it is manifest, notwithstanding, that there was a steady onward 
 movement; for in 1415 (September 13) "certain good men of the 
 mistery of Curriers presented to the Court of Aldermen a petition pray- 
 ing for the approval of Ordinances made by the governors thereof ; and 
 the request was granted. These Articles provided two Wardens to rule 
 the Craft ; enabled the said Wardens to exercise the usual right of con- 
 trol, search, and seizure ; forbad the employment by members of any but 
 freemen or apprentices under a penalty of 13^. ^d. and the convention 
 of any assembly by the \'comanr\- without the leave of the Wardens ; 
 and declared it unlawful for persons of the mistery to make any 
 smouldering fire to the annoyance of the neighbourhood, or to work 
 on an}- vigil and on Saturdays after noon. 
 
 The only other testimonj- to the proceedings about the same period is 
 the investiture of the Wardens by the Common Council with the nomin- 
 ation of the City scavengers during pleasure. Probably the Gild farmed 
 the revenue. 
 
 In 1 5 16 a deed of feoffment executed by Thomas Sterne, one of the 
 Fraternity, placed his brethren after his death, subject to the payment of 
 2/. a year to his relict during her life, in possession of a messuage called 
 the Boar's Head with four adjoining tenements in the parish of St. Al- 
 phage, in the ward of Cripplegate, contiguous to London Wall, with 
 certain charitable and superstitious stipulations — namely, that the Craft 
 should expend \Os. yearly in charcoal for distribution among the poor 
 of St. Alphage, and a like sum in prayers for the repose of the soul of 
 the testator, whereof t,s. 4^/. should be divided among such of the Livery 
 as were in attendance at the said service of Requiem. The mind and 
 intention of the donor in this case were, that the site should be used, and 
 remain, as a common Hall of the beneficiaries for ever ; failing which, 
 the whole was appointed to be sold, and the money divided among the 
 poor of the Brotherhood or their widows. The feoffees or trustees were 
 to be periodically renewed in perpetuity, or so long as the original des- 
 tination of the gift was respected. 
 
 This sequence of detached circumstances is capable of being employed 
 to establish a few important points. We may be satisfied that at the 
 date when the estate at London Wall was enfeoffed, the Curriers pos- 
 sessed a settled and orderly government by Wardens, a code of Ordin- 
 ances or bye-laws, and a satisfactory standing among their fellow-citizens. 
 The acquisition of the Sterne estate went far to consolidate and centralize 
 the Fraternity ; and unquestionably at a very short inter\'al from entrance 
 on the property there was a removal from the neighbourhood of Cheap- 
 side to the quarter which was to become the Curriers' permanent home. 
 
 The particulars which we gather in the course of the century relative 
 C.C. s8
 
 45^ THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 to this subject are scanty enough, but assist in knitting together some- 
 thing Hke a connected and consecutive story of the gradual rise to the 
 dignity of a chartered corporation. The acknowledged rank of the Gild 
 as a factor in the branch of trade to which its members applied them- 
 selves, is proved by the Acts of the Crown, Court of Aldermen, and 
 Common Council; in 2 Elizabeth (1559-60) there is a particular 
 reference to the oaths to be administered to officers of the Gild and 
 others ; and we cannot fail to deduce from this entry, that the power of 
 search, even under royal authority of doubtful force, was exercised outside 
 the craft, and affected Spanish leather-dressers dwelling in and about the 
 City. A licence from the Crown, revocable in five years, if found inex- 
 pedient, was granted in 1567, enabling the Wardens, freemen, servants, 
 and apprentices of the Curriers of London to buy or sell leather in all 
 markets and fairs within forty miles of London ; under 1581, a complaint 
 lodged in the Court of Aldermen against the governing body, refers to 
 the latter as the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Company ; and 
 an order of Court was made that journeymen should no longer attend 
 weddings and burials, that a common bo.x should be provided, and that 
 the Assistants should cause quarterage to be collected. Next we arrive 
 (August 8, 1583) at the grant of arms ; and in 1587 the Ordinances are 
 revised and a new body of trustees appointed under the feoffment of 
 Thomas Sterne. 
 
 These Elizabethan Ordinances are at once significant and interesting, 
 and favour a conclusion presently to be stated. They prescribe that the 
 election of Wardens year by year shall be by the Wardens and Fellowship ; 
 that those chosen shall be sworn in the Mayor's Court ; that there shall 
 be Assistants to co-operate with the Wardens ; that the latter shall have 
 supreme authority over the Company ; that no assemblies shall be held 
 without their consent ; and that they shall have the right of search and of 
 recovering penalties ; finally, that work, save cleaning, shall be suspended 
 on festivals and at noon on Saturdays. There are sundry other stipula- 
 tions as to apprentices. But the features to be borne in mind are, that 
 the Gild is again described as a Company, that its Hall is named as a 
 place where the entire Brotherhood, as well as every foreigner using the 
 art, is to assemble twice a year, that the Beadle is said to be the sum- 
 moning officer, and that at these general meetings the Clerk shall read 
 the bye-laws, so that none may plead ignorance of their purport. 
 
 It was not perhaps very surprising that the Article touching the elec- 
 tion of Wardens should awaken controversy, especially in the presence of 
 such a new element in the Executive as the Assistants ; and in 1597 the 
 Lord Mayor was solicited to intrepret the meaning of that particular 
 clause. This dut}' he discharged by making an order that the outgoing
 
 THE CUKRIERS. 459 
 
 Wardens should elect two of their successors — one from the ranks of the 
 Assistants, the other not, and that the remaining or junior one should be 
 nominated by the Fcllouship. 
 
 Let us pause to consider the chain of evidence, thus extending from 
 1415 to the closing years of the following century. We have cited a 
 series or succession of documents, which set the Curriers before us in 
 the light of a body acquiring by degrees and in turn Wardens (141 5), a 
 Hall (1516), Assistants (1581), arms (1583), a Master, Livery, Clerk, and 
 Beadle (i 587) ; and yet we discern no vestige of a charter. The question 
 is, whether we are to infer a prescriptive existence through two cen- 
 turies, or the loss of muniments by fire or otherwise. The Hall perished 
 in 1666. 
 
 Had the Curriers never received a charter, the former view might have 
 been tenable and legitimate. But unfortunately for such an argument, 
 only six years after the constitutional settlement of 1597 James I. ac- 
 corded one (April ^o, 1606), which has been preserved, which recites no 
 other, and which refers to the step as a new phase in the career of the 
 applicants. 
 
 The Gild is incorporated by the name of the Master, Wardens, and 
 Commonalty of the Art or Mistery of the Curriers of the City of Lon- 
 don, and is endowed with all the customary powers and privileges, of 
 which the only substantial additions to existing jurisdiction appear to 
 be the use of a common seal, the right to sue and be sued, and the 
 usual liberty as to acquisition and sale of lands and hereditaments other 
 than those held of the Crown iu capite. But special stress is laid on 
 the possession and employment of the common Hall within the City or 
 its liberties. 
 
 This was the first and practically the only grant, as that of 1687 was 
 cancelled by the Act 2 William and Mary, c. 8, s. 12. In it a rather 
 material modification of the government is perceptible, as the executive 
 is ordained to consist of a Master, two Wardens (Upper and Renter), and 
 twelve Assistants, the Master and Wardens being eligible from the 
 Livery, but the Renter being customarily chosen by seniority from the 
 Assistants. The Fellowship had been silently disfranchised ; and the 
 popular element in the constitution in course of time was so reduced that 
 in 1882 the number of Freemen was returned at eight, while the Liverj% 
 the Court inclusive, was stated to amount to no. In a Gild which, 
 whatever its primitive complexion may have been, derived from its prin- 
 cipal benefactor, Thomas Sterne, in 15 16 an estate which yields the bulk 
 of its present income, on terms emphatically recognising and befriend- 
 ing the Commonalty, that class is all but extinct ; and while, if the lan- 
 guage of the lease and release of the feoffment of 1516 in 1726 holds
 
 460 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 good, the charter of 1606 remains valid, the Sterne property vests in the 
 Master, Wardens, and Conuuonalty, the compulsory alternative — the sale 
 of the Hall and its appurtenances — would create an even graver diffi- 
 culty as to the devolution of the proceeds. 
 
 Even where the absence or loss of the Hall may not, as in this case, 
 jeopardize the charter, it seems fatal to the essential attributes and spirit 
 of these institutions ; while, on the contrary, the mere possession of one 
 without the ancient prescriptive accessories strikes us as equally failing 
 to answer all the postulates of fitness. 
 
 At the same time, in the official return of 1S82, the Company included 
 in its executive staff " a Master of the Household," who was evidently a 
 functionary equivalent to the Wardens of the Yeomanry in some of those 
 bodies which we have had occasion already to describe. This indivi- 
 dual, whose designation only was peculiar, does not occur in any early 
 transactions which have fallen under public notice ; there was a period 
 when such an office, looking at the tenor of Sterne's feoffment, was 
 especially appropriate or pertinent ; and it is somewhat remarkable that 
 his existence, if he was part and parcel of the machinery in former times, 
 does not formally transpire till it has become an anachronism. The 
 Master is there, but where is the household ? 
 
 It may be to the point to add, that during these years the reduction in 
 the number of freemen was apparently influenced by the abnormally 
 large admissions to the Livery, perhaps to assist the Company in its 
 building project, which not only produced a heavy disbursement, but a 
 serious loss of rents from demolished freeholds. 
 
 The power of search and connexion with the trade have long ceased. 
 The right of supervision was exercised as lately as 1831. 
 
 We have mentioned the destruction of the probably early i6th century 
 Hall in 1666. At the end of August, 1670, it had not yet been rebuilt, 
 and the Company had ipso facto no legal existence. But at some date 
 prior to 1701 we learn that it had been replaced on a smaller scale and 
 a more limited area, the frontage being apparently left vacant for build- 
 ing. In 1872-4 the site was again cleared, the materials sold, and 
 temporary accommodation obtained by renting a portion of the Sun 
 public-house facing the street, while a new and more spacious pile was 
 being erected, partly with borrowed money and partly with sold-out 
 stock. The operations extended from 1872 to 1879 ; and a very singu- 
 lar circumstance occurred. The premises were actually completed on 
 the approximate site of the former building, without a frontage to London 
 Wall, the Hall being approached through an iron gate and a passage, 
 when, by an arrangement for mutual convenience with the occupants 
 of the adjoining building, the whole structure was taken down, almost
 
 THE CUTLERS. 
 
 461 
 
 before the walls were dry, and rebuilt with an abutment on the main 
 thoroughfare, Messrs. Rylands defraying the outlay and renting the 
 remainder. 
 
 There arc very few of these institutions which tlo not offer some novel 
 point of custom or obligation. It may have often occurred, that in 
 either case the origin was casual ; but when the practice began, its 
 continuance was unchallenged. The Curriers during a great length of 
 time were accustomed to place at their meetings, by the side of the 
 Master, a horn whistle, by which the Chair commanded silence ; and 
 when this object was lost, a silver one was substituted from a legacy left 
 for the purpose. But the latter is preserved in a case, and seldom intro- 
 duced. It has not the sanction of antiquity, and is intrinsically useless. 
 
 In a statement of assets and liabilities, applicable to 1880, the new 
 Hall and its contents are reckoned as worth 7,050/., which may represent 
 its cost without representing its realizable value. A small item in the 
 yearly receipts is derived from a sub-share under the Vintners of the 
 Irish Plantation. 
 
 In 1834 the Company returned its income at 549/. i8s. lod., and its 
 expenditure at 548/. In 1870 the former had risen to 804/. 5.?. ()d., and, 
 subject to fluctuations, it reached nearly 1500/. in 1880. In 1892, the 
 corrected figures were : corporate revenue, 1,250/., trust, 39/. ; which of 
 course involves the treatment of the Hall and its site as the private 
 estate of the Company, instead of being scheduled as held under a very 
 peculiar limitation. 
 
 •Cbe Cutlers. 
 
 Overseers of the trade of Cutlery were appointed by the Court of 
 Aldermen in 1344 with the usual power of search, and in the same year 
 a code of bye-laws was approved, as follows : — i. That no Master or 
 Warden of the said trade shall maintain any one whomsoever against the
 
 462 thp: minor companies. 
 
 members ; 2. That none shall make common sales on Sunday, whereas 
 journeymen and apprentices have stolen or wasted their master's pro- 
 perty during their master's attendance at church ; 3. That the term of 
 apprenticeship shall be for seven years, and that all masters must be 
 freemen ; 4. That none but a freeman may keep a cutler's shop ; 5. That 
 any declining to be judged by the Warden or Wardens for the time 
 being, shall have liberty to go before the Mayor, and if convicted of 
 wrong done, shall pay half a mark ; 6. That all goods, to prevent deceit, 
 shall be made by day ; 7. That none shall receive the apprentice or 
 journeyman of another, until his term has expired. 
 
 Further regulations for the trade were made in 1380, and provide, 
 among other matters, for the harnessing of no knives with handles or 
 gaynes of silver, unless of sterling metal, that in the case of wooden 
 handles none should be coloured, except those of digeon [? boxwood], 
 that no journeyman should receive higher wages than he was assessed 
 to be worth, that all cutlery made in the City should be passed by the 
 Overseers of the Craft, before it was carried out of the City, and that no 
 goods should be sold at evecheapings or in hostelries, but only in 
 cutlers' shops. 
 
 At this period the Gild was probably accounted one of the minor 
 bodies in point of importance and membership, as in 50 Edward III. it 
 returned only two members to the Court of Com- 
 mon Council, others sending four and even six. 
 
 From some differences which arose between the 
 Cutlers and the Sheathers in 1408, it is to be con- 
 cluded that the former delivered to the buyer the 
 knife or other similar utensil complete in all its 
 parts, but that, before it was ready for sale, it under- 
 went manipulation at the hands of three (and indeed 
 
 KJL.U AKma. - -« , 
 
 four) different mechanics or operatives : the blade- 
 smith, the cutler, the sheather, and the furbisher, the last-named con- 
 tributing the pommel and decorative parts of the handle. 
 
 The burden of this grievance in 140S was, that certain sheathers dis- 
 credited the Cutlers by supplying unworkmanlike sheaths for knives 
 and other articles ; and a concurrent ground of complaint, common to 
 both crafts, was, that foreigners sold to the Cutlers of London articles 
 bearing forged marks, purporting to come from English bladesmiths. 
 The result was, that the Court of Aldermen sanctioned the appointment 
 of a mixed committee of the Cutlers and Bladesmiths to oversee all 
 goods offered, and to present cases of fraud to the Court. 
 
 We have so far dealt with the few scattered notices, which present 
 themselves in the civic archives or elsewhere ; and even when we reach a
 
 THE CUTLERS. 463 
 
 somewhat later point of time, wc have to lean upon very scanty par- 
 ticulars and suggestions, the Company seeming to have lost its muni- 
 ments in the Fire, and to possess an unusually slender amount of 
 information as to its early history.' 
 
 It is stated that charters were conferred by Henry V. in 1415, by 
 Hcnr>' VI. in 1423, by Henry VIII. in 1509, by Philip and Mary in 
 1553, by Elizabeth in 1558, by James I. in 1607, by James II. in 1685, 
 and by Anne in 1703. But these grants may be reduced in a substan- 
 tial sense to those of Henry V. and James I., since the others were 
 merely confirmations by inspexiinus, except that of 1685, which con- 
 tained the usual restrictive and disabling clau.ses, and was annulled by 
 the statute of William and Mary. The Company is at present governed 
 by the charter of 1607. It does not pos.sess the earlier concessions in 
 any form. 
 
 The inspeximus of 1422 reveals, according to a statement in the 
 parliamentary return of 1882, a state of great distress among the men of 
 the mistery of the Cutlers by reason of losses at sea, and their inability 
 to subsist, except through the benevolence of well-disposed people ; but 
 there is no further clue to the circumstances under which this depression 
 arose. It must have been temporary; for in 145 1 the Hall in Cloak 
 Lane and other premises were acquired by purchase. 
 
 The charter of James I. was granted on the petition of the Company 
 for its better rule and government, and for the prevention of divers 
 abuses practised in cutlery to the loss and damage of His Majesty's 
 subjects. It conferred on the executive the power of making Ordin- 
 ances for the government of the craft, and of search and correction over 
 the trade in London, and within three miles' radius, and the right to call 
 on the civic authorities and all others for assistance in carrying out the 
 law ; it approved of the constitution of the Company as composed of a 
 Master, an Upper Warden, an Under Warden, and twenty Assistants, of 
 whom all were to be elected out of the Commonalty — the Master and 
 Wardens annually on Trinity Eve, the Assistants for life. The custom 
 long existed of choosing five Stewards from the Livery to provide 
 a dinner for the Court ; but the practice is now varied by the payment 
 of 10/. \os. by each of these officers toward that object. The actual 
 course of procedure in electoral matters does not seem strictly to follow 
 the charter, as the Court not only ignores the Commonalty, but assumes 
 the privilege of selecting from the Livery the members of the Committee 
 of Assistance. 
 
 ' The Master, Mr. Cheesewright, informs us that he does not possess any means of 
 assisting our researches.
 
 464 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 There is one curious feature in the choice of a new Master, however, 
 and it is, that the outgoing Master, with the Wardens and Assistants, 
 having fixed upon two or three meet and sufficient persons in their 
 own ranks, thereupon present them to the Livery ; and the united 
 body, either by a majority of votes or of pricks with a pin on paper, 
 determines which of them shall succeed to the vacancy. The custom of 
 pricking for Master is sufficiently special to merit notice, although it is 
 not limited to the Cutlers, and in the case of the Sheriffs it is so familiar 
 and habitual. 
 
 The Company has from time to time made certain bye-laws conform- 
 ably with the charter of 1607, independently of those submitted to the 
 Court of Aldermen in 1344 and 1380, while it was still unincorporated, 
 and a renewal of the search clause found in the charter of 1607 by the 
 Lord Keeper, Lord Treasurer, and Judges in 1703. This latter ordin- 
 ance vested in the Cutlers authority to make a quarterly inspection 
 throughout London and within three miles of all shops and other places 
 of manufacture or sale of all manner of swords, daggers, rapiers, hangers, 
 wood-knives, pen-knives, razors, surgeons' instruments and knives, 
 skeynes, hilts, pommels, battleaxes, halberts, or any other weapons or 
 blades, or other thing belonging to the mistery. This control has long 
 fallen into desuetude, and, an Act of Common Council having rendered 
 it obligatory for every cutler in London and the liberties to be free of the 
 Company, the measure was repealed in 1839, at the instance of the Court, 
 from a feeling that the principle was impracticable and unfair. The 
 London branch of this industry, since the first quarter of the eighteenth 
 century, when Sheffield began to develop symptoms of becoming what 
 it is to-day, has been obliged to content itself with sharing the advant- 
 ages of the steel manufacture, with a constant drift toward a secondary 
 rank ; and the City Livery Company is all but unknown to thousands 
 who have heard of the Master Cutler of Sheffield and the yearly feast 
 over which he presides. The trade has forsaken the Metropolis, which 
 retains only the historical recollection and the antique machinery. 
 
 Under the charter of James I. a licence in mortmain to the extent of 
 100 marks (66/. 13^'. 4d.) a year appears to have been obtained ; and in 
 1839 the amount was raised to 200/. a year, of which nearly half was 
 unexhausted in 1882. The Metropolitan Railway (Additional Powers) 
 Act, 1866, s. 43, enabled the Company to lay out in the purchase of land 
 6,238/. paid by the promoters of the line for property in Houndsditch. 
 
 In 15QI-2, among the Companies having Liveries, the Cutlers are 
 placed twenty-second, with a Livery of 24 ; in 1 509, they occur twenty- 
 third in order; but in 15 15 the Company was officially ranked seven- 
 teenth. In 1699, the Livery was returned at 1 10, in 1724, at 125, in 1882,
 
 TllK CUTLERS. 405 
 
 at 88, and in 1892 at 100. In r8S3 the number of freemen was thought 
 not to exceed tiuelve. 
 
 Referring to the corporate and charitable estates, they have been alike 
 enormously augmented by the common agency of metropolitan de- 
 velopment. Under 1417 tenements in Watling Street came into the 
 hands of the Company by feoffment from John Parkes and Thomas 
 Kinton ; and from that time a succession of bequests made the Cutlers 
 the owners of property in Cloak Lane, College Hill, Aldersgate Street, 
 Houndsditch, Fleet Street, Fleet Lane, and Ludgate Hill, besides 
 acquisitions of inferior importance in the suburbs and a leasehold at 
 Egham, which has lapsed. The premises at Ludgate Hill are in l^clle 
 Sauvage Yard, Boy Court, and in the main thoroughfare, but originally 
 consisted of the Belle Sauvage Inn with all its appurtenances, and the 
 Rose and Crown, which may or may not have been a second hostelry. 
 Messrs. Cassell & Co. are tenants under the Company of the Belle 
 Sauvage Yard tenements, on a lease which had nearly seventy-five 
 years to run in 1882. The Houndsditch property was chiefly acquired 
 under the will of Agnes Carter in 1469-70, and that in Aldersgate 
 Street similarly from John Monk in 1522. In 1566 and 1569 the Bucke 
 Legacy in Fleet Street and the Craythorne estate on Ludgate Hill 
 respectively accrued. 
 
 A portion of the Craythorne estate was allotted to the once very 
 necessary and usual object of relieving the poor prisoners in the 
 London gaols, who depended for their maintenance on external alms- 
 givers ; and, the fund available for such a purpose, when our prisons were 
 remodelled, ceasing to be required, the Company joined the Mercers 
 in a new scheme prepared by the Charity Commission, and pay over to 
 them the amount for distribution. 
 
 In 145 1 Thomas Frill executed to the Company a conveyance of 
 messuages on College Hill and in Cloak Lane, which in priority of 
 time followed the entrance upon those in Watling Street, and which 
 derived a special interest from being selected as the site of the Cutlers' 
 Hall, which stood in that part of Cloak Lane demolished for railway 
 purposes, and in the original purchase was said to consist of two houses, 
 the one converted into a seat of business for the Company, and the other 
 into a residence for the Beadle, who was perhaps then, as he has since 
 remained, an officer of more than ordinary consequence, appearing in 
 the modern accounts as the recipient of a higher salary than the Clerk. 
 In Cunningham's Handbook, 1850, the Hall is described as No. 6 ; and 
 in the existing balance-sheets the remaining buildings are numbered 7 
 to 9 inclusive. 
 
 Maitland speaks in 1739 of the second Hall in Cloak Lane, erected 
 
 C.c. 59
 
 466 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 after the Fire, as " convenient and beautiful." Very few particulars about 
 it or its precursor transpire. The lane in which it was situated was almost 
 undoubtedly so called from its immediate contiguity to Walbrook, and 
 once adjoined Turnwheel Lane, now completely absorbed by Cannon 
 Street Station, but indebted for its appellation to a similar cause. The 
 present Hall in Warwick Lane, which, judging from the heavy outlay 
 on tavern bills, from 1871 to 1880, occupied, in the arrangements for 
 its purchase from Messrs. Tyler and in its construction, a remarkable 
 length of time, is a handsome edifice ; but is of course destitute of 
 historical interest and contains no archjeological objects. 
 
 The total income, which in 1871 was under 2,444/., had risen in 1880 
 to 5.935'^- I2i-. 2d. with an expectation during the ensuing ten years of 
 a further increase of about 600/. a year.' In the same period the Com- 
 pany's sub-share of the Irish estate with the Salters shewed a tendency 
 to shrinkage, having been 337/. \os. in 1880 against 472/. lOs. in 1871 
 and following years. But this loss is relatively immaterial, regarding 
 the expansive capabilities of the London property. 
 
 Among the miscellaneous disbursements in the published accounts 
 occurs a yearly item of 3/. which is termed " Pepys's gift," arising 
 from a bequest, not of the Diarist, but of a gentleman of that name, a 
 member of the Company in 1840. In 1878 the Company lost 1133/. 
 9J-. 2d. through the defalcations of the Clerk. 
 
 The Cutlers elected some time since, when the question of technical 
 education was mooted, to refrain from entering into the movement ; but 
 they promoted an Exhibition of Cutlery- in 1879 at a cost of upward of 
 500/., followed by a series of Technical Lectures, delivered by eminent 
 professional experts at the Hall to large and attentive audiences ; and 
 they appear, moreover, to expend a considerable amount annually in 
 donations. The Exhibition was successful almost beyond the hopes of 
 its patrons ; and an interesting assortment of specimens of ancient work 
 was lent by the owners. 
 
 It was about the same time, that the Company decided on appropriat- 
 
 ' According to Whitaker, however, the corrected figures for 1892 were 5400/. in- 
 clusive. 
 
 ^ The three classes of goods admitted, were General Cutlery, Surgical Cutlery, .Sword 
 Cutlery ; and the points to which exhibitors were recommended td pay special atten- 
 tion were : general e.xcellence of material, temper and workmanship, novelty of style, 
 practical and general utility. There were ninety-four competitors in the three classes, 
 of whom forty-eight were in the first. The jurors were the most distinguished men of 
 the day in the various departments ; one gold and twelve silver medals, and twenty- 
 eight certificates were awarded, and it was estimated that about 15,000 persons visited 
 the show. The Company had reason at the time to believe that the project operated 
 benefici.dly both on the manufacturers and their work-people.
 
 THE DISTILLERS. 
 
 467 
 
 \u<^ 100/. a year to the cncouragment of apprentices in the cutlery trade, 
 witli a view to secure a succession and school of capable artisans ; and 
 under this scheme bounties were payable to the masters during the 
 term of three years and on its expiration to the apprentice, both in the 
 shape of money and the freedom of the Company, when the report was 
 favourable. It was a praiseworthy effort, but out of touch with the 
 new spirit of commerce and the altered relationships between servants 
 and employers. 
 
 XTbc IDistillcrs.' 
 
 The usual accounts of this Company represent its origin as unknown; 
 but there seems little doubt, from the language of the official code of 
 rules and directions drawn up in 1639, that until the charter of 1638 was 
 granted, 14 Charles I., August 9, the followers of the mistery were in- 
 dependent of control, and carried on their operations according to their 
 individual discretion ; nor did the reform of 1638. affect any but the 
 members of the calling in and near the metropolis. 
 
 The person, who seems to have been primarily instrumental in pro- 
 moting the movement for the incorporation of the Distillers, was Sir 
 Theodore de Mayerne, physician to the King, and a gentleman who 
 took a great interest in all matters relating to cookery, preserving, and 
 
 This Company made no return in 1S80.
 
 468 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 similar accomplishments. He left behind him a very curious MS. of 
 culinary receipts, which was published in 1658. In the book, hereinafter 
 to be described, he is explicitly called the Founder of this Company. 
 
 We have said that the charter was obtained in 1638 ; and in the follow- 
 ing year, Mayerne, in conjunction with Dr. Thomas Cademan, medical 
 adviser to the Queen, prepared a series of regulations and bye-laws for 
 the management of the new scheme, with some introductory elucida- 
 tions of a rather meagre character, relating to the circumstances which 
 had necessitated and encouraged the step. 
 
 This volume appeared in 1639, and is entitled : — 
 
 "The Distiller of London : Compiled and set forth by the Special Licence and 
 Command of the King's Most E.xcellent Majesty : For the sole use of the Company 
 of Distillers of London. And by them to be duly observed and practised." 
 
 The preceding leaf is occupied by the arms, which we have engraved 
 above, and a description of them, which is as follows : — 
 Assure : a Fesse waivie. Argent ; between a Sun drawing up a Cloud. 
 
 In the later works of reference the arms are given differently from 
 this, and also more fully : — 
 
 Azure : a fesse wavy argent; in chief, the sun in splendour, encircled with a cloud, 
 distilling drops of rain, all proper ; in base, a distillatory double-armed or, on a fire 
 proper, with two worms and bolt-receivers of the second. Crest : on a wreath, a garb 
 of barley, environed with a vine fructed, both proper. 
 
 Supporters : The dexter, the figure of a man representing a Russian, habited in the 
 dress of the country, all proper ; the sinister, an Indian, vested round the waist with 
 feathers of various colours, wreathed about the temples with feathers, as the last ; in 
 his hand a bow, at his back a quiver of arrows, all proper. Motto : " Drop as Raine 
 Distill as Dewe." — Deut. .\xxii. 2. 
 
 An address from Dr. Cadeinan and Sir T. Mayerne iminediately 
 succeeds the title, and in it we meet with some slender outline of facts 
 
 connected with the infancy of the institu- 
 tion and the unsatisfactory state of affairs 
 prior to that event. They tell us that it 
 was a royal mandate, expressly set forth in 
 the Letters Patent, that the rules should be 
 settled and printed. In fact, the whole thing 
 has a Court flavour ; and doubtless the in- 
 terest taken b)' persons of qualit)- of both 
 sexes in these matters tended to accelerate 
 the establishment of the business on a more 
 healthy basis than, if we may credit Cademan 
 and Mayerne, it had till that time occupied. 
 
 V second prefatory effort is subscribed by the entire Company, as it 
 existed in 1639, namely : —
 
 T1U-: insTiLLKKS. 469 
 
 Assistants. 
 
 Thomas Cadenian, Afasler. 
 
 Theodorus dc Maycrne, Foiiiuler. 
 
 Edward Hooker, \ 
 
 Foulks Wormcleigliton, J Wardens. 
 
 Ralph Triplett, ) 
 
 William Brounckcr, 'I'liomas Dallock, 
 Edward Franckton, Henry (ireene, 
 
 Henry Pinson, Thomas Coe, 
 
 Roger Pahiier, Francis Heath, 
 
 John Brewer, WiUiam Basse, 
 
 Barnard Fountayne, Jolin Woods, 
 George Snelhng, WiMiam Wilks, 
 
 John Bayley, Henry Hoyce, 
 
 Daniel Cage, Hugh Bowyer, 
 
 John Carnytham, 1 
 
 In this original list we do not see any mention of a Clerk ; but in the 
 third edition of the Rides and Orders, etc., 1668, the name of John Greene, 
 " one of the Attorneys of his Majesties Court of King's Bench," is re- 
 presented as holding the appointment ; which is so far interesting, that 
 it shews that at that comparatively early date the civic Gilds appreci- 
 ated the need of securing the advice of a professional lawyer in the 
 conduct of their affairs. 
 
 The process necessary for completing the enfranchisement of the Dis- 
 tillers, — the enrolment of their charter in the Chamber of London, — was 
 delayed, however, to an unexampled extent, the Court of Aldermen 
 declining, in the face of repeated commands from the King and his 
 officers, to sanction the act. The latest communication from Charles I. 
 is dated October 30, 1639 ; but his directions and threats were un- 
 heeded, and the Company was not placed upon the Roll till March 17, 
 1658. 
 
 We have seen that by the original constitution the government con- 
 sisted of a Master, Founder, three Wardens, and nineteen Assistants, and 
 that a Clerk was subsequently added. The place of Founder probably 
 did not survive Mayerne himself 
 
 There appears to be no mention of the surrender of the Distillers' 
 charter at the Restoration ; but they ceded it subsequently and received 
 a new one. May 12, 1687 ; this was confirmed, together with the Rules 
 and Directions, in 1690. The Court of Aldermen gave them a Livery, 
 October 21, 1672. 
 
 By an Act of Common Council, July 29, 1774, all distillers within the 
 civic jurisdiction were compelled to be free of the Company ; but this 
 regulation has long grown out of use. 
 
 In 1699, the Livery was returned at 108; in 1724, at 127 ; in 1739, at 
 122 ; and in 1892, at 28. 
 
 The fees on taking up the freedom are : by patrimony or servitude,
 
 470 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 3/. lis. 6d. ; by purchase, 7/. I5i-. 6d. Upon admission to the Livery, a 
 sum of 14/. i8s. 2d. is payable; formerly the amount was 13/. ds. 8^. 
 The Company holds no trust or charitable property ; but it owns the 
 freehold of the site originally purchased for the erection of a Hall, which 
 was never erected, besides a funded estate arising from the accumulation 
 of surplus income, and certain articles of silver plate presented from 
 time to time by members. 
 
 To return for a moment to the book in our hands. The separate 
 editions, specially printed for the Gild in 1639 and 1668, give the 
 " Characters expressing the quantities, qualities, and kinds of materials 
 and ingredients used in this work " in cipher, which in both the copies 
 before us is alike explained in coeval MS. But in 1664, Dr. French, 
 in annexing the Distiller of London to the third impression of his Ai-t of 
 Distillation, 1664, took credit for supplying the terms at length, instead 
 of inserting them " in mysterious Characters and Figures." 
 
 At p. 15 (edit, of 1668) we find the following precept: — 
 
 " That no Afterworts or Wash (made by Brewers, &c.) called Blew John, nor musty 
 unsavory or unwholesome Tilts or Dregs of Beer or Ale ; nor unwholesome or adul- 
 terated wines, or Lees of wines, nor unwholesome sugar-waters ; musty unsavory or 
 unwholesome returned Beer or Ale ; nor rotten corrupt or unsavory fruits, druggs, 
 spices, herbs, seeds; nor any other ill-conditioned materials of what kind soever, shall 
 henceforth be distilled, extracted, or draun into Small spirits, or Low wines, or be any 
 other ways used, directly or indirectly, by any the Members of this Company, or their 
 successors at any time hereafter for ever." 
 
 The same subject is taken up again further on, in a passage which 
 refers to the state of trade in 1668. At p. 51 we read : — 
 
 "Whereas upon due examination it hath plainly appeared ; That many insufferable 
 inconveniences have of late fallen upon this Company and their Trade, in general ; by 
 reason of the disorderly and abusive expence and imployment of Brewers After-worts 
 (called Wash) Insomuch that thereby, not only those of this Company that have had 
 no hand therein, but even the Distillers themselves that have been the Delinquents, 
 have intollerably suffered both in their Reputation, and great decay of their Trades, 
 by these their alone inconsiderate practices. For reformation of the present disorders 
 and abuses, and future prevention of the like. These ensuing admonitions and direc- 
 tions, are strictly to be observed and practised. Viz : — 
 
 "That no Member or Members of this Company, or their Successors, nor any of them 
 at any time hereafter for ever, by any way or means whatsoever, (directly or indirectly) 
 shall or may, use, dispose, convert or imploy, any After-worts (or Wash, made by 
 Brewers or others) into Vinegar, Beer-egar, or Ale-egar, or either of them : or to or 
 for any other use or imployment whatsoever, except only to distill the same into 
 Low wines or Spirits, to be re-distilled into proof spirit, for the uses aforesaid, accord- 
 ing to the true interest and meaning of these directions. As they and every one of 
 them respect their Oaths by them taken (when they were made free, and received 
 into this Incorporation). And will undergo the penalties provided, or to be pro- 
 vided, by the Ordinances of this Company, or otherwise, to be imposed or inflicted on 
 the Contemners Neglectors or Opposers hereof."
 
 THE DISTILLERS. 47 1 
 
 We have transcribed the foregoing passage as a sample of the charac- 
 ter and tone of these rcgulatinns for observance by freemen of the 
 Company. 
 
 The book ends with " A Catalogue of the Materials and Ingredients 
 used in the precedent Rules," and " The Oath of every Free-man." 
 
 The latter runs thus : — ■ 
 
 "The Oath ok Every Free-.man. 
 
 " You shall swear, That you will be good and true to our Sovereign Lord the King's 
 Majesty that now is, and to his Heirs, and Successors, Kings and Queens of this 
 Realme : and in all matters and things lawful and reasonable relating to the said 
 Company, shall be obedient to the Master, Wardens, Assistants, and Governors of 
 this Company for the time being, and their Successors, and shall readily appear upon 
 all Summons by their Beadle or other officer (except you have sufficient cause to be 
 absent), or else you will forthwith pay all such Penalties and Fines, as you shall for- 
 feit according to the Ordinances of this Company for breaking the same : All the 
 lawful Acts, Ordinances and Orders made, or to be made for the weale, rule and 
 good government of the said Company, you shall to your power observe and keep ; 
 . . . and all lawful Coimcels and Consultations, words, matters, and things which 
 you shall at any time hear or know, spoken or done at any Court or other Assembly 
 of the said Company, that doth concern the government of the Company, Reformation 
 of Abuses, or Regulation of Refractory or Disorderly Persons, you shall not divulge, 
 declare or make known to any Person or Persons whatsoever, whereby the good 
 government of the said Company, Redress of Abuses therein, or Regulation of their 
 Disorderly Members may be hindered, prejudiced or prevented. 
 
 "All this you shall faithfully and truly do and performe to the utmost of your power. 
 So help you God, and the Holy contents of this Book. 
 
 "God save the King." 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The vertuose boke of the distyllaeyore of all maner of waters. By Jerome of Bruns- 
 wick. Foho, (1525), 1527, 1529. 
 
 The Treasure of Evonymvs, conteynynge the wonderfuU hid secretes of nature, 
 touching the most apte formes to prepare and destyl nedicines, ... By 
 Conrad (.7esner. Translated by Peter Morwyng. 4to, 1559, 1565. 
 
 The Distiller of London. Compiled and set forth by the speciall License and Com- 
 mand of the King's most Excellent Majesty : For the sole use of the Company of 
 Distillers of London. And by them to be duly observed and practized. Folio, 
 1639, 1668, and with the later editions of French's ^>i of Distillation. 
 The List of ciphers in both the foHo copies is explained in coeval MS. 
 
 The Art of Distillation. By John French, M.D. 4to, 1651, 1653, 1664, 1667. 
 
 To the 3rd and 4th editions is annexed the Dis/jlh-r of London^ with the ciphers translated into 
 ordinary characters. 
 
 A Description of the Philosophical Furnace, or A new .^rt of Distilling, divided into 
 five parts. Whereunto is added a Description of the Tincture of Gold, Or the 
 true Avrum Potabile ; Also, The First part of the Mineral Work. Set forth and 
 published for the sakes of them that are studious of the Truth. By John Rudolph 
 (Jiauber. Set forth in English, By J. F., M.D. .^to, 1651. With diagrams. 
 Dedicated to his Honoured Friend John Jenison in the Bishopric of Durham, 
 Esquire, by J. F.
 
 472 
 
 THE MINOR COMrANIES. 
 
 Introitus Apertus ad Artem Distillationis. Or, the ^^'hole Art of Distillation 
 Practically Stated. By W. Y-Worth. i2mo, 1692. 
 
 Chymicus Rationalis: Or, The Fundamental Grounds of the ChymicalArt Rationally 
 Stated and Demonstrated, By Various Examples in Distillation, Rectification, 
 and Exaltation of Vinor Spirits . . . . By W. Y-\Vorth. i2mo, 1692. 
 
 The Dyers, although they are here placed in the order of the alpha- 
 bet, are held to rank as the first of the Minor Companies. At one time, 
 from their lengthened connection with the Shearmen and Fullers on a 
 footing of equality, they strenuously contested precedence with the 
 Clothworkers, when the latter represented by fusion the two other Gilds 
 above named. But in 7 Henry VIII., by the award of the Lord Mayor, 
 the Dyers were adjudged to follow the Clothworkers, unless the chief 
 magistrate was of this Company, when for the time being they, agree- 
 ably to ancient usage, would take precedence of all, if their member 
 chose to dispense with the prescriptive usage of translating himself, on 
 election, to one of the twelve leading Associations. 
 
 We have shown how this etiquette practically amounted to an un- 
 written law, and was not infringed till Sir R9bert Willimott courageously 
 declined to leave the Coopers in 1743. 
 
 The knowledge of the art of producing colour for all kinds of purposes 
 at an extremely remote date, is amply demon- 
 strated by the excellence which the illuminator 
 and glass-painter attained in the Middle Ages ; 
 and at a yet earlier date the secret of dyeing 
 wools and woollen goods was familiar to those 
 who pursued that craft, as it was little more than 
 an evolution from the British custom of staining 
 the person with woad or some other pigment,' 
 and from the prevailing partiality for bright and 
 
 ' During the medisval period the juices of herbs were employed to stain the features 
 and body for purposes of disguise. 
 
 OLD ARMS.
 
 THE DYERS. 473. 
 
 showy colours, the dyer must have found the occupation sufficiently 
 remunerati\-e. The traditional story of the Orkney pirate, who in the 
 eleventh centurj- seized some English vessels bound for Dublin with 
 English cloth, points to the demand in the Irish capital for gaudy and 
 picturesque hues, as part of the booty consisted of scarlet goods, with 
 which Sweyn decorated his ship, and thence christened the expedition 
 his Scarlet Voyage. 
 
 We incidentally point out elsewhere, that in Magna Charta, one of 
 the clauses stipulates that there should be only one breadth of dyed 
 cloth throughout England, and that this restriction was abrogated by 
 Edward III. 
 
 But apart from the treatment of woollen stuffs, the dyer soon acquired 
 an additional channel for his industr}- in the dyeing of leather ; and in 
 1372 an arrangement between the Leatherscllers, Pursers of the Bridge, 
 and Dyers, defined their respective duties and obligations. The most 
 curious feature in this transaction is, that with the last-named Craft,, 
 of whom three subscribe the Articles, their wives are associated as 
 parties. 
 
 The account, which we furnish in its place, of the changes at successive 
 periods in the livery of the Drapers, shews what unlimited means the 
 dyeing trade had acquired by the early part of the fifteenth century, of 
 producing almost every variety and shade of colour, both the " sad " for 
 every-day purposes, and the bright and gay for holidays and feasts. 
 
 In the interesting series of scenes in rich stained glass in one of the 
 corridors at Merchant Taylors' Hall, depicting the celebrated feud be- 
 tween the Taylors and the Skinners, we are struck by the lavish and 
 picturesque diversity of costume of the figures, both male and female,, 
 which are represented as taking part in the affair at its successive stages, 
 from the first hustle in the streets to the final pacification at the dinner- 
 table, and which merely reproduce the coeval apparel of those concerned. 
 
 " Lincoln green " is renowned in the romance of Robin Hood and 
 elsewhere ; but that outlaw is represented as possessing a regular store 
 of cloth, both of that colour and of scarlet, in a poem of 1 508. Many 
 ■of our elder writers celebrate Coventry blue, or the blue thread which was 
 formerly a staple manufacture there. It was largely used for embroi- 
 dering on white. 
 
 The profuse variety of colours obtainable for costume and decoration 
 is seen from entries in household books of the thirteenth and following 
 centuries. Stow relates that within his memory the Earl of Oxford used 
 to ride into London as far as his mansion in St. Swithin's Lane, attended 
 by eighty gentlemen clad in Reading tawny with gold chains about their 
 necks. 
 
 C.c. 60
 
 474 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The purple, which was formerly accounted the peculiar distinction of 
 ecclesiastical dignitaries, was obtained from remote times from a small 
 shell-fish (Bmciniiiin htpullus) found then, as now, on the Cornish 
 coast. 
 
 The dyeing of silks attracted a good deal of attention in the earlier 
 half of the reign of James I. [1607-16], when various abuses in connec- 
 tion with the business were exposed, and the Projectors desired to force 
 upon the City the appointment of a Viewer of all dyed silks. The 
 Dyers themselves more than once petitioned Parliament against the 
 importation of logwood or blockwood, which, it was alleged, led to a 
 large share of the deception in the process. 
 
 The frauds committed in dyeing of silks seem to have been regarded 
 very seriously, and to have been attended by disastrous consequences 
 to the offenders. But it was not the dyer who suffered, in some cases 
 which are reported as having come before the Star Chamber ; for al- 
 though as early as 15 16 the Wardens of the Gild were dismissed on this 
 ground in consequence of a complaint lodged with the Chamber by the 
 Lord Mayor, at a later date (1629-32) we find silkmen heavily amerced 
 on the same account. In one instance, the culprit compounded by a 
 payment of 2000/. ; and in another the informers were awarded 1500/. 
 The malpractices in this direction seem therefore to have been both on 
 the side of the dyer and his employers ; and the disgraced Wardens 
 -owed their punishment to their negligence in not detecting breaches of 
 the law and of the Ordinances of the Gild. In 1635, proceedings were 
 again taken against the silkmen for corrupt dyeing ; and here it was the 
 ■"Governor and Assistants" of the Company who were summoned before 
 the Chamber as the defendants. The presumption must be, that the 
 troubles of the silkmen arose out of their irregular use of dyes and the 
 criminal information filed by the Wardens in consequence. 
 
 The Dyers come under notice in 1362, as requiring the offices of the 
 civic authorities to restrain malpractices. The rules which were then 
 made explain the nature of the complaints which had been preferred 
 against certain members of the mistery. They enact that no dyer 
 who dyes wools with woad shall dye any manner of cloth, hats, caps, 
 linen thread, or silk, under penalties ; and that owners of wools may 
 know, if they choose, whether their property has been changed, they 
 may take their wools without payment, before the wools are dry ; and 
 the owners on their part shall, when the wools are dry, and are of the 
 right colour, pay for the same without fail, or the dyers may make their 
 plaint before the Mayor, according to the Statute of Smithfield. 
 
 The Dyers have suffered the double misfortune of having had two 
 conflagrations (1666 and 1681), by which their premises were destroyed
 
 THE DYERS. 475 
 
 or seriously damaged, and they are exceptionally deficient in material 
 for elucidating their early history. What may, perhaps, be termed their 
 political annals are circumscribed within very narrow limits, as wc 
 merely hear of a charter granted by Henry VI. in 1471, and of bye-laws 
 approved November 15, 30 Elizabeth (1587), before James I., on the 
 30th of June (1607), conferred the charter by which the Company is 
 at present constitutionally governed. This instrument, in which it was 
 described and incorporated as the Wardens and Commonalty of the 
 Mistery of Dyers of the City of London, seems, however, to have been 
 mainly an iiispexinms, and there were probably others in the interme- 
 diate period. James II. renewed the grant, 19 March, 1686-7, with the 
 customary restrictions ; and Anne finally ratified the privileges on the 
 original basis, and confirmed the Company's bye- laws, April 26-October 
 
 3". 1705- 
 
 The Dyers appear, however, to rely immediately, in the management 
 of their affairs, on the Standing Orders, sixty-eight in number, which 
 are set out at large in the parliamentary return of 18S0-2, and which 
 embrace every department of the Executive. This code of rules, 
 founded on the earlier bye-laws, is of no further public interest than 
 the particulars which it supplies of the duties of the Bargemaster, which, 
 after the discontinuance of water-pageants, have been confined to the 
 supervision of the swans on the Thames, on behalf of themselves, the 
 Vintners' Company, and the Crown. 
 
 These regulations for the swan-herd and his four assistants are the 
 more important, that they may be presumed to disclose to us points of 
 established practice, while many old fashions prevailed. We shall there- 
 fore enumerate the principal heads : — -i. The appointment of a Barge- 
 master by the Court from time to time ; 2. His attendance at the Hall, 
 on all Court days, and at dinners, if so ordered, when he should stand 
 behind the Renter Warden's chair, in both cases in his livery ; 3. The 
 directions as to surveying the swans and their nests early in May of 
 each year, the inspection of marks, and the pinioning of cygnets ; 4. The 
 service of notice to the Court, to the Crown officer, and to the Vintners,, 
 so often as swans should be removed to temporary shelters during frost, 
 alike at the time of removal and restoration ; 5. The allowance of a 
 livery and hat once in seven years; 6. The payment of 15/. a year as 
 salary, and lis. a. day during the swan-upping, besides all expenses, which 
 he was bound to enter in a book, and deliver in due course to the Clerk. 
 
 The relation of the present Company to the \''intners, who, as we 
 have already noticed, are associated with them in the business, and still 
 christen one of their functionaries Swan-warden, was apparently due to- 
 the common proximity of the two Halls to the river side and to each
 
 476 THE MINOR COMTANIES. 
 
 Other. But the members of other Companies attended as a matter of 
 compHment ; and in 1598 there is an entry in the Founders' books of 
 ^s. 4.1/. for baking pies, when the Company, or some of them, went swan- 
 upping.' 
 
 The administrative machinery of this Gild consists of a Prime War- 
 den, a Renter Warden, and the Assistants, in whom is vested the whole 
 authority, except that the Commonalty, in whose favour the charter was 
 given and exists, has a voice in the choice of the Beadle at the annual 
 genera! meeting. In 1501-2, the Livery numbered 19 ; in 1699, 200 ; in 
 1724, 202 ; in i88o, the Court inclusive, about 83; and in 1892, 66. The 
 Company has no exact knowledge of the number of freemen, but 98 
 were admitted between 1851 and 18S0. Under the municipal order of 
 1515, the Dyers were made the thirteenth Company. 
 
 The property chiefly consists of warehouses and tenements in Upper 
 Thames Street, on Dowgate Hill, in Dyers' Buildings, Holborn, and at 
 Leytonstone, in addition to the interest of the purchase-money (39,000/.) 
 paid by the Salters, for the Dyers' sub-share of the Ulster Plantation.* 
 An information was filed against the Company in 1 831, by a member of 
 the Livery, on the ground of improper user of the Thames Street and 
 Holborn estates, which, it was alleged by the plaintiff, had been left 
 exclusively to eleemosynary objects. The defendants succeeded in 
 clearing themselves from fraud ; but a new scheme was settled in 1833, 
 by which the application of funds from these two sources to charity was 
 still further extended ; and as lately as 1880, the Charity Commission 
 placed the greater part of the Dyers' trust possessions on a new footing. 
 The result justified the challenge and inquiry of 1 831, more especially 
 as the Court had withheld with characteristic reticence the true state of 
 affairs, of which it had no reason to be ashamed, as it was subsequently 
 shown that, when the proceedings in equity were first taken, instead of 
 23/. 19J. 4^/. a year, the strict aggregate charge on the trusts concerned, 
 the defendants were paying about 300/. a year on that account. The 
 decree of 1833 fixed the amount at one-half of the Holborn, and one- 
 fourth of the Thames Street income, or altogether about 400/. a year. 
 
 The original Hall in Upper Thames Street, near Ebgate or Old Swan 
 
 ' At Pattick and Simpson's sale-room in 1877 (F'ebruary 6, Nos. 290 c/ segg.) were 
 offered some very curious MSS., containing several hundred swan-marks, principally 
 referring to the river Cam. But one had belonged to the monastery of Crowland, and 
 was described as the Abbot of Crowland's Mark, called The SLOurge. It was trans- 
 ferred by Sir Walter Mildmay, 2-3 Philip and Mar)', to Michael Beale, of Woodhal- 
 ton, Co. Huntingdon, for 10/., and in 1650 it passed from this family to Talbot Pepys 
 of Impington. 
 
 - In 1892, according to Whitaker, the total income is 7,000/., of which a seventh is 
 held in trust.
 
 THE DVERS. 477 
 
 Lane, and not far from London Bridge, disappeared in the Fire of 1666. 
 The site is at present occupied by Dyers' Hall Wharf and Warehouse ; 
 but the precise position of the Hall itself is not ascertainable, nor are we 
 aware whether the building was restored on the same spot, and whether 
 a second conflagration in 1681 occurred there. 
 
 In 3 Henry VHI. the Wardens of the Dyers laid claim in a petition 
 to the Court of Aldermen to the severalty of Brctaske Lane in Dowgate 
 Ward ; but, after due search made in the records, it was declared and 
 adjudged to be a common thoroughfare. Of this lane Stow in his general 
 narrative says nothing. It was probably one contiguous to the original 
 Hall or premises, and was perhaps desired for building purposes. The 
 historian describes a house in Cosin's Lane, once known as Lambard's 
 Messuage, subsequently a dye-house ; and there may have been a settle- 
 ment round the seat of business of such establishments, the supply of 
 water being near at hand. 
 
 But it is to be suspected that the Dyers, notwithstanding, closed up 
 the lane ; for this is evidently the locality and case to which Stow 
 elsewhere refers, mentioning that in 4 Elizabeth (i 561-2) the City 
 Chamberlain was authorized by the Common Council to take down a 
 certain door, and reopen a thoroughfare, in the same Ward. 
 
 The Dyers have almost evidently had at successive periods at least 
 four Halls. That in Thames Street, with the double flight of steps 
 leading to an entrance on the first floor, was not the first place of meet- 
 ing, nor even perhaps the second ; and the existing palatial seat is abso- 
 lutely modern. 
 
 The fortunes and transactions of the Company are involved in an 
 obscurity somewhat unnecessarily and tiresomely aggravated by the 
 reserved attitude of the existing authorities. Of the present place of 
 meeting on Dowgate Hill it can only be said, that it is a handsome 
 structure, and that it was formerly part of the Company's property in 
 what was once known as Little Elbow Lane. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES.' 
 
 The Act 23 George III., cap. 15. For rendering more effectual the provisions con- 
 tained in an Act of the 13th year of King George the First for preventing fraud 
 and abuse, in the dyeing trade. 
 
 The Decree in Chancery, Attorney-General v. the Dyers' Company, Aug. 5, 1833. 
 
 Vesting Order and Scheme of the Charity Commissioners as to the Company's 
 Charities, December 10, 1880. 
 
 ' C'ompare Notices annexed to the account of the Vintners.
 
 478 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 XTbe jfanmafters. 
 
 
 The antiquity and Oriental origin of the fan, with the infinite diversity 
 of material and design employed, both in those which were imported 
 from the East Indies and those manufactured in France and Italy, have 
 been rendered even more familiar in quite recent times than before by 
 the attractive volume from the hand of M. Uzanne. In the East, and 
 even in the South of Europe, such an invention was a natural and 
 necessary auxiliary in allaying the heat of a tropical or even a sultry 
 climate ; but in a more n )rtherly region like England it was apt to ful- 
 fil an artificial and secondary function ; and the ornamental and elegant 
 character which it soon assumed at once opened a new channel to the 
 ingenuity of the artist and converted the fan into an object of fashion 
 and a vehicle for intrigue. The celebrated Colonel Lovelace, in his 
 Lucasta, 1649, has some verses " On Lucasta's Fan with a Looking-glass 
 in it ; " it was of ostrich feathers, set with precious stones, we are told, 
 unless this was poetical licence. But it is not necessary to suppose so, 
 as from the notices which have been collected from our early writers on 
 the subject it is to be concluded that no expense was grudged to em- 
 bellish this appendage to a lady's dress. The handle seems to have 
 often been of silver or gold, or of inlaid ivory, and with the dimensions 
 of the object, which more closely resembled a hand-screen than the fan 
 at present in use, rendered it both weighty and cumbrous. The owner 
 not unfrequently delegated to a servant the task of carrying it abroad. 
 
 The probability is that in the time of Elizabeth, when such accessories 
 seem to have been first introduced, either from France or Italy, their use 
 was confined to a limited circle ; but passages in old plays and satires 
 establish that under the Stuarts they became much more plentiful and
 
 THE FANMAKERS. 
 
 479 
 
 general, if they were not occasionally employed b}- the other sex ; and 
 when the VVatteau school of painting lent itself to the embellishment of 
 the manufacture, and our social manners were more generally influenced 
 by those of the ]'"rench Court, fans acquired a prominence and popu- 
 larit\- which made their production a lucrative branch of commerce, 
 and exposed their fair purchasers to the attacks of the moralist and 
 lampooner. 
 
 The fans imported from the Continent and from India were alike 
 subject to dutj', and were consequently expensive commodities when 
 they reached the hands of the retail buyer. 
 This did not sensibly hinder their influx into 
 our ports, where they arrived at regular in- 
 tervals in the second half of the seventeenth 
 century, in large consignments to the mer- 
 cers, drapers, and haberdashers of the metro- 
 polis and other places along the coast. In 
 London itself the Table of Rates in force in 
 1680 entitled the riverside porters to charge 
 I2(/. for each load, which was the scale for 
 foreign goods. e.^rly .arms. 
 
 It was within the period when the employment of fans continued to 
 grow more universal, and the demands of the Excise kept the price of 
 the article necessarily high, that the project was conceived of instituting, 
 on the basis of existing Corporations, a Gild or Company of Fanmakers. 
 Very probably some of those concerned in the movement were foreigners 
 settled in London, and already engaged in the trade ; but the justifica- 
 tion for the establishment of an organized Fraternity and the prayer for 
 a charter bespeak a more or less flourishing home industry, rendering 
 common action practicable and advantageous. 
 
 It was while a lady of the Stuart family — the last of her name — -was 
 on the throne, that the grant was sought and obtained. The charter, 
 which is dated April 19, 1709, and which is the latest in order of time 
 of all such grants, is engrossed on parchment, and contains in the upper 
 left-hand corner, as a sort of initial ornament, a small full-length portrait 
 of her Majesty.' 
 
 The youngest of all the Companies was designated The Master, War- 
 dens, and Assistants of the Company of Fanmakers, and was appointed 
 to consist of a Master, two Wardens, and seventeen Assistants. In 1882 
 the Freemen were estimated at 200, and the Livery at i 20. The latter 
 is limited to 200; but it is to be remarked that in 1724, when the charter 
 
 ' The original instrument was most obligingly shown to us by Colonel Sewell, Clerk 
 to the Company.
 
 480 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 had been fifteen years in existence, a return of the Livery Companies 
 omits mention of this one. The actual income is nominal, and is largely 
 dependent on private contributions — a source which has been always 
 employed and recognised, under great emergencies, even by the Great 
 Companies. 
 
 But the Fanmakers started at a juncture when there was not sufficient 
 opportunity, prior to the repeal of the duty on foreign imports, to gain 
 a footing and accumulate a common purse ; and the exemption of fans 
 from customs was virtually fatal to the welfare of the Gild as a substan- 
 tial and self-supporting body. The Exhibition, which it promoted in 
 1878, reflected great credit on the spirit and taste of those concerned, 
 and cost the Company, corporately and personally, no less than 750/. 
 
 It associates itself, however, with an article of female luxury, of which 
 the fascination does not appear to decline, and the novelty is inex- 
 haustible ; and there is no reason why the precedent lately set by the 
 admission of Lady Charlotte Schreiber should not be followed, even to 
 the extent of making the Fanmakers' a true Association of Brethren and 
 Sisteren, who might severally and mutually conduce to its success and 
 prosperous continuance. 
 
 In Leadenhall Street Peter Motteux, translator of Don Quixote, kept 
 an emporium for East India goods, at the sign of the Two Fans; and it 
 was continued after his death, in 1722, by his widow. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 
 The Faumakers' Grievances by the Importation of Fanns from the East Indies. A 
 broadside. 
 
 trbe ifarriers. 
 
 The Farriers, or, as Stow calls them, Ferrers, are mentioned among 
 the Fellowships which had the right of naming the Keeper of the King's 
 Great Beam at the Steelyard in the thirteenth century. They are also 
 described as Ferriers and Ferrones ; and somewhat later their French 
 designation, Man'chatix, is translated into Marshals.
 
 THE FARRIERS, 48 I 
 
 In the first year of Edward I. (1272) Walter Ic Bruii, farrier in the 
 Strand, London, received a grant of the King in capitc of a piece of 
 ground in St. Clement's Parish for the erection of a forge, on condition 
 that he paid at the Stone Cross annually, in respect thereof, six horse- 
 shoes with the nails appurtenant. The horse-shoes were rendered by 
 Walter himself in the first and second years of Edward I. ; and the pay- 
 ment was continued in the fifteenth of Edward 11. The property after- 
 ward passed to the Corporation. But we see that the craft in its incep- 
 tion started with the functions subsequently discharged by the black- 
 smith, and doubtless for a long time combined them with tho.se of the 
 horse-leech. 
 
 By the civic regulations of 1350, fi.xing the prices of goods and the 
 wages of operatives, a farrier was not allowed to charge more than he 
 had done before the Pestilence of 1348; that is, 
 for a horse-shoe of six nails, \\d., and for one of 
 eight, 2d., and for taking off a shoe of six or eight 
 nails. Id. ; but for the shoe of a courser he might 
 ask 2A</., and for a charger, id., and for taking 
 either of them off, \d. 
 
 The Farriers owed their Ordinances to a com- 
 plaint made in 1356, that certain unskilled ferrons 
 
 11. r • , ^- ,11 OLD ARMS. 
 
 had set up forges m the City, and had occa- 
 sioned the loss of many horses. Hereupon the Mayor summoned ail the 
 farriers, and took steps to prevent a continuance of this abuse. The 
 good folks of the trade were required to elect two Masters to supervise 
 ail forges, and the shoes and nails that were employed therein ; to pro- 
 vide for cases where surgical treatment was needed, and to preserve the 
 scale of charges which was in force before the Pestilence. 
 
 At this epoch they were merely a Mistery and Brotherhood, but exer- 
 cised the power of binding apprentices, admitting to the Freedom, and 
 controlling the craft ; they are designated the Marshals of the City of 
 London ; and their two Wardens were presumably elected, as usual, by 
 the Commonalty, subject to ratification at Guildhall. 
 
 But our knowledge of this Society and trade is remarkably scanty, 
 partly owing to the almost total destruction of its papers in the Fire ; and 
 for the few particulars which we are enabled to furnish we are indebted 
 to collateral sources. In official and other returns of 1 501-2, 1509,. 
 and 1515, it is not named. In 1531-2 it occurs as having no Livery. 
 But in 1572-3 we observe that property was left to St. Pulker's parish, 
 London, on condition that the churchwardens should pay annu- 
 ally to the F'arriers 13.?. ^d. for distribution among their poor. The 
 insignificance, indirectness, and solitariness of the gift, so far as charitable 
 
 c.c. 61
 
 482 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 uses are concerned, may indicate the obscurity and imperfect organiza- 
 tion of the recipients under Elizabeth ; and the misfortune is that the 
 dole, which is bestowed on the widows of freemen, has consequently 
 undergone no expansion. In the levy of 1660-1 for the payment of the 
 I'orces by land and sea, its members were among the other similar 
 bodies assessed for the purpose. A code of bye-laws — the next on record 
 to those of 1356 — was approved by the Judges in 16^6-7. 
 
 Tracing back their existence as a constituted Fraternity with a form of 
 government to the middle of the fourteenth century, the Farriers either 
 failed to seek, or omitted to obtain, a charter till the close of the reign 
 of Charles II. The grant is dated January 17, 1684-5, ^^id does little 
 more than confirm the ancient jurisdiction over the trade, which was 
 now extended to the Cities of London and Westminster and their 
 liberties and a radius of seven miles from either. There was also a 
 licence in mortmain to the amount of lOo/. a year, of which a very small 
 proportion has been exhausted. The Company was directed to consist 
 of a Master, three Wardens, and nineteen Assistants, which is the exist- 
 ing complement. In 1882 the freemen numbered 94, the Livery, 88.' 
 The latter was probably granted by the City on incorporation, but it 
 was for some reason withdrawn, and restored in 1692. It is unlimited ; 
 but the calls to it seem to be exclusively voluntary. In the ten years 
 1870-9 the admissions to the Freedom were principally by redemption ; 
 and the advantages of belonging to the Company are, no doubt, as in 
 the majority of instances, independent of the nominal calling, and are 
 sought b)' new members on social and electoral grounds. In 1882 there 
 were only five or six persons who were farriers or veterinary surgeons 
 on the books, although in 1758 the often-quoted Act of Common Council 
 imposed on all operative farriers the obligation of taking up the Freedom 
 of the Company. Such a principle, equally with the right of search, has 
 been long abandoned as an anachronism. 
 
 At the same time there has been on the part of the administrative 
 body a feeling of interest in the welfare and progress of the industry 
 with which the Company is identified, and a desire, as far as possible, 
 to maintain the standard of quality and promote improvements. 
 
 Some years since, three prizes were offered with this important object 
 in view : (i) the Freedom of the Company, a gold medal, and 20/., for 
 the best essay on the Treatment of Horses in Health and Disease ; 
 (2) a silver medal and 10/. for the best, most economically made, and 
 most useful set of shoes for carriage horses in London over macadam, 
 asphalte, and wood roadways, with special regard to slipperiness from 
 
 ' In 1724 it stood at 76, in 1892, 96.
 
 THE FELTMAKERS. 
 
 483- 
 
 any causes ; (3) a bronze medal and 5/. for a similar set of shoes for 
 cart-horses. 
 
 The most celebrated of farriers was, we fear, not of the so-named 
 Gild — the joint leader of the Cornish insurgents at Blackheath Field in 
 1496, where Bishop Latimer's father served on the side of the King. 
 Latimer, as a boy, helped to buckle on his parent's armour before he set 
 out for the battle, as he told Edward VI. in one of his sermons preached 
 before the King, and through him all of us for ever. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Markhams Maisterpeece : Containing all Knowledge belonging to a Smith, Far- 
 rier, or Horse-leach. By Gervase Markham. 4to, 161 5, 1636. 
 
 The same writer piihlished several other books of earlier date relating to horses. 
 
 The Complete Farriar, Or the King's High-Way to Horsemanship. By Gervase 
 
 Markham. 8vo, 1639. 
 
 ^*t^ Licensed in 163:. 
 
 The Compleat Horseman and Experte Farrier. By Thomas de Gray. Folio, 
 
 1639 ; 4to, 1670. 
 The Coun[t]rey Farrier : Teaching divers and sundry approved Medicines, to Cure 
 
 all sorts of Cattell : . . . Very useful and necessary for all Country-Farmers, 
 
 Householders, and generally for all sorts of people. The Second edition, . . . 
 
 8vo, 1650. 
 The Anatomy of an Horse. By Andrew Snape, Junior, Farrier to His Majesty. 
 
 Folio 16S3. With engravings. 
 
 Xlbe ifeltmahcrs. 
 
 
 This As.sociation, an offshoot from the Haberdashers, and founded to 
 regulate the manufacture and sale of felt hats, applied as early as 1576, 
 it appears, for a charter, but was opposed by the parent body, and did 
 not succeed in establishing itself till the following reign. 
 
 The origin of the Felt manufacture — a method of converting hair or 
 wool into cloth without a loom — is referred back by some to a tra- 
 dition coupled with the name of St. Clement, who flourished in the 
 second and third centuries ; and St. Clement's Day, the 23rd November, 
 used to be the Hatters' festival. The Saint reduced carded wool to this
 
 484 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 material, according to the fable, by treading and natural moisture ; but 
 the knowledge of the artificial processes requisite for the purpose was 
 far more ancient than Clement's time. 
 
 That the English Feltmakers existed long before their formal union 
 as an independent and distinct Association, we need not doubt. One of 
 the unlicensed bodies, amerced by the Crown in 1180, was that whereof 
 Richard Thedr, Feltrarius or the Feltmaker, was Alderman ; and the 
 fine was two marks, being double the amount demanded from the Cloth- 
 workers or Pannarii. 
 
 Under the name of Feltmongers, they occur in 1 501-2, as forty- 
 seventh out of seventy-four bodies, and as the last and least of those 
 
 possessing a Livery.^ As the Livery con- 
 sisted of two members only, perhaps these 
 were the Wardens of the Gild. Once more, 
 in 15 1 5, when the Companies were assigned 
 by the Court of Aldermen to their several 
 places in order of priority, to obviate disputes 
 on public occasions, the Feltmongers retained 
 the rank given to them at the earlier date, 
 except that a forty-eighth Company — the 
 Fruiterers, which came si.xty-fourth in 1502 — 
 completed the roll, which shut out several 
 important fraternities, the Stationers, Stock- 
 fishmongers, and Scriveners among the number. 
 
 Stow* tells us that James I., by letters patent of 1604, incorporated 
 this Society by the name of " Master and Wardens and Commonalty of 
 the Art or Mistery of Feltmakers of London : " granting them therebj- 
 divers privileges and liberties for the good government of the same 
 Corporation ; and he adds that this was the first Company, which the 
 King incorporated. The charter gave a Master, four Wardens, and 
 twenty-one Assistants, as the governing body. 
 
 But although the Feltmongers were incorporated in 1604, they were 
 not enrolled at that time, and in 1612-13 we find the Common Council 
 expressing through the Lord Mayor " a general and free opinion " 
 against the e.xpediency thereof How this objection and difficulty were 
 overcome, we do not learn ; but the Company held its ground, and not 
 only obtained new charters from Charles II. in 1667 (June 27), and 
 
 ' The Fellmongers, mentioned in proceedings at Guildhall in 1394, and in the 
 Leathersellers' Ordinances, 1635, are of course distinct. But the distribution of 
 labour was formerly so irregular and obscure, that it is hard to determine whether 
 they were salesmen or craftsmen, or both. 
 
 ^ Annales, 1615, p. S55.
 
 THE KELT.MAKliRS. 48; 
 
 1669-70 (January 10), exclusively of an inspexivius of George III., De- 
 cember 4, 1772, but in the first-named the ,c;rant of 1604 was allowed 
 and confirmed, and in the Skinners' Charters of 1667 and 1685, the right 
 of the Feltmakers' Corporation, or of any other Feltmakers, to cut wools 
 for the manufacture of hats, was specially secured. The right of search 
 and control spread over a four miles' radius. 
 
 The Companj- does not possess the original instrument of 1604. There 
 are bye-laws approved by the Judges in 1667, 1698, 1745, and 1759. 
 By the last-quoted code all persons engaged in the trade were required, 
 in conformity with the Act of Common Council of the previous year, to 
 take up the Freedom. 
 
 In 1882, the number of freemen was unknown. The Livery at that 
 date numbered 53, in 1887-8, 61, and in 1892, 65. It is limited to 120. 
 
 The Company has long ceased to exercise any practical superintend- 
 ence over the trade, and chiefly relies (its property of any kind being 
 small) on its honorar\' Liverymen, among whom there generally are 
 .several distinguished public characters. The late Earl of Iddesleigh 
 and the late Mr. W. H. Smith,' M.P., belonged to the Gild. 
 
 The use of felt as a material for the headdress of both sexes rendered 
 the trade in this description of attire for a considerable period both 
 large and lucrative. The palmy epoch was unquestionably while the 
 business still remained in the hands of the haberdashers ; but the oppo- 
 sition of that body to the separate incorporation may shew that the 
 monopoly was still worth preser\-ing. Throughout the first half of the 
 seventeenth century the contemporary representations of costume satisfy 
 us that the custom for such articles must have remained very regular and 
 extensive even after the Restoration ; but the influx of foreign felt, both 
 in a manufactured and other state, even in the reign of James I., injured 
 the home trade so much as to lead the makers in and near London to 
 remonstrate against the grievance. The establishment of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company in 1670, again, by bringing beaver skins and other furs 
 into fashion, further crippled the members of the Gild, since the fashion- 
 able world was apt to prefer the new wares, while the Continental 
 supply answered the requirements of the majority. 
 
 The revenue, as we have already hinted, is inconsiderable — from 300/. 
 to 400/. a )"ear, partly arising from fines and fees, and partly from two 
 properties left in 1692 and 1S04 in trust for uses — and leaving little or 
 
 ' The founder ot the newspaper business, Mr. Smith's father, was a stationer in the 
 Strand, and did not originally sell periodical literature or books. His shop, on the 
 site of the later premises, used to be a long, low-pitched frontage, and lay ne.\t door 
 to the Crown and Anchor. One of Mr. Smith's specialities was schoolboys' guinea 
 desks.
 
 486 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 no margin after necessary expenses and reasonable hospitalities dis- 
 charged. In 1876, the Company laid out a small amovmt in a compe- 
 tition for essays and specimens, with a view to arriving at the most 
 desirable method of manufacturing and applying felt. 
 
 There are no relics of any kind in the possession of the Feltmakers. 
 The Beadle's mace is characteristically surmounted by an emblematical 
 hat. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 To the most honorable Assembly of the Commons House of Parliament. The 
 humble petition of the Feh-makers in and neare London, praying for the prohibition of 
 the importation of Felts and Hats wrought and half wrought, beyond the seas. [1621.] 
 A broadside. 
 
 Ube jfletcbers. 
 
 This Gild, like one or two others, merely enjoys its rank by pre- 
 scription, as no charter or Act of Parliament can be produced, whereby 
 it was incorporated. In some form or other it must, from the nature of 
 its employment, have existed literally time out of memory, and in the 
 fourteenth century is found in treaty with the Bowyers on some points 
 of disagreement between them. It was then evidently an established 
 and recognised Fellowship. 
 
 In a Romance poem of the fourteenth century, "The King and the 
 Hermit," which has been used by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, the dis- 
 guised King tells his host, that his name is Jack Fletcher, and the hermit 
 at once suggests that, as he is of that craft, he may perchance help him 
 now and then to a shaft or two. 
 
 In 1371, the Bowyers and Fletchers came to Guildhall to seek the 
 approval of the Mayor and Aldermen to a series of Articles drawn up 
 with a view to keeping the two trades distinct, and to preclude the inter- 
 
 ' Compare the account of the Bowyers, siiprd.
 
 THE FLETCHERS. 48; 
 
 ference of otic with the other. It appeared on the face of the proceed- 
 ings at ;i Hunting of Common Pleas of Land, that certain \vori<men 
 served both crafts, and this practice was judged to 
 be detrimental and improper. It was settled that 
 ail should henceforth elect to which trade they would 
 belong, and renounce the other ; but all articles in 
 an incomplete state might be finished and sold with- 
 in a fixed date. 
 
 This case before the Mayor's Court was simply an 
 effort to reconcile current differences with the allied 
 
 . . . , . OI.D ARMS, 
 
 craft, and does not touch any principle of status or 
 government. But the Ordinances of 1403 shew the appointment of 
 Wardens under the control of the Lord Ma)-or and Court of Alder- 
 men, with right of search as to all manner of arrows, arrowheads, and 
 quarels, in the hands alike of freemen and foreigners. No one of the 
 trade was to offer goods for sale without proper assay ; and the Wardens 
 on their part were bound to be at all times prepared to make such 
 assay under penalties. But all manner of folk bringing to the City for 
 sale broad arrows and bolts were exempt from search. The freemen 
 were in no case to sell to any foreigner, until it was of certain know- 
 ledge that such sale was not to the prejudice of the King and realm. 
 
 The Fletchers obtained a grant of arms, 7 Edward IV., and in the 
 reign of Henry VII. a crest in augmentation, having previously, it is 
 concluded, had power vested in them to possess a Livery. But all the 
 ancient registers and ledgers have been lost ; and the earliest extant 
 records go no further back than 1775. 
 
 The governing body consists of an Upper and a Renter Warden and 
 ten Assistants. There is no common seal, and presumably no licence 
 to hold real property. The total income is returned at 149/. a year, of 
 which nearly one half arises from the ground-rent of premises erected on 
 the site of their old Hall in St. Mary Axe. 
 
 The Company states that it possesses a right of ancient standing, 
 though of no present validity, to borrow money from the Bowyers and 
 Leathersellers. It would be curious to ascertain in what circumstances 
 such a liberty originated, unless it was the absence of a charter, though 
 it is not difficult to understand how the three crafts would have a run- 
 ning account together. 
 
 It has no further direct or other connection with the trade. 
 
 There is a palpable indication that the Fletchers formerly enjoyed a 
 much higher degree of prosperity. We perceive that they had their own 
 Hall ; and the industrial art, of which they engrossed the profits within 
 the municipal area, remained during many ages of prominent import-
 
 488 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ance. But they and the Bowyers suffered a common decline when the 
 apph'ances of war underwent throughout Europe a fundamental change. 
 Even in the time of James I. the Bowyers and Fletchers had evidently 
 survived their prosperity. They, the Musicians, and the Woolmen pre- 
 sent themselves in the subscription-list to the Ulster purchase scheme of 
 1615 as the smallest contributors. 
 
 In 1739, the Company consisted of the two Wardens, ten Assistants, 
 and twenty-five Liverymen, of whom the last paid on admission a fine 
 of 10/. They had not then parted with their small Hall.' 
 
 Zbc jfounDers or Coppcrsmitbs.' 
 
 
 We are referred to the reign of Edward III., and to the year 1365, for 
 a casual incident, which, as is by no means unusual, constitutes our 
 earliest piece of intelligence respecting the present Association, and at 
 the same time exhibits it in the light of an established Fraternity. The 
 document which embodies the evidence is a petition in Norman-French 
 to the civic authorities from " the Good Men of the Mistery of the 
 Founders of the City of London," and prays for the grant of Ordinances 
 for the management of the Craft. At this point of time and long after, 
 the Founders had no control outside and beyond the detection and pre- 
 ■sentment of bad material and workmanship. 
 
 The goods particularized in this petition are : candlesticks, buckles, 
 spurs, stirrups, straps, lavers, and pots. But we may securely add ewers 
 and basins for various domestic and professional purposes ; and indeed 
 
 ' The Hall was in Aldgate Ward. It is thus noticed by Stow : — " So turning backe 
 into S. Mary Axe, they [the bounds] goe upon the East side, from the house of Master 
 lohn Holding, commonly called Fletchers halV — which reads as if Holding had 
 given or lent his residence at the outset for the meetings of the Company, which was 
 incapacitated from holding it corporately. 
 
 - We have been indebted to the courtesy and liberality of the Company for a hand- 
 some illustrated volume entitled Annals of the Worsliipfid Company of Founders. 
 By William Meade Williams, Master, 1852-3-4. 8vo, privately printed, 1868.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 
 
 489 
 
 EARI.Y ARMS OR 
 COGNIZANCE. 
 
 the ewer, as a typical article of manufacture, was the original trade- 
 mark. The general recognition of the Gild, and its evident length of 
 standing about this time, are evinced by its right in 1376 to accredit two 
 representatives to the Common Council. 
 
 We find, about a quarter of a century later (1389) a revival of the 
 regulations of 1365, which, in common with the original Articles, deal 
 with the mischievous practice, which then prevailed, 
 of using light and tender solder for candlesticks, etc., 
 and of making stirrups, spurs, and buckles of de- 
 fective or fictitious material ; and they guard against 
 irregularities on the part of apprentices, journey- 
 men, and strangers working at the trade. The last- 
 named were required to pass an examination before 
 the Masters or Overseers. Power of search was con- 
 ceded, as usual, but only in company with a City 
 Serjeant. 
 
 The maintenance of subordination among the apprentice class was at 
 once essential and difficult. The Ordinances specify most of the things 
 which these youths were not to do ; but in 160S playing at bowls, and 
 betting at cards, dice, tables, shovelboard, and other unlawful games,. 
 were prohibited. As late as 1684, in the not very cheerful days of the 
 Quo Warra)ito, the Master and Upper Wardens played at nine-pins on 
 the Thames during the great frost ; but perhaps this privilege was 
 reserved for the seniors. 
 
 Great stress is laid on clockzvork being executed only with the finest 
 and purest metal. It is curious that the journeyman is termed a vadlet, 
 an awkward transition from the French valet. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that in 1365, if not long prior, the govern- 
 ment was in the hands of Wardens or Masters ; but in 1391 the two 
 officers appointed to rule the craft, and to see the Ordinances duly 
 carried out, are named — Thomas Grace and Robert Newman — and were 
 presented to the Court of Aldermen for confirmation. 
 
 In 1469, the affairs of the Gild were doubtless not very prosperous, 
 as we meet with it, under the name of Coppersmiths, engaging to furnish 
 the modest quota of nine men to the City Watch. 
 
 It transpires from an official reply to charges preferred against the 
 governing body at a much more recent period, that in 1472— our next 
 landmark — there was a development of some kind ; for the Court states 
 that in the year cited " we began with twenty-four poor honest men," 
 signifying that such was then the complement of the Executive. Nor 
 does it seem improbable that about this date the Brotherhood — for it 
 was still nothing more — was gaining in consideration and standing, 
 C.C. 62
 
 49° THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 though far from affluent. The Ordinances of April 2, 1489, justify such 
 a conclusion : they touch upon the exclusive manufacture or fabric of 
 goods by freemen, the scrutiny by the Wardens before the parcels are 
 packed, and their exposure for sale at fairs and by hawkers ; but they 
 are partly occupied by directions as to apprenticeship, masses, burials, 
 and alms. 
 
 Here we get a distinct record of a Livery or Clothing, on which, in 
 common with the freemen and journeymen, payments for all religious 
 services are charged, and a sufficient insight to enable us to perceive 
 that the Founders were not remiss in fulfilling the professions on 
 which these Societies based their title and claim to favour. But while 
 they appear in 1489 to have possessed a Livery, in an official return 
 of 1 501-2 they are classed with those who had none, so that it was 
 perhaps not even an acknowledged prescription. We advance a step 
 further in 1508, when, by reason of the necessity for adjusting certain 
 3ifferences among the members through the good offices of the Cor- 
 poration, we for the first time trace the seat of the Craft to the neigh- 
 bourhood of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, and discover St. Clement's 
 Chapel in that church to be at once the receptacle for the common chest 
 and the shrine at which obits, requiems, and oblations were offered. We 
 also gain a clue, which bears on the glimpse accidentally acquired of the 
 state of affairs in 1472. For there is in these proceedings of 1508 a 
 highly eloquent indication, that then, as doubtless in the earlier years, 
 the system of government was peculiarly popular, inasmuch as six of 
 the yeomen are appointed to assist in auditing the accounts, and are 
 charged with the custody of one of the four keys of the chest, the other 
 three constructively remaining with the Senior, Renter, and Junior 
 Wardens. 
 
 It appears that the Wardens had been involved through the action of 
 one of the Fellowship, John Sandford, in legal proceedings, and had 
 been summoned to the Court of Exchequer to answer a charge of 
 having made some innovation as to the fees payable by apprentices. 
 The matter put the Founders to considerable expense, and was ulti- 
 mately referred to the Lord Mayor for settlement ; but there seems to 
 have been an unanimous feeling in favour of upholding the Wardens ; 
 for at the meeting held on the 26th October, 1508, " the whole Fellow- 
 ship, both old and young," joined in praying them to labour, so that the 
 Lord Chancellor might have the irregularity rectified.' 
 
 ' The question remained open, not merely with this Company, but with several 
 others, at least till 1556, when the Wardens attended at Guildhall to confer with the 
 Lord Mayor and Aldermen thereupon.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 49 1 
 
 The bye-laws of 15 15 substantially reproduced those of 1489. 
 
 Elsewhere we dwell a little at large on a great stride made approxi- 
 mately in 1534, when the Founders were put, by the bounty of some of 
 their wealthier members, in possession of a site for a common Hall be- 
 tween St. Margaret's Church and Coleman Street. The ownership did 
 not perhaps yield immediate fruit, as material and labour were in those 
 days costlier than land ; and if it were the fact that the open area ac- 
 quired had been a place of interment, the selling value was presumably 
 impaired. At any rate, proceedings before the Court of Aldermen in 
 1579 afford testimony that some half-century after this occurrence the 
 organization was still feeble and the revenue scanty ; and the Lord 
 Mayor was obliged to formulate a scheme for the more punctual pay- 
 ment of quarterages. 
 
 Another phase of laxity, the omission to come to the Masters' Feast, 
 was met in 1535 by a regulation that every Liveryman should pay 
 2s. for his dinner on that occasion whether he brought his wife or not, 
 and whether he came or stayed away. 
 
 It is worth while, as a constitutional point, to solicit attention to the 
 fact that the threepence per quarter leviable from the Livery was to be 
 collected by the Junior Warden, but that the twopence payable by the 
 freemen was raised by two of their own number selected from four pre- 
 viously nominated by the Clothing. This practice responded to the 
 democratic feeling otherwise evinced by the Gild ; the acuteness of the 
 pecuniary tension seems to manifest itself in the power given to recover 
 by distress. 
 
 Perhaps the stricter enforcement of discipline proved beneficial and 
 salutary ; for in the course of a few years the Founders, though still 
 unincorporated, seem to have made sensible progress, and to have gained 
 a certain prestige. In 1587 they were invested with the responsible 
 and widely important duty of assizing all weights at a fixed table of 
 rates ; and this office led to the appointment of a Sizer, who stamped 
 every weight, before it could be legally used, with the Founders' mark of 
 an ewer, and caused it to be sealed at Guildhall. 
 
 This valuable trust, which was amplified in 1599 at the expense of the 
 Plumbers, was succeeded, October 13, 1590, by a grant of arms from 
 Robert Cooke, Clarencieu.x,^ and in 1592 (March 28), by the "Ordi- 
 nances of Elizabeth," so termed, because their comprehensive range 
 almost entitles them to the rank of a charter. 
 
 Here several points have to be observed. Not only the Livery, but 
 
 ' Viewed, approved, and entered in the Visitation of London, 1634, by Henry St. 
 George, Richmond Herald.
 
 492 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Assistants, are specified ; St. Bartholomew's day, or twelve days before 
 or after, is fixed as the season for elections ; owing to the limited income 
 of the Craft, no one, save a past Warden, is to have more than one 
 apprentice, who shall be bound for eight years, lest the admissions to 
 the Freedom should grow too numerous ; but a past Warden may have 
 two, provided that he employ both on his own work. Each appren- 
 tice, before he is bound, is to be " abled " by the Wardens, " in order to 
 see that he is free born and whole of limb for the honour of the City," 
 the master paying hereupon 2s. to the Gild, and 6d. to the Chamber of 
 London. The livery is to be of one suit and colour with hoods of 
 prescribed pattern and hue, and is to be renewed every three years. 
 The quarterages, collected in the manner ordained in 1587, are to be 
 kept in a common box with three locks, of which the Junior Warden 
 shall keep one, the Yeomanry the other two, the box remaining, not in 
 St. Clement's Chapel, but in the common Hall. In 1609, the colours 
 for the livery are said to be black and red. 
 
 The tenor of this series of Articles bespeaks an approach to final con- 
 solidation. In 1592 the Founders have three Wardens, a Court of Assist- 
 ants, a Livery, a Hall, and a Cook,' with a degree of popularity in the 
 general temper and complexion of the body. But when we trace the 
 Founders a little further, and enter on the next reign, we recognise a 
 somewhat strange phenomenon in the shape of a petition to the Crown 
 by Robert Thompson, Founder, shewing that the absence of a settled 
 government favoured the growth and continuance of many abuses in 
 the Craft, and praying that the said Craft be incorporated for its own 
 and the general good. 
 
 The representations of Thompson were referred to the Commissioners 
 for Suits, who obtained a favourable report from the Mayor and Alder- 
 men (Nov. 4, 161 3), and ultimately produced the desired effect in a 
 charter of September 18, 1614. 
 
 The expenses attendant on the process were defrayed by a loan from 
 Mr. Richard Rudinge, a member, on the security of the estate. The 
 total outlay seems to have been 115/. 14^., of which 100/. represented the 
 payment into the Hanaper, 2/. 4^. a fee to the Recorder for his advice, 
 and the remainder, save 5^-. 4^., gratuities to officials, including i is. to 
 Sir Francis Bacon's clerk. The item of 5J. 4^. was for preparing a 
 written statement of the points which the petitioners desired to be 
 embodied in the charter, which is so far worth noting. 
 
 The Gild was constituted a Company with perpetual succession, a 
 common seal, a licence to hold lands of 40/. value by the year, the right 
 
 ' On February 24, 1605-6, John Tyffins, of Coleman Street, was appointed Cook 
 during pleasure at 26^-. 8(/. a year.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 493 
 
 of search and prosecution, and a government consisting of a Master, 
 two Wardens, and fifteen Assistants. But a very material change in an 
 aristocratic direction had been effected in the electoral system, which 
 now crossed over to the opposite extreme, by depriving the Livery as 
 well as the Yeomanry of nearly their whole voice in the selection of 
 officers and the management of affairs. A narrow principle of co-opta- 
 tion vested in the Court the entire constitutional and administrative 
 authority, and created an oligarchy in the persons of the few more 
 successful and affluent members, who had long previously signalized 
 their presence by the purchase of the freehold occupied by the Hall, 
 as they or their descendants probably did by defraying the cost of the 
 structure. In the present instance the prevailing poverty of the Brother- 
 hood necessarily assisted in enabling the more eminent and fortunate 
 to obtain and preserve an ascendency. 
 
 The Gild was incorporated under the style of " The Master, Wardens, 
 and Commonalty of the Mistery of Founders of the City of London," 
 and the letters patent were addressed to " all and every our loving sub- 
 jects, the Founders of our City of London, and others, the Freemen ot 
 the said Mistery ; " but the clauses affecting elections were, as we have 
 intimated, so framed as to neutralize any popular aspirations derived 
 from the preamble. 
 
 The composition of the new body embraced all English makers of 
 brass weights, and melters and workers of brass and copper wares, or 
 workers of molten brasses and copper metals, and all annealing, within 
 the City and three miles' compass ; and the executive was empowered 
 to make ordinances, so that they are agreeable to the laws of the land 
 and to the liberties of London, saving the rights of the Pewterers ; and 
 as touching the right of assize, we find it laid down that when the 
 Company's Sizer, who was under oath, had marked weights with the 
 Ewer, they were to be sealed, if of avoirdupois standard, at Guildhall, but 
 if of troy, at Goldsmiths' Hall. Upon the acquisition of arms, stamps 
 of various sizes were employed, the whole coat appearing, when the 
 dimensions of the article permitted. 
 
 When Ben Jonson wrote his Alchejiiist, shortly before the formation of 
 the Company in 1614, Lothbury was yet the quarter set apart for this 
 business, and Stow's Continuator (1633) writes : "This street is possessed 
 for the most part by Founders, that cast candlesticks, chafing-dishes, 
 spice-mortars, and such-like copper or laton works, and do afterwards 
 turn them with the foot, and not with the wheel, to make them smooth 
 and bright wath turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a 
 loathsome noise to the bye-passers, that have not been used to the 
 like."
 
 494 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The din and smoke in this locality and in Bartholomew Lane must 
 have been highly disagreeable, whatever we may think of the matter, 
 looking back upon the scene from a picturesque point of view. The 
 furnaces were perpetually at work, both in the City and the immediate 
 outskirts ; and the prevalence of wooden buildings made it imperative 
 that the overseers of the craft should enforce all possible precautions 
 against fire. 
 
 Of the Ordinances, which closely succeeded, and replaced those of 
 1592, we shall draw attention to that which directed that on election- 
 day two of the Livery should be nominated to serve as stewards at the 
 Assistants' dinner on Lord Mayor's day, or such other day as might be 
 chosen for the occasion, at which dinner the Livery, as well as the Court 
 might be present, and the former might bring their wives. No one who 
 had not served or fined as Steward, was eligible as an Assistant ; but the 
 same person was not liable to be called upon a second time. 
 
 No steps were apparently taken to renew the grant of 1614 previously 
 to the Quo Warranto of 1684, except that in 1652 the democratic section 
 of the Company endeavoured to prevail on the Committee for Corpora- 
 tions, by reason of the alleged unconstitutional and arbitrary acts of the 
 Court, to assist in providing them with a more stringent or more clearly 
 worded charter. The papers connected with the business are pre- 
 served ; but they do not shew what, if anything, was accomplished. 
 The movement might to a certain extent harmonize with the general 
 tendency of the Commonalty or even Livery ; but it was perhaps in this 
 case prompted and encouraged by the prevailing political spirit ; for the 
 Master and Wardens, in their reply, affirm that these " false, pretending 
 complainers," whom they had " entreated as brethren in love," would 
 " level the government and orders of the Company according to their 
 own perverse, proud and peevish minds." 
 
 The Committee possibly shared the view that it was an ex parte and 
 ill-founded appeal. Yet it is impossible to disguise the fact that the 
 charter of 16 14 was calculated to foster discontent and disunion, while 
 it introduced at the same time, perhaps, the only system of administra- 
 tion compatible with order. 
 
 The surrender of the old charter took place in June, 16S4 ; and the 
 new one, which cost about 250/., followed the customary lines. The 
 Master appointed by the King under it was the rather celebrated 
 Colonel, afterwards General, Oglethorpe. The Revolution of 1688, as 
 in other cases, restored the status quo ante. 
 
 The bye-laws, which are now in use, when any necessity arises for 
 reference or exercise, were those passed, however, on February 3, 1783, 
 and offer points of difference from the prior code indicative of a decline
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COI'PERSMITHS. 495 
 
 in the prosperity and credit of the Corporation. Here we note the 
 requirement of a bond for 5CX)/. and one suret)' from the Master, before 
 he tai<es office, as a safeguard against the waste or embezzlement of the 
 funds, and whereas the Stewards in the preceding regulations defrayed 
 the cost of the yearly dinner, the amount — not exceeding 10/. — was now 
 made a charge on the common purse. The Clerk and Beadle are ex- 
 pressly mentioned as subject to annual election or reappointment ; and 
 at this time the Master, one of the Wardens, or two of the Wardens 
 and nine Assistants, appear to have made a Court. 
 
 In returns of 1699 and 1724, the Livery is given as 90 and 136 re- 
 spectively. In 1736 the Executive consisted of the Master, two War- 
 dens, and twenty-nine Assistants ; in 1746, the Assistants were reduced 
 to twenty-eight. But these fluctuations were often accidental. 
 
 It is confessed by those who should be least willing, perhaps, to admit 
 it, that from 1740 to 1840, the affairs, in consequence of impoverishment 
 by the Fire and gradual alterations in mercantile economy, were at a 
 very low ebb, that the income was not over lOo/. a year, and that a call 
 to the Livery was a phenomenal exception. Except that power without 
 resources is not covetable, this state of things followed the lines of the 
 charter of 1614, which, with the exception of the temporary one of 
 James II., was the only grant to the Company; but, where the estate 
 was nominal, the absorption of influence and authority by a few was 
 apt either to be short-lived or to react by diverting the scheme from 
 its original and professed objects. The alternative was tried by the 
 Founders, who let their Hall and other freeholds, enlarged their Livery,' 
 and increased the scale of fines. The result was thought to warrant the 
 erection of a new place of meeting in 1S77 with borrowed money, 
 although in the years 187 1-7, both inclusive, the calls to the Livery 
 were only 23, and the fees pa3'able by Freemen and Liverymen, even 
 where the former join by redemption, were moderate. An impulse thus 
 given to the expansion of the Company on new lines in 1S53 by an in- 
 fluential member of the Court, does not seem to have been maintained. 
 
 The annual receipts in 1880 were stated to exceed 1,660/.-; but the 
 expenditure was considerable, and the Company owed 8,500/. 
 
 It was in that year that a series of prizes was offered, amounting to 
 87/., for competition in brass and bronze work, and for the best essay on 
 the history of Founding in brass, copper, and bronze. In the execution 
 of the models, beauty, originality of design, and excellence of workman- 
 
 ' In 18S2, the Livery amounted to 115, in 1892, to 100. In the former year there 
 were only 22 on the Freedom. 
 
 ■ In 1892, the figures are 1,900/., of which the trusts make only 90/.
 
 496 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ship, were to be studied. These movements are seldom without their 
 share of good ; and the governing body entertained the idea of con- 
 tinuing and extending the encouragement of the art. But we believe 
 that nothing further has been achieved. 
 
 We have heard how various trades congregated, at first more or less 
 fortuitously, in certain quarters, to which for convenience or in the public 
 interest they confined themselves. As Cheapside, Cornhill, Bishopsgate, 
 the riverside, had their settlers, so we find that, from time immemorial 
 perhaps, the Founders chose as their seat the area behind the Bank 
 of England, always known as Lothbury, or Lodebury ' [? Ludbury], and 
 formerly an open area, watered, down to the middle of the 15th century,^ 
 by the Walbrook, which almost bathed the western side of St. Mar- 
 garet's Church. Even in the days of Defoe it was a district of com- 
 paratively moderate consequence. 
 
 The Founders, in fact, formed a colony on this ground, in order to be 
 at a distance from the primitive centre of traffic and habitation, where 
 their employments were calculated to be obnoxious,^ and probably 
 during at least two centuries presented a spectacle which, from its very 
 humility and rudeness, it becomes interesting to contemplate in the 
 mind's eye. A cluster of poor wooden tenements, roofed with thatch, 
 round St. Margaret's, Lothbury, and in one of these, where the Warden 
 or Wardens dwelt, their place of assembly and consultation. 
 
 This spot was their home, their daily haunt. Their thought was for 
 it and of it. They were familiar with every inch of the ground. They 
 had opportunities of knowing the course of events and every turn of 
 affairs. It is the almost invariable incidence and drift in these cases 
 that, where they in the beginning gathered together, there they abode ; 
 for their most solemn associations were with the ground and the holy 
 building erected upon it. It was round this that they had first clus- 
 tered, and had slowly increased in number and substance ; and they 
 instinctively clang to the place as one breathing a charmed and sacred 
 atmosphere. The ancient nomad instinct was in them no longer. Where 
 their first choice or the exigencies of their position brought them, cen- 
 tury after century witnessed their survival, probably their aggrandize- 
 ment and evolution. 
 
 The common practice of the Gilds, until they obtained a regular seat. 
 
 ' " By S. Giles Churchyard was a large water, called a Poole : I reade in the yeere 
 1244, that Anne o/LoMury was drowned therein." — Stow's 5?/^^/^/, ed. 1633, p. 11. 
 
 ^ In 1440 the stream at this point was vaulted over by Robert Large, Mercer, and 
 the church extended. 
 
 ' See the Statutes of the Streets against Annoyances, printed in Stow's Sumey, 
 1633, No. 25, where the Founders are particularly mentioned.
 
 THE FOUNOKKS OK COPrERSMlTHS. 497 
 
 was to assemble in some religious establishment, at the residence of the 
 Wardens, or at the Hall of another i<>atcniity. The first allusion to any 
 place of meeting in the present instance is under 1497, when the Brewers' 
 and Armourers' Halls were hired at a groat a day on different occasions, 
 but in eacli case for two days ; on April 12, 15 13, certain business was 
 transacted " in Coleman Street," possibly at one of the Wardens' houses ; 
 in 1 5 16, Leathersellers' Hall was engaged. 
 
 Not as it happened with the Drapers, Ironmongers, and others, a 
 small and poor community, cleaving to the soil whence it sprang, and 
 where its bread was, and its altar, and the ashes of its dead, looked 
 around in quest of a worthier meeting-house and a more commodious 
 repository of its possessions; and in 1534, or thereabout, two houses- 
 and a parcel of ground lying between St. Margaret's and what is now 
 Moorgate Street, were purchased by eighteen members of the Gild " for 
 the purpose of a common Hall. How long subsequently to this import- 
 ant transaction, denoting a new era in the annals, the object was actu- 
 ally accomplished, we do not learn ; but it is abundantly clear that the 
 financial condition of the Founders long after this time was too humble 
 and weak to permit the allotment of common funds to building expenses ; 
 and we shall not probably be far from the truth in assuming that they 
 followed the practice of much richer bodies by working piece-meal, and 
 even contenting themselves at first with the available accommodation. 
 The tradition is, that the vacant plot bought with the tenements was the 
 garden or burial-ground of the Friars Austins ; and if this had been so,. 
 we should have to suppose that the transfer was somewhat later than 
 that usually assigned to it, since, prior to the Dissolution, the monks 
 would scarcely have parted with their garden, and still less with their 
 graveyard. But the fact is, or seems to be, that this is an unsupported 
 theory ; and the site of the original seat of government and meeting was 
 not indeed on the eastern, but on the western side of St. Margaret's, 
 toward Coalman or Coleman Street, before Moorgate Street existed. 
 
 Not many notices of the building occur. It stood at .some distance 
 back from the thoroughfare, the frontage belonging to the Corporation, 
 and appears to have been approached by a lane or alley leading to a 
 spacious paved courtyard. St. Margaret's was immediately to the east 
 of it ; in the rear were a few detached buildings in large grounds, with 
 a view of the Moor beyond. We incidentally hear of the basement let 
 as early as 1565 at 4/. a year, the refectory, two parlours with a glass 
 window between them, the sizing room, the gowns' roorn, a paved 
 kitchen, and an inner buttery, where the treasure-chest was kept ; but 
 
 ' Eight contributed 20i'. each, the rest, 2/. I 5.1-. ; altogether, 10/. 15.?. 
 CO. 63
 
 498 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 there is no specific account of the house. The refectory and parlours 
 were almost obviously on the first floor, and there was a storey above, 
 where the Clerk probably had his dormitory. 
 
 In 1549, a company of players paid los. for the use of the place, and a 
 wedding-party was charged only a groat about the same time ; perhaps 
 it was the marriage of a member, as various sums are entered for this 
 sort of service, one of 12s. A Haberdasher, in 1558, gives no more than 
 
 The Hall was lost in the Fire, and was rebuilt by private subscription. 
 The corporate means, however, remained chronically slender, and por- 
 tions of the building were let off for different purposes and to a variety 
 of persons or public bodies,' till in 1846 the whole was rented by the 
 Post Office. But at the same time the Company, by this and various 
 other financial expedients, swelled its income ; and in 1854, the old 
 quarter, which had been the home of the Craft between five and six 
 centuries, was finally abandoned, and a house on the western side of 
 St. Swithin's Lane purchased for 3,500/. under a special licence in 
 mortmain. In 1877, New Founders' Hall, which involved a loan of 
 8,000/. at four per cent., was erected. The possession of the fee simple 
 affords security for the ultimate freedom from debt ; but of course the 
 Founders' fortunes have entered on a new phase irreconcilable with 
 the Lothbury traditions. They belong to the same category as the 
 Loriners, Needlemakers, and Spectaclemakers, with the special advan- 
 tage of handsome premises for official and convivial purposes. Histori- 
 cally the curtain falls, as it rose, in Lothbury. 
 
 A dispassionate consideration of the few known leading facts relative 
 to the Founders during their five or six centuries of life as a Society in 
 Lothbury and elsewhere, induces us to attach greater weight than at 
 first sight we might be prepared to do, to the statement of the Company 
 in 1652, that it began in 1472 with "twenty-four poor honest men" ; for 
 the paucity of members of more than very moderate means was evi- 
 dently, down to the middle of the present century, a ruling and chronic 
 feature. Many of the Gilds were poor ; but they either linger in obscur- 
 ity or have disappeared. Here we have one, which hung on a single 
 thread — a fortuitous and happy investment at the Reformation in a City 
 freehold on the part of certain of its members — and was at last redeemed 
 
 ' Among those who had the use of portions of the premises were the Merchant 
 Adventurers, who leased the sizing and gowns' rooms, the Brown Bakers, who 
 occupied the warehouse under the Hall, the Loriners, Clockmakers, Gunmakers, and 
 Ticket-porters, the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge, preachers, players, 
 and dancing-masters. In 1699, the Scots Church in London took a lease of the Hall 
 and parlour lor forty-one years.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 
 
 499 
 
 from ruin by that agency alone. We have the official admission that 
 
 the Fraternity or Company was indigent and limited in 1472 ; we are 
 
 officially apprised that it 
 
 was in narrow circumstances 
 
 from 1 740 to 1 840 ; and the 
 
 sale of plate under pressure 
 
 is a periodical incidence ; 
 
 but there may have been a 
 
 middle period of prosperity, 
 
 for which the vouchers 
 
 perished in 1666, inasmuch 
 
 as, although the prime cost, 
 
 in or about 1534, of the 
 
 premises in Lothbury was 
 
 undoubtedly small, and there 
 
 is no evidence for heavy 
 
 subsequent outlay, that of 
 
 the second Hall is computed 
 
 at nearly 4,000/. — an amount 
 
 which would not have been 
 
 advanced in the 17th century 
 
 on the property, and must 
 
 have come from internal 
 
 sources as before. 
 
 The most ancient book of 
 accounts belongs to 1497, 
 and comprises a schedule of 
 the plate and other effects 
 then in the possession of 
 the Founders. But some of 
 these articles had been ac- 
 quired at an earlier period, 
 as the collection at present 
 includes two masers attri- 
 buted to the end of the 
 fourteenth century. In the 
 inventory we observe basons 
 and ewers of latten or laton, 
 a species of fine brass, dishes, 
 table-cloths, and two plain 
 " washing towells." The 
 silver and silver-gilt objects are what are intended, when in a subsequent 
 
 THE BOWIN SPOON. 1625.
 
 500 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 entry there is a reference to the Juells belonging to the Craft ; the term 
 might extend to the vessels employed in St. Clement's Chapel. 
 
 From time to time plate, which would have represented a very large 
 and valuable collection, was presented ; but the necessities of the Com- 
 pany, from narrow receipts, irregular payments of dues, constant levies 
 for public purposes, and the severe loss entailed by the Fire in 1666, 
 rendered the periodical conversion of everything of the kind into money 
 indispensable ; and of the entire quantity received not more than four 
 ancient pieces remain. 
 
 The plate falling within this category comprises a spoon presented by 
 Humphrey Bowin, with his initials and the date 1625 and three tankards, 
 for the purchase of which Thomas Fisher, Merchant and Founder of 
 London, left 50/. by his will, proved in 1708. There are also two 
 masers, one with a cover, ascribed to the reign of Richard II. ; a 
 Venetian glass of the l6th century, richly painted with an allegorical 
 design, and said to have been taken by a yeoman of the English guard 
 at the siege of Boulogne in 1544 ; and a copper chest, probably the one 
 mentioned in the records as given by Mr. Stephen Pilchard, Upper 
 Warden, in 1653-4. The glass, which has a silver foot with the hall- 
 mark of 1607, was bequeathed by Richard Wioley, Master in 1631 and 
 1640, is used on election-day, when the old Master presents it, filled 
 with hippocras, to the new one. There is also a set of six china bowls, 
 the gift of Mr. Thomas King, Clerk to the Company, in 1784, with the 
 arms painted on them ; these are of the ordinary Oriental type, some- 
 times called Loivcstoft. 
 
 With the excellent monograph of Mr. Williams before us we cannot 
 refrain from annexing a few extracts from the portions of the book 
 which illustrate the share of the Company in public transactions of 
 various kinds. 
 
 Upon the visit of Elizabeth to St. Paul's, on November 18 in the 
 Armada year, the Founders were required by precept from the Mayor 
 to attend with their whole Livery in their best apparel at their appointed 
 stand covered with fair blue cloth at eight o'clock in the morning, and 
 there were to be Whifflers^ in coats of velvet and chains, ten at the least. 
 
 In 1614 the Founders associated themselves with the Haberdashers, 
 Turners, and Wa.x-Chandlers in taking up a 2,000/. share of the Irish 
 Plantation, contributing 90/., while the Haberdashers stood for 1688/., 
 the Wax-Chandlers for 120/., and the Turners for 102/. The Founders 
 sold their portion in 1686 for 144/. a,s. 6d. It is so far worthy of remark 
 that the tenants-in-chief had realized their own several years before 
 
 ' Young freemen who played on a whiffle, a sort of pipe, and headed a procession. 
 See p. 310 supra for a representation of one.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 
 
 iOI 
 
 In 1627-S the Wardens of this Company, the Sadlers, and the 
 Glaziers were committed to Newgate for omitting to pay the respective 
 quota toward a loan to the Crown of 120,000/. The assessment on the 
 Founders was 90/., and thc)- compounded for 20/. 
 
 About 1649 ^\'<^ detect a habit of holding the meetings of the Com- 
 pany elsewhere than at the Hall, which was probably let. There are 
 such entries as the following : " Paid at the Three Tuns two several! 
 tymes about our W'hifflers and other business concerning Lord Mayor's 
 
 THE TREASURE CHEST, 1653. 
 
 Da)- . . 
 [in Cheap] 
 Islington . . . ^^5 
 in Ould Fish St' . 
 Day at the 3 Tuns 
 to have continued for 
 
 £t, 6s. gd. ;" " Paid upon Rlidsummer Day at the Dagger 
 . . £2 4s. 6d. ; " " Paid upon Bartholomew Day at 
 js. \od. \" "Paid upon — Sepr. at the Ship 
 . . £2 iT^s. 4d. \" "Paid upon Michaelmas 
 . £4 2s. 4d. ; " and this state of affairs seems 
 some time, as in 165 1-2, January 30th, occurs : 
 " A Thanksgiving Day at the Cardinal's Cap [in Lombard Street]." 
 
 Under 1652 we find two significant items : " Rec'' of the Gunpowder 
 del'' forth of the Hall, £4 o o," and " Paid for State Arms in the Glass
 
 502 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Winder, i8s." On June 22nd, 1660, there is a payment of 2/. 4.S. 6d. 
 for the King's Arms. 
 
 The sale of the plate, pewter, brass, linen, and other effects in 1666-7 
 at once indicates the consequences of the Great Fire and the rescue 
 of the Company's property. But the Hall was lost, and in order to 
 rebuild it 500/. were borrowed ; 230/. \os. were raised by fines and sub- 
 scriptions, and 68/. iZs. were realized by 275 oz. 12 dwt. of plate. The 
 first breakfast in the new Hall was held on Lord Mayor's Day, 1671. 
 
 It was between 1697 and 1699 that the great scandal arose and con- 
 tinued as to fraudulent practices by officers of the Company, and even 
 by some of the Masters, in relation to the binding of apprentices and 
 admissions to the Freedom ; numerous payments on these accounts were 
 discovered to have been misappropriated by the suppression of entries ; 
 and the books were for a considerable time detained at Guildhall, and 
 an order made that no Founder should henceforth have the freedom 
 of the City. The difficulty was at last overcome, and the disability res- 
 cinded ; but the records afford numerous other cases in which members 
 of the staff were charged with irregularities ; and there was a constant 
 succession of dismissals from the Court for non-attendance or neglect 
 of pecuniary obligations. In 1704 the Company's Staff-head was pawned 
 by the Beadle, and was redeemed for 3/. 5^. 
 
 In 1701-3, however, an honourable and capable Master, Noah De- 
 launay, did much to retrieve the affairs of his Gild ; and in the latter 
 year, at the close of his term of office, the Founders were clear of debt. 
 
 The objection of the Chamber of London to the same individual 
 belonging to more than one Company was met in 1755 by a proposal 
 that persons exercising the trade, and being of another Company, should 
 enter as Love Brothers, paying only 2s. for the King's duty, and not to 
 be eligible for any office. The only instance in which this scheme was 
 carried out seems to have been in 1767, when Mr. Edward Warner, 
 Citizen and Draper, and a founder by trade, paid a guinea and other 
 fees for this honorary distinction. But in 1772 Mr. Lotall, Clockmaker, 
 had his fees returned, because his election as a Founder in the ordinary 
 manner was declared to be irregular and void. 
 
 Another singular case occurred in 1773, when, on May 3, at a full 
 Court, Mr. John Cole, a Liveryman elect and afterward Master, insisted 
 on being admitted in proper form ; and the two Wardens accordingly 
 went outside, where Mr. Cole was waiting, and, a Livery gown and hood 
 having been delivered to them, one took the right-hand sleeve of the 
 gown and the other the left-hand one, and introduced into each severally 
 and respectively the arms of Mr. Cole, who, being so gowned, one of the 
 said Wardens thereupon placed a hood on the head of Mr. Cole. Mr.
 
 THE FOUNDERS OR COPPERSMITHS. 503 
 
 Cole being now gowned and hooded, one of the Wardens returned into 
 the Court room, and having informed the Company of what had taken 
 place, demanded if they were prepared to receive Mr. Cole. The Com- 
 pany signified their readiness, and, the Beadle opening the folding doors 
 wide, and silence being ordered, a procession was formed, headed by 
 the Beadle carrying his staff, behind whom followed Mr. Cole, with a 
 Warden on either side. Mr. Cole was thus led up and introduced to the 
 Master, who, on learning Mr. Cole's desire, with the wIkjIc Court, rose, 
 and the Master taking in iiis right hand the right hand of Mr. Cole, said : 
 " Gentlemen, I pronounce Brother Cole a Liveryman of this Company." 
 Hereupon all the members of the Court successively shook hands with 
 Brother Cole, and the Master invited him to dine with the Company 
 that day, for which Brother Cole expressed his obligations, but pleaded 
 a prior engagement. Bowing respectfully to the Court, he thereupon 
 took his leave, and gave 2s. 6d. to the Beadle and a like sum to the 
 poor-box. 
 
 Among other inconveniences and discomforts attendant on straitened 
 circumstances appears to have been a difficulty in providing Livery 
 gowns on emergencies, although at the Hall there was an apartment 
 appropriated to them. Sometimes the}' were borrowed from persons 
 who kept them on sale or hire, and who occasionally purchased them 
 from the Wardens when they were sold to cover arrears of fees ; but in 
 1844, at the opening of the Royal Exchange, when the Founders applied 
 for fifty tickets, the Committee of the Court of Aldermen gave leave 
 to such liverymen as had not gowns, to wear rosettes of the colours of 
 the Company at their stand in the Poultry. 
 
 In 1829, in lieu of any external eleemosynary provision, the Founders' 
 Charitable Fund was established, for the relief of distressed and deserv- 
 ing Liverymen and their widows, and upward of 500/. were subscribed 
 by the Court and Livery. The interest of whatever principal was col- 
 lected from time to time was to be distributed twice a year ; but no 
 larger sum than 3/. per annum was to be granted without a special order 
 of the Court, and a member of the Court in decayed circumstances or 
 his widow was to take precedence of Liverymen or their widows, and, 
 if the funds permitted, to receive double the said amount. 
 
 No other point of particular interest or curiosity offers itself to notice, 
 unless it is the presentation in 1835 by a member of fifty copies of 
 a pamphlet entitled Affectionate Advice to Apprentices, of which a copy 
 was to be given to each apprentice on being bound at the Hall. 
 
 The Company's accounts, however, throw some light on the nature 
 and development of the staff. At the very commencement, in 1497, 
 William Mivell, or Mepell, is employed, first as Clerk and subsequently
 
 504 THE MINOR COMPANIES 
 
 as Clerk and Beadle, at 16^. Sd a year, an allowance for his gown, and 
 doubtless other perquisites. The salary gradually rises to 3/., 4/., 10/., 
 20/., 40/., 100/. He originally lives at the Hall, when one is obtained, 
 and after the Fire receives a liberal indemnity for losses and rent-money ; 
 but in 1692 he is required to find himself in lodgings, this charge being 
 considered in the emoluments,^ and a Housekeeper, Sarah Shurley, is 
 appointed, with power to receive all rents arising from the hire of por- 
 tions of the building. 
 
 The first notice of the existence of a Beadle independent of the Clerk 
 is, as usual, of an indirect kind. In 1544 there is a charge of e,s. for 
 his quarter's wages. But he enjoys numerous advantages, including a 
 residence, and shortly supersedes the Clerk as the sizer of weights. The 
 Clerk and himself at various times are subject to readjustments of their 
 duties and claims, and are not very unfrequently convicted of embezzle- 
 ment. The income grows from i/. to 60/., a year, and in 1769 a member 
 of the Court is tempted to resign and to take the post. It is at present 
 worth 146/. a year. 
 
 The Company thus furnished itself by degrees with a Clerk, Beadle, 
 and Housekeeper, and in 1606 and 1679 appointed a Cook. But this 
 berth probably fell into abeyance when the use of the Hall became more 
 and more restricted through the financial necessity for accepting tenants. 
 It detracted from the characteristic and typical costume of the festive 
 spectacle, where the brethren and the sisteren assembled together in 
 their statutory apparel on the old ground at Lothbury, or even of the 
 official banquet in the Court parlour, when dinners and deliberations 
 were held at unconsecrated taverns — in places of common resort. 
 
 FOUNDEKS' COMP.\NY. M.\SER WITH COVER (14TH CENTURY). 
 
 ' The present Clerk has rooms at the Hall in St. Swithin's Lane, and, in addition 
 fo his salary of loo/., is entitled to certain fees.
 
 THE FRAMEWORK KNITTERS OR STOCKING WEAVERS. 505 
 
 XTbe jframcworl? Uiiiittcrs or Stochino Mcavcrs. 
 
 Stow ' tells us that in 1564 William Rider, apprentice to Thomas 
 Burdet, opposite St. Magnus Corner, London Bridge, happening to see 
 a pair of knit woollen stockings at the lodging of an Italian merchant 
 who had come from Mantua, borrowed 
 them, and made a second pair like them, 
 and these were the earliest articles of the 
 kind manufactured in England. 
 
 It was thirty-five years later that, accord- 
 ing to the historian just cited, the art of 
 knitting or weaving silk stockings, waist- 
 coats, and divers other things by engines or 
 steel looms was devised and perfected by 
 William Lee, Master of Arts, of St. John's 
 College, Cambridge, who afterward went arms, 1739. 
 
 abroad and extended the knowledge of the invention to France, Spain, 
 Italy, and other countries. 
 
 Under the account of the Mercers^ we have referred to the adoption 
 by Queen Elizabeth of the fashion of wearing silk stockings about 1560 ; 
 and her example would naturally be followed. So far as the immediate 
 matter is concerned, it may be sufficient to relate that in 1657 the fol- 
 lowers of this trade addressed to the Protector Cromwell : " The humble 
 representation of the promoters and inventors of the art and mistery 
 or trade of framework knitting or making of silk stockings or other work 
 in a frame or engine." The petitioners alleged that the trade of frame- 
 work knitting was never known or practised here in England or in any 
 other place in the world before it was (about fifty years past) invented 
 
 ' Annals, 16 15, p. 
 
 C.C. 
 
 64
 
 5o6 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 and found out by one William Lee, of Calverton, in the county of 
 Nottingham, gentleman, who, by himself and such of his kindred and 
 countrymen as he took unto him for servants, practised the same many 
 years somewhat imperfectly in comparison of the exactness it is since 
 brought into by the endeavours of some of your petitioners." They 
 therefore prayed that they might be united and incorporated by charter 
 under the Great Seal of England, whereby their just right to the in- 
 vention might be preserved from foreigners, the trade advanced, abuses 
 therein suppressed, the benefit of the Commonwealth by importation 
 and exportation and otherwise increased, and hundreds of poor families 
 comfortably relieved by their several employments about the same, who 
 would otherwise be exposed to ruin, having no other calling to live of 
 
 Upon this eloquent and pathetic appeal Cromwell granted the desired 
 charter, June 13th, 1657, and the same was enrolled in the Chamber of 
 London the 14th of July following. The Court of Aldermen did not take 
 so long to consider the expediency of ratifying the act as they had 
 done in prior cases, or a significant hint from his Highness might have 
 been received at Guildhall. 
 
 No text of this instrument, however, appears to be extant ; but it was 
 succeeded by one from Charles II. August 19th, 1663, in which the Com- 
 pany is incorporated by the name of the Master, Wardens, Assistants, 
 and Society of the Art or Mistery of Framework Knitters of the Cities 
 of London and Westminster, and Kingdom of England, and Dominion 
 of Wales, with perpetual succession, an exemption from the statute of 
 mortmain to 100/. a year, a common seal, the right of search, and other 
 ■customary privileges and powers. 
 
 The governing body was appointed to consist of a Master, two War- 
 xiens, and fifteen or more Assistants, and John Croson, the first Master, 
 was required to take an oath before a Master in Chancery for the due 
 execution of his office. The first Wardens, Court of Assistants, and Clerk 
 (John Hannis) were similarly nominated ; but the election of officers 
 thereafter was to vest in the Company, and to take place on Mid- 
 summer Day annually. 
 
 The Charter of 1663 was also promptly enrolled (Sept. 24, 1663). 
 But the Court of Aldermen did not grant a Livery till June 9, 17 13, 
 and the bye-laws do not seem to have been drawn up and approved by 
 the Judges till 1745. 
 
 The peculiarities in the present instance ai'e the omission in the 
 second charter, from political motives, of all recital of the first, the 
 swearing-in of the first Master in Chancery Chambers, and the unpre- 
 cedented width of scope allowed to the new institution. 
 
 In 1678 certain members of the Company united to purchase a site
 
 THE FRUITKRERS. 
 
 507 
 
 in Red Cross Street for the erection of a common Hall, and so late as 
 1720 a further amount was raised in a similar manner to complete the 
 arrangement. The result was possibly facilitated by the acquisition of 
 a Livery a few years before. In 1724 this is stated to number fifty-eight, 
 and in 1739 the same ; and in the latter year the executive consisted, 
 according to Maitland, of a Master, two Wardens, and eighteen Assist- 
 ants. The Livery fine was then 10/. 
 
 It soon came to pass that the large franchise conceded to this body, 
 and carried out under the bye-law.s of 1745, was discovered to be in- 
 jurious to trade ; and even in 1753 Parliament ruled that the ordinances 
 governed no one outside the ranks of the Gild. Such a decision para- 
 lysed the action of the latter, which ceased almost from that time 
 forward to intervene in the affairs of the trade. In or about 1821 the 
 Hall was sold to the Corporation for 3,628/. los. ^d.; and this, with 800/. 
 derived from surplus internal income, now forms the entire corporate 
 estate exclusively of a few charities managed by the Company. In 1861 
 the plate was sold for 79/. \6s. id., and the proceeds applied to the 
 repair of the almshouses 
 
 But a system of rigid frugality, which, judging from official returns, 
 has been long observed, ma}' considerably swell the property in course 
 of time. In 1880 there was a surplus of nearly 500/. 
 
 The sole article of interest or curiosity in the possession of the Frame- 
 work Knitters is a Master's chair, presented by a past Master in i68i. 
 
 Ube fruiterers. 
 
 OLD AR.MS. 
 
 ARMS, 1739.' 
 
 As an Association, the Fruiterers may be naturally supposed to have 
 existed prior to the establishment of a systematic constitution. But 
 we have very little to guide us in forming an opinion on this point, as 
 
 ' See these Arms engraved on a very grand scale in Wallis's Londoii's Aniuyry, 
 1677.
 
 508 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the only reference to them of ancient date is in the order of precedence 
 which was fixed in 15 15, and here they are placed last in a list of forty- 
 eight. In the rehearsal of the Gilds present at the Mayor's feast in 
 Guildhall in 153 1-2 the Fruiterers were represented by two members, 
 and had one mess allotted to them. They are particularly specified as 
 having no Livery. In levies of corn and money on the Gilds between 
 1602 and 1604 they appear as donors of sixteen quarters and I2.f. gd., 
 the Merchant Taylors heading the list with 936 quarters and '^^yl. Sj-. (^d. 
 
 James I., in his third year, incorporated this trade, " for the better 
 order, government, and rule of them," by the name of The Master, 
 Wardens, and Commonalty of the Mistery of Fruiterers of London, 
 with perpetual succession and government, a licence in mortmain to 50/. 
 a year, the faculty of making bye-laws, the right of search and supervision 
 over the City and a three miles' radius, and other usual powers. The 
 executive was fixed at a Master, two Wardens, and five or more, not 
 exceeding twenty. Assistants. 
 
 The present governing body consists of the constitutional number. 
 Election-day is on the 25th January, when the Master and Upper War- 
 den are selected from the Court, usually by rotation, and the Renter 
 Warden by the Court from the Livery. The Upper Warden has charge 
 of the charitable funds (which arise almost entirely out of corporate 
 savings), the Renter, of the general accounts. 
 
 No code of bye-laws seems to be known anterior to those of 1759. 
 They embrace provisions for the internal government, for the control 
 of the trade, and for the reception and treatment of apprentices. 
 
 We do not hear at what precise date the Company acquired a Livery. 
 The official returns of 1699, 1724, 1881-2, and 1S92 give it as 37, 57, 
 99, and 10 1 respectively. 
 
 The earliest glimpse of the Fruiterers, subsequently to their founda- 
 tion, is connected with the Ulster Plantation in 161 3, when they sub- 
 scribed for a portion of the Vintners' Bellaghy Manor. There is an 
 annual payment on this account of about 3/. \os. ; and the funds and 
 assets of the Company are otherwise derived from fines, fees, and 
 quarterages, which, under the auspices of a thrifty management, have 
 resulted in a very considerable accumulation during many years passed. 
 In 1834 the property was described as mainly consisting of 775/. Bank 
 Stock. 
 
 The Company has long ceased to maintain any direct or official con- 
 nection with the fruit-trade ; but of late years it has offered prizes 
 through the Royal Botanic Society for the best English-grown fruit, the 
 exhibitor in all cases to be no other than the grower. 
 
 In 1 891 Sir James Whitehead, then Master, manifested a warm interest
 
 THE 1-RUITERERS. 509 
 
 in the subject, and from his personal influence was enabled to give a 
 marked impulse to the movement for encouraging fruit-culture. A large 
 and influential meeting was held in the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion 
 House to promote local exhibitions all over the country and the delivery 
 of practical lectures. There was, and yet is, a reasonable feeling, that 
 the extension of knowledge and industry- in this direction might tend to 
 alleviate agricultural distress, and form a new source of profit for cot- 
 tagers and other country folk throughout the suburbs and provinces. 
 
 Toward the Mansion House fund for this purpose Messrs. Crosse and 
 Blackwell contributed 105/., Mr. Chaplin, Minister of Agriculture, 21/., 
 and others smaller sums. The part taken by the Company in the matter, 
 and perhaps the fragrant associations with it, have assisted in drawing 
 into its ranks in modern days a highly respectable class of persons, 
 whose admission-fees sensibly and favourably affect the receipts. 
 
 There is an immemorial usage, by which the Fruiterers, on October 7 
 yearly, present to the Lord Mayor an offering of English-grown fruit 
 in amicable commutation of the ancient right of the municipal 
 authorities, as City fruit-meters, to a toll in kind on all produce of this 
 sort brought into the City. Some eminent firm supplies this prescriptive 
 due, and there is a regular entry of it in the accounts. The gratuities 
 to the Lord Mayor's servants inclusive, the outlaj- is about 24/. 
 
 There is no Hall ; but the meetings are periodically held either at 
 Guildhall or at the Hall of the Parish Clerks in Silver Street. The 
 annual banquet on St. Paul's Day (January' 25) is a grand and costly 
 affair ; but it is purely a question of subscription among the members 
 and their friends, and does not represent a corporate charge. The 
 audit dinner is defrayed out of the Company's funds. 
 
 On the whole, the items registered in the books are of ordinary 
 character ; yet one may be particularized as bearing the impress of 
 antiquity, and it is the payment at each anniversary festival of a sum 
 of 15/., more or less, to " first-comers," who possibly had their dinner 
 fees returned to them as a reward for punctuality — a virtue more 
 appreciable at a period when the guests, who chiefly belonged to the 
 trade, and resided on their own premises in the suburbs, were apt to 
 find a difficulty in reaching the place of assembly.' 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Frviterers Secrets : Containing directions for the due time and manner of 
 gathering all kindes of fruite. ... By N. F. 410, 1604. Reissued, 4to, 
 1609, under the title of The Husbandmans Fruitfull Orchard. 
 
 ' In the Scriveners' Books are repeated entries of payments to members "for 
 timely attendance."
 
 5IO 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A Treatise of Frvit-Trees. Shewing the manner of Grafting, Setting, Pruning, and 
 Ordering of them in all respects. By Ralph Austen. 4to, 1653. 
 
 A Book of Fruits and Flowers. Shewing the Nature and Use of them, either for 
 Meat or Medicine. 4to, 1653, 1656. 
 
 Herefordshire Orchards. A Pattern for all England. Written in an Epistolary 
 Address to Samuel Hartlib, Esq. By J. B. 8vo, 1657. 
 
 Observations upon some part of Sir Francis Bacon's Natural History as it concerns 
 Fruit-trees, Fruits, and Flowers. By Ralph Austen. 4to, 1658. 
 
 The French Gardiner : Instructing how to cultivate all sorts of Fruit-trees. . . . 
 
 Translated (with additions) by John Evelyn. 8vo, 1658, 1672, 1675. 
 John Evelyn's Pomona, appended to his Sylva. Folio, 1664, 1670. 
 A Dialogve : Or Familiar Discourse, and conference betweene the Husbandman, 
 
 and Frvit-Trees, in his Nurseries, Orchards, and Gardens. . . . By Ra 
 
 Avsten, Practiser (50 years) in the Art of Planting Frvit-Trees. . . . 8vo, 
 
 Cxlord, 1676. 
 Plain and Full Instructions to raise all sorts of Fruit-Trees that prosper in 
 
 England, By T. Langford. 8vo, 16S1. 
 Fruit- Walls Improved. By inclining them to the Horizon. By Nicolas Facio de 
 
 Duillier. 410, 1699. With two folded plates. 
 
 xrbe (Btr&lers. 
 
 The remoteness of the origin of this occupation speaks for itself. 
 The gradual call for commodities gave rise to the market of supply ; 
 and it was merely secondary and indirect agencies which brought the 
 manufacturers or vendors of articles of use and consumption together, 
 and led them to appreciate the value of union. The name Ceiuturier 
 had been adopted at an early date as a family patronymic, demonstrating 
 the antiquity and familiarity of the business. In i Henry III. (1217) 
 Benet or Benedict Seynturer was one of the Sheriffs of London. 
 
 The Girdlers were, doubtless, at the outset, a Fraternity by prescrip- 
 tion, as there is testimony that the manufacture to which they devoted 
 themselves was in a flourishing condition even in Anglo-Saxon times, 
 and had indeed reached its climax at or before the Restoration. 
 
 They originally constituted a lay union in St. Laurence, Old Jewry,
 
 THE GIKULERS. 5 I I 
 
 having established themselves there under the tutelary auspices of that 
 church and saint. They possessed Ordinances and a government, the 
 latter most probably in the first place by an Alderman of the feudal 
 type, who was in due course replaced by Wardens. 
 
 The antiquity of the Brotherhood is sufficiently proved by the 
 language of letters patent directed by Edward III. in 1327 to " Les 
 Ceincturiers de notre Citee de Loundres," wherein 
 the ancient regulations and usages of the craft are 
 approved and confirmed. The royal licence author- 
 izing the Girdlers to elect one or two persons to 
 overlook the rest and prevent defective or dishonest 
 work by no means makes it certain that such an 
 administrative principle was not already in force. 
 But it was not consonant with the dignity of the 
 
 OLD .ARMS. 
 
 Crown to admit a defeasance or forestalment of 
 its authority. Under the designation of Zonars it is enumerated 
 among the City Gilds which in 1376 were represented on the Common 
 Council, being entitled to send four members. 
 
 The patent above mentioned, which, as we readily perceive, did not 
 pretend to be more than a licence, was confirmed by Richard II. in 
 1377, and by Henry IV. in 1401. No charter was obtained till the 27 
 Henry VI. (1448) when the Brotherhood of St. Laurence was incor- 
 porated under the name of The Master and Wardens of the Mistery 
 of Girdlers of the City of London ; and this grant was renewed, 2 
 Edward IV., 10 Elizabeth, 15 Charles I., and i James II. The charter 
 of Elizabeth united together in one corporation the Girdlers, Wyre- 
 workers, and Pinners by the style of The Master and Wardens or 
 Keepers of the Art or Mistery of Girdlers, London. What the motive 
 for this consolidation may have been, does not transpire ; the two other 
 bodies comprised in the proceeding do not seem to have possessed any 
 property or influence ; and the fact may explain their omission from the 
 title. At this period, as we have elsewhere shown, the pins used among 
 us were chiefly imported. 
 
 But the three misteries are joined and invited together into one body 
 corporate and politic and one Society and Company for ever. The right 
 of search and a licence in mortmain up to 40/. a }-ear were among the 
 concessions. 
 
 What ma)' be termed the political history of the Company, sub- 
 sequently to its formation in 1448, seems to have been more than usually 
 devoid of incident ; but this partly arises from the almost total loss of 
 its archives in 1666. Of the little that we are able to collect, the most 
 part is derived from casual or indirect sources.
 
 512 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The Ordinances of the Girdlers, framed by their own body, and 
 approved by the Court of Aldermen, were apparently first formulated 
 in 1344, and were in substance as follows: i. No man of the trade was 
 to work any manner of tissue of silk, or wool, or of linen thread, unless 
 the tissue was according to the assize, that is, of six quarters ; 2. That 
 no man should garnish, or cause to be garnished, girdles or garters with 
 any metal but laten, iron, or steel ; 3. That no man should make them 
 barred, unless there were a rowel beneath the bar ; 4. That no tissue of 
 sixth, fifth, third, or double size should be garnished without a double 
 point at the buckle in the tongue, and in the bars with a double point 
 down to the rowel ; 5. That apprentices should be taken for seven years, 
 and only by freemen ; 6. That no man should work on Saturday, or on 
 the Eve of a Double Feast, after noon ; 7. That no man should keep his 
 shop open on Sunday, although he might sell on emergency inside the 
 shop ; 8. That none should set any woman to work, save his wife or 
 daughter ; 9. That none should work by night ; 10. That none should 
 make girdles of worse than ox-leather. 
 
 The Girdlers were not entitled to harness their goods with either of 
 the precious metals, but were obliged, if such a process was desired, to 
 employ a goldsmith, who set his own mark on that portion of the work. 
 
 In 1356 the Girdlers obtained from the Crown a power of search and 
 seizure over all goods appertaining to their mistery, when the same were 
 of inferior workmanship or of untrue material. The Gild had repre- 
 sented that its members were injured and defamed by certain men 
 outside the City, who wrought girdles of baser metal than was allowed 
 by custom ; and the writ issued in their favour and behalf partook of 
 the character of the grant to the Saddlers in 1272 in being a general 
 licence for the whole realm. But the Saddlers framed a remonstrance 
 against the privilege as obnoxious and unjust, apparently on account 
 of leather saddle-girths forming part of their business, and procured a 
 suspension of the writ till the next meeting of Parliament by Order in 
 Council of the 26th of October in the same year. There is nothing to 
 shew what the ultimate issue was. The transaction serves to illustrate 
 the lax way in which, down to a much later epoch, our Kings, from the 
 ill-organized official system prevailing, were apt to assent to demands of 
 a certain class on the most ex parte and imperfect information. 
 
 A wide interval elapsed between the municipal regulations for the 
 control and protection of the trade in the fourteenth century, based on 
 customs and principles possibly never committed to writing, and the 
 only code of bye-laws, which we can trace as having been made pursuant 
 to the charter. This is dated May 30, 16S2, and was approved in the 
 ordinary manner by the Judges, agreeably to the statute 19 Henry VII.,
 
 THE GIRDLERS. 515 
 
 enacted to guard against the authorization of anything contrary to the 
 prerogative or the laws of the realm. In grants made by Henry VI. we 
 find this proviso, however, already introduced. 
 
 In consequence of a change of fashion, the practical interest of the 
 Girdlers in the calling cannot be said to have survived the reign of 
 Charles II. ; and it has been pointed out that the charter which blended 
 them with the Pinners and Wireworkers, by reason of the successive 
 redistribution of industries and establishment of needlemakers, wire- 
 workers, hook-and-eye makers, lanthorn-makers, stock and wool card 
 makers, tin-plate workers, and others, rendered supervision impracticable,, 
 even if it had not become otherwise inoperative. 
 
 The governing body is composed of a Master, two Wardens, and 
 seventeen Assistants, according to the charter. The choice of the 
 Master and Wardens is vested in the Livery, and they are occasionally 
 re-elected. A liveryman must have served seven years, before he is 
 qualified to come on the Court. The Clerk, Beadle, and Porter are 
 elected or confirmed at the annual general meeting. This scheme shews 
 a fairly popular constitution. 
 
 In iSSi there were 91 on the Livery; and between 1S41 and 1880 
 153 freemen were admitted. The ranks of the liverymen do not appear 
 to undergo much alteration. In 1699 the returns were 85 ; and in 1724, 
 the same. 
 
 The Company refers to its severance from an active share in the 
 united industries, whether commercial or administrative, as a matter of 
 ancient history ; but it has been fortunate enough from the fifteenth 
 century to a date within memory to acquire under various wills and 
 other dispositions a series of valuable properties, including the site of 
 its Hall. 
 
 These estates lie in the City itself, at Cow Cross, at Hammersmith 
 and Brook Green, and in Ireland. That at Hammersmith is very large, 
 and, with other lands and tenements in London, was given by Henry 
 Flycke by feoffment in 1579 and by will in 1582. The George Inn is 
 specified as a leading feature in the bequest, and was by no means 
 impossibly the best part of it. The Irish estate is a sub-share of the 
 Skinners' manor of Pellipar, and is managed by the latter Company. 
 The Girdlers' income used to be about 700/. a year ; but it has since 
 suffered reduction. 
 
 The most interesting and the oldest possession, however, goes back 
 to the epoch anterior to the establishment of the Company, and was the 
 ground in the Old Jewry on which the Hall was subsequently built. 
 This important foundation of the prosperity of the Brotherhood was a 
 gift under the will of Andrew Hunt, January 24, 143 1-2, and included 
 
 C.C. 65
 
 514 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the area on which the Hall stands, with its appurtenances, and was to 
 be held subject to superstitious and other uses, namely : the performance 
 of masses for the soul of the departed in the Church of St. Laurence, the 
 offering of five wax candles, each of a pound weight, before the image 
 of the saint, twice a year for ever, the Vicar of St. Laurence being 
 joined in the trust to secure the observance of these terms ; the per- 
 manent provision of lodging for two decayed members of the Society on 
 the premises, and the payment to one of them of sevenpence a week.' 
 
 The Hunt and Flycke estates, both of which may be judged to have 
 been of very moderate worth at and long after the period of acquisition, 
 constitute the most important portion of the whole property. The 
 former, represented by the Hall, which was rebuilt and refurnished 
 between 1877 and 1880 at a cost of nearly 10,000/.,' is of course not 
 remunerative. A shrinkage has been experienced in those directions 
 where the Company owns agricultural land ; and certain improving 
 leases do not fall in till the middle of the twentieth century. 
 
 The Company appears to have no objects of historical or archjeo- 
 logical value. The only eminent member whom it boasts was Thomas 
 Sutton, founder of the Charterhouse. 
 
 ^be (3lass«SeUcrs. 
 
 We indirectly learn from the patent granted by Elizabeth in 1580 to 
 a Venetian whose name is variously given, for making Venice glasses in 
 Crutched Friars, that at that time there were fifty persons belonging to 
 a Glass-Sellers' Association, who, pleading to the Lords of the Council 
 
 ' The Company eventually varied and enlarged this charity by granting pensions 
 of 30/. a year to two liverymen and of 10/. a year to the widows of two other members. 
 
 - To meet this outlay a good deal of real and other estate seems to have been sold, 
 including some in Basinghall Street.
 
 THE GLASS-SELLERS. 515 
 
 the grave injury attendant on the grant to their own trade, succeeded 
 in obtaining a h'mitation of the sale of the foreigner's wares to his own 
 works or depot. 
 
 We owe to Stow the information that the premises used as a glass- 
 factory had originally been the Hall of Crutched Friars. " The Friers 
 Hall," he says (edit. 1633,9. 157), " was made a glassc- 
 house, or house wherein were made glasse of divers sorts 
 to drinkc in." The origin of this establishment is usually 
 assigned to the year 1557; but it was at any rate shortly 
 after the dissolution of religious houses. The same 
 authority adds that on the 4th September, 1575, the 
 place was destroyed by fire. There were at the time 
 
 ' . COMMON SEAL. 
 
 stored up for the furnaces no fewer than 40,000 billets 
 
 of wood, which explains the inability to quench the flames, and implies 
 
 operations on an extensive scale. 
 
 At this institution, which was constructively rebuilt after the fire, a 
 celebrated literary character, James Howell, writer of the Letters, was 
 at one time employed on the staff in the capacity of Steward. 
 
 The Glass-sellers, who comprised in their business the manufacture 
 of looking-glasses, do not come prominently under notice in an official 
 way, till, under the usual plea of abuses in the trade demanding a more 
 regular and authoritative control, they obtained a charter from Charles 
 II. in 1664 by the name of the Master, Wardens, Assistants, and 
 Commonalty of Glass-Sellers of London, declaring them, free as well as 
 foreign, in London and its liberties and within seven miles thereof, 
 to be one body politic, with perpetual succession, the right of search 
 with warrant and constable, and other usual privileges. There is 
 particular mention of the art of grinding, polishing, casing, foyling, and 
 finishing of looking-glasses ; and we observe a special reservation of the 
 patent rights of Thomas Tilson of London, merchant, for the sole 
 making of crystal glasses and plate and other glass for mirrors, coach- 
 windows, etc., doubtless the works at Lambeth patronized by the Duke 
 of Buckingham, and of those of the Venetian factory above-mentioned. 
 
 The charter, dated July 20, 1664, was enrolled in the Chamber of 
 London on the 20th of September following, and the bye-laws were 
 approved on the 28th of November. 
 
 It appears that between 1664 and 1684 the Glass- Sellers assumed 
 the title to create a Livery without the usual licence from the Court 
 of Aldermen, but that under the influence of the Quo Warranto the 
 custom fell into desuetude, and some members joined the Liveries of 
 other Companies. But about 1710 a revival took place in the state of 
 the glass business, especially in flint and looking-glasses, and the
 
 ;i6 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 number and character of the Company consequently improved ; and in 
 1712 a Livery of sixty was granted after the usual formalities. 
 
 It is likely that such a concession at that time was fairly commensu- 
 rate with the commercial standing of the Glass-Sellers; but in 1825 a 
 compliance with a further prayer for extension, and the carriage of the 
 number to a hundred and twenty, with a 20/. fine and other charges 
 must be simply interpreted as the now familiar process for raising funds, 
 which had first come into operation after the Great Fire, and led to the 
 Act of Common Council of 1697. 
 
 In 1724 the Livery numbered, however, only forty; in 1882, fifty-one; 
 and in 1892, 38 ; so that the smaller complement scarcely seems to 
 have been reached. 
 
 The bye-laws of 1664 are singularly exhaustive, and provide for a 
 larger development than the Companj- was destined to attain. They 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON GLASSES. 
 
 deal with all the incidence of internal government, including funeral 
 observances and the reception of apprentices, and declare that the 
 meetings are to be held at the Hall or some other certain appointed place 
 — an alternative not generally afforded, but perhaps suggested by the 
 discontent in some cases through the absence of becoming accom- 
 modation. 
 
 The corporate income of the Glass-sellers arises from a small property 
 in stocks, and the fines and fees received from members of the Court, 
 Livery, and Freedom ; ^ its only trust is a scholarship of 50/. a year, 
 tenable for four years at either of the Universities, founded by Mr. John 
 Abbott, Master of the Company in 1875, in favour of the City of 
 
 ' In 1892, according to Whitaker, the corporate income was nil ; but this we appre- 
 hend to be an error. The same authority sets down the trust income as 21/., but does 
 -not include the Abbott endowment.
 
 THE GLAZIERS. 
 
 517 
 
 London School. In the Returns of 1S34, tlic average yearly revenue 
 was said to be about 40/. 
 
 It is highly creditable to a body so modestlj' endowed, that in 1.S7G 
 it organized, at a cost of not less than 400/., an Exhibition of Glass at 
 the Alexandra Palace, at which medals, certificates, and money prizes 
 were awarded. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 The Miserable Case of the Glass-Makers. An undated broadside. 
 
 Z\K (Blasters. 
 
 .\KMS, 1633. 
 
 AKMS, 1739. 
 
 Indirect traces of the Glazier, both as a craftsman and as the mem- 
 ber of a Fellowship, frequently occur, long before the formation of the 
 Company under that name. Valid reasons often existed for the delay- 
 in seeking a charter, and the least usual one was the reluctance of the 
 Crown to confer it. The two principal difficulties were perhaps the want 
 of union and the want of money ; and we generally find that the move- 
 ment was ultimately made by one or two leading members of the 
 mistery, who provided the funds and conducted the negotiation. That 
 the art and industry were in a very flourishing state in the time of 
 Elizabeth^ there is little doubt ; and on the accession of the Stuarts, 
 glass became even more customary in the windows of public and private 
 buildings. There is evidence that for a certain length of time the case- 
 ments of the Companies' Halls were unprovided with this shelter from 
 the weather, and that the rain was allowed to penetrate into the apart- 
 ments. But the ancient Glazier did not confine himself to secular work. 
 
 ' Young, glazier to the Queen, lived in Wood Street, Cheapside, and it is said that 
 the head of James IV. of Scotland, when his embalmed remains were taken from 
 Shene monastery after the Dissolution, and cast on a rubbish-heap, was severed from 
 the trunk by a workman, and came into Young's possession. The latter kept it for 
 some time, and was struck by its freedom from any offensive odour; but he eventually 
 let the se.xton of St. Michael's, Wood Street, lay it in the charnel-house.
 
 5l8 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 and in furnishing painted glass to almost numberless churches and 
 chapels found perhaps the most lucrative department of his occupation. 
 There was no lack of employment, as time passed, however, for the 
 followers of this calling among all classes in the City, who used it for 
 residential or commercial purposes, and the master-glazier might count 
 on receiving extensive orders both from the clergy and laity, alike 
 for new work and repairs. We annex a specification of labour and 
 material supplied in 1608 to the Carpenters' Company: — 
 
 THE GLAZIER'S BILL. s. d. 
 
 Iinpriniis for 95 quarrels [squares] of new glass 
 
 //. In the said Hall, 115 foot of old glass, repaired at \d. a foot 
 
 //. In the little parlour, iS foot of old glass, repaired at \d. a foot 
 
 It. In the same parlour, 12 quarals of new glass at \d. a quarel 
 
 //. In the great parlour, 2 quarels 
 
 //. In the same parlour, 12 foot repaired 
 
 //. In the stairs, 8 foot repaired 
 
 //. In the same stairs, 15 quarels 
 
 //. In the entry, 3 quarels... 
 
 //. In the pastery, 4 foot repaired 
 
 //. In the same pastery, 5 quarels 
 
 //. In the galleries, 50 quarels ... 
 
 //. In the same galleries, 80 foot repaired 
 
 //. In the buttery, 7 quarels 
 
 //. In the clerk's house, 7 quarels 
 
 The earliest work, serving as a manual for the trade, was published by 
 Walter Gedde in 1615, and about the same date (12 James I.) an Act of 
 Common Council directed that all persons whosoever, using the Art of 
 Glazing within the City and Liberties should thenceforth be subject to 
 the control and search of the Masters of the Craft, and laid down very 
 stringent regulations for the binding of apprentices to none but free 
 Glaziers. 
 
 This decree seems to imply the existence in and before 1616 of a 
 Fraternity possessing some kind of government and recognised jurisdic- 
 tion ; a very few years later (1627-8) irrefragable evidence of such a 
 thing meets the eye in the committal of the Wardens to Newgate for 
 failure to pay an assessment toward a loan to the Crown ; which cir- 
 cumstance may be partly construed by the want of corporate funds ; 
 as in 1602-4 the Gild is at the bottom of a list of subscribers to charges 
 levied by the City as the donor of eight quarters of corn, and ^s. <\d. 
 respectively. When we come to the date of actual incorporation, 13 
 Charles I., the preamble of the grant allows in so many words, of course, 
 the antiquity of the art and its rank as an established institution. We 
 learn that the ancient Fraternity of the Mistery or Art of Glaziers had 
 theretofore made many good orders for the regulation of themselves and 
 
 VIJ. 
 
 XJ. 
 
 l.\. 
 
 VIJ. 
 
 
 WW). 
 
 
 XIJ. 
 
 
 IJ- 
 
 
 XIJ. 
 
 
 VllJ. 
 
 
 XV. 
 
 
 UJ. 
 
 
 inj. 
 
 
 V. 
 
 IIIJ 
 
 • iJ- 
 
 vj- 
 
 VUJ. 
 
 
 VIJ. 
 
 
 VIJ.
 
 THE GLAZIERS. 519 
 
 their calling, and that in several preceding reigns their condition had 
 been advanced and improved. The present charter therefore erected the 
 existing freemen, in London and within five miles compass, into one body 
 corporate and politic by the name of the Wardens and Commonalty 
 of the Mistery or Art of Glaziers and Painters of glass, and bestowed 
 on them the power to make bye-laws for the guidance of the Craft .nid 
 the punishment of offenders, a common seal, and other privileges. 
 
 This and the one which superseded it, I James II., are the only 
 charters in the possession or knowledge of the Company. The latter 
 seems to be that by which it is governed, save the disabling proviso as 
 to conformity and one or two other points, and prescribes that the 
 executive shall consist of two Wardens and eighteen Assistants chosen 
 from the Commonaltj- annually on St. Matthew's day. In 1S82, how- 
 ever, the Court was composed of a Master, two Wardens, and only 
 thirteen Assistants. There were at that time fifteen freemen and thirty- 
 two liverymen. In 1699 and 1724 the Liver}- had been 76 and lOO 
 respectively. 
 
 Of the original by-e-laws we do not meet with the te.xt, but later Articles 
 expressely repealing these were framed at a court held at Loriners' Hall 
 February 19th, 1749. They are thirty-two in number, and touch upon 
 the details of management and control. By No. 12, the person elected 
 Steward was liable to supply the Annual Dinner on Lord Mayor's Day, 
 or pay a fine of 6/. ; No. 14 requires the presentment of a proof-piece 
 from apprentices seeking their freedom ; and No. 18 levies 4^. from 
 Glaziers whose premises are searched, there being presumably //7W(?/^«> 
 evidence of something amiss. It is almost superfluous to add that the 
 search and other like claims are a dead letter. 
 
 The corporate estate of the Company is principally derived from in- 
 ternal sources, and 3,700/ stock, arising from the sale of property in 
 Thames Street and Queen Street, Cheapside, which was purchased, 
 June 6, 1671, for 490/. The trust estate is worth about 50/ a year. 
 
 The objects of interest are limited to the common seal and the 
 Master's jewel. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A Booke of Svndry Draughtes, Principaly serving for Glasiers ; And not Im- 
 pertinent for Plasterers and Gardiners. By Walter Gedde. 4to, 161 s. 
 
 The Art of Glass. By Antonio Neri. Translated into English by C. M. 8vo, 
 1662. Reprinted, folio, 1826. 
 
 Essays of the Strange Subtility of Effluviums, . . . together with a Discovery 
 ofthe Perviousness of Glass. By the Honourable Robert Boyle, F.R.S. 8vo, 1673. 
 
 The Art of Glass. Shewing how to make all sorts of Glass, Crystal and Enamel. 
 Likewise the making of Pearls, Precious Stones, China, and Looking Glasses. 
 By H. de Blancourt. 8vo, 1699. With Plates. 
 
 This work includes the method of making Glass Eyes.
 
 520 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Zbc ©lovers. 
 
 The Glovers framed their Ordinances, and had them approved by 
 the Corporation, in 1349. They embrace one or two unusual provisions, 
 namely, that no one of the trade shall be admitted to the Freedom of 
 the City without the assent of a majority of the Wardens ; 2. That 
 if any servant in the trade shall steal from his master to the value 
 of 1 2c/., more or less, the default shall be arranged by the Wardens, 
 unless the offender elect to be judged otherwise. The remainder of the 
 code offers nothing of particular interest or relevance. 
 
 It occurred in the very next year succeeding the issue of these Ordi- 
 nances, that a case of the breach of them was brought by the Wardens 
 of the Gild before the Mayor's Court. Seventeen pairs of gloves, 
 " vamped up in a false fashion, in deceit of the people, and to the 
 scandal of all the trade," were found upon John Francis of Northamp- 
 ton, with other spurious goods, and were burned by order of the Court 
 in Cheap near the Stone Cross. 
 
 In 1372 the Glovers are found among the thirty-one bodies which 
 joined in raising a benevolence amounting altogether to 452/. i6s. 
 toward the cost of the King's wars in France. In 1464 (October 20) 
 they received from Clarencieux, King of Arms, a grant of a coat of 
 difference, from the terms of which we gather that the Craft then 
 possessed two Wardens Thomas Hoddesden and Nicholas Wright, 
 and the power of making bye-laws. This coat was quartered with one 
 sometimes, but wrongly, ascribed to the Pursers. 
 
 In 1488 (April 26) we perceive that the Pursers obtained the sanction 
 of the City to a new set of Ordinances, in which there is no allusion 
 to the Glovers, still a separate, and perhaps weak, community. But ten 
 years afterward we come across a joint petition to the Court of Aldermen 
 on the part of their co-citizens, the Freemen of the two Crafts, re- 
 presenting that time out of mind they have been two separate Crafts, 
 and so have continued to this day, with divers good Ordinances, and
 
 THE GLOVERS. 52 I 
 
 many of them. The said petitioners were formerly of meetly substance 
 and able not only to live, but to bear their parts toward the charges of 
 the City ; but now of late they have grown both alike sorely decayed 
 both in numbers and property, without means to sustain their Fellow- 
 ships, or to bear lot and scot. Therefore they pray the Court to grant 
 that they may be henceforth one Craft, under the name of Glovers- 
 Pursers, and be so enrolled ; and the demand was conceded. 
 
 We hear no more of the matter till 150 1-2, when in a record of the 
 Gilds possessing Liveries the Glovers-Pursers are placed twenty-seventh^ 
 with a Livery of twenty-three. Very shortly after (June 7, 1502), they 
 were incorporated with the Leathersellers, and there the first stage 
 of the independent annals of the Glovers terminates. 
 
 But a sufficientl}- remarkable circumstance is, that, whereas in 1498 
 the Pursers and Glovers had pleaded their common depression and 
 poverty, in 1502 the former at all events were weighty and influential 
 enough to prevail on the Leathersellers to adopt their special religious 
 observances, and to impress on that important body their own ritualistic 
 idiosyncrasies. 
 
 The original Gild or Fraternity of Glovers had in 1464, as we have 
 thus shown, an Executive and coat-armour, and had, thirty-four years 
 subsequently, effected a junction with the Pursers, a more powerful 
 Fellowship, but drawn into peculiarly strict alliance with the other by 
 unity of religious feeling. 
 
 Whether the Pursers here mentioned were identical with those " of 
 the Bridge," a Brotherhood possibly as old as 11 80, and already associ- 
 ated with the Leathersellers of Cheap in 1372, we cannot be sure ; but in 
 their Ordinances of 1488 the associates of the Glovers seem to connect 
 themselves with the Grey Friars within Newgate, and in 1 502 with 
 the Chapel of Our Lady at St. Thomas of Aeon in Cheapside. The 
 Leathersellers, on their part, appear to have selected as their place for 
 devotion and offerings the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, near Guild- 
 hall ; and on their coalition with the Glovers-Pursers in that year the 
 united body transferred their allegiance to Cheapside, or in other words, 
 the Leathersellers deferred in this respect to their new allies. Yet in the 
 Leathersellers' Ordinances of 1635 the Glovers and Glovers-Pursers are 
 cited (possibly by error) as if they had been distinct. 
 
 Only three years posterior to the date just quoted, the members of the 
 Glove Trade, under the auspices of a development of taste for more 
 costly and elaborate fashions in that article of costume, were encouraged 
 to make an effort to recover their corporate independence, their voice 
 in the general Council having perhaps, since the Reformation and the 
 aggrandizement of the Leathersellers, somewhat lost its weight ; and 
 
 C.C. 66
 
 522 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 a new Company was constituted by letters patent of September 5, 1638 
 (14 Charles I.), under the title of "The Master, Wardens, and Fellow- 
 ship of the Company of Glovers of the City of London." 
 
 Its government consisted in 1739 of a Master, four Wardens, and 
 thirty Assistants, with a Livery of 130 paying a fine of 5/. i^s. A,d. ; and 
 at that time it had a Hall in Beech Lane. According to official returns, 
 the Livery in 1699 amounted to 120 and in 1724-5 to 128. 
 
 Of the later history of the Glovers little is known, except that in 
 1882 its entire property consisted of 3,800/. stocks, that the Livery fine 
 was 21/. and that for coming on the Court 52/. io.f. The fees on taking 
 up the Freedom are correspondingly high. According to Whitaker, the 
 Livery in 1889 was 14, and in 1892,90 — the latter figure a probable 
 misprint for 9. 
 
 The City Regulations of 1350 fixed the price of a pair of sheepskin 
 gloves at id., and a superior quality at \\d., and so upward. 
 
 During a lengthened period the trade must have largely profited by 
 the very general demand among both sexes in the upper classes for 
 coverings for the hand for horsemanship, hunting and hawking, as well 
 as for tournaments and occasions of ceremony ' and gallantry, and for 
 ordinary use. They were bought for new year's gifts, generally per- 
 fumed or inscribed with posies or precepts ; and they were worn by men 
 as favours or tokens. Great expense was often incurred during the 
 Tudor and (more especially) the Stuart reigns, alike in the material and 
 the fabric. To the Ironmongers' pageant for 1566, James Peele con- 
 tributed, or rather supplied, six pairs of gloves for the children who took 
 part, at 6d. a pair. 
 
 As Peele was the author of a volume on " Book-keeping," published 
 in 1553, and as he is also mentioned as the writer of the pageant above- 
 mentioned, the Glovers may think it worth while to claim him as a 
 brother, more especially since he was probably related, if not father, 
 to George Peele the dramatist. The family was apparently of a literary 
 turn ; for Stephen Peele, the contemporary stationer, produced several 
 
 fugitive pieces about 1570. 
 
 EUinda, one of the ladies com- 
 memorated in Lovelace's Lucasta, 
 1649, is represented as wearing white 
 gloves trimmed with ermine. In the 
 Museum at Saffron Walden is the 
 
 • A pair of richly embroidered gloves, for ceremonial use, formerly belonging to 
 Louis XIII. of France, is figured from the original by Lacroix {La Vie Militaire aic 
 Moyen Age, 1873, p. 215).
 
 THE GOLD AND SILVER WYRE DRAWERS. 
 
 seventeenth-century lady's glove represented in the text from a draw- 
 ing by Fairholt. 
 
 It is mentioned that in 1580 the haberdashers' shops in London had 
 on sale both French and Spanish gloves. 
 
 Furred gloves arc named in the Skinners' charter of 1667, and were, 
 it is there said, sometimes irregularly lined or fitted by apprentices. 
 
 In A>t Abridgment of the City Charter, 1680, the package duties charged 
 on two of the commoner sorts of imported gloves were, for those with silk 
 fringe and faced with taffeta, per dozen pairs, a penny ; for those lined 
 with coney or lamb-skin, or plain, a halfpenny per dozen pairs. 
 
 From the same source we learn that glovers " clipping the maund or 
 packet " were chargeable, under the Package Tariff, with the payment 
 of \\d. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 The Gloues deuised for New yeres gyftes to teche yonge people to knowe good from 
 euyl wherby they may learn the x. commaudementes at theyr fyngers endcs 
 other good lessons be written within the fyngers, the tree of vertues with her 
 braunches in the right palme and the route of vyces in the lefte, with a declara- 
 tion of the other pyctures folowinge in meter. God save the Ouene. [About 
 1558.] A broadside with a woodcut. 
 
 Xlbe (BoIO an& Silver Mvrc drawers.' 
 
 PRESENT .'VRMS. 
 
 The art of drawing wire and thread, formed from the precious metals,- 
 was doubtless a development, although an early one, of that which 
 limited itself to copper and iron. Both branches of the trade existed 
 in a thoroughly established state in the reign of Edward IV.-^ The 
 
 ' A fuller account of this Company than is practicable in a general work will be 
 found in Mr. Horace Stewart's very useful and elaborate monograph. History of the 
 Worshipfil Company of Gold and Silver IVyre-DraweiS, and of the Origin and 
 Development of the Industry which the Company represents. 4to, 1891. With illus- 
 trations. 
 
 ^ The wire enclosing the wooden handle of the Walworth dagger at Fishmongers' 
 Hall has the appearance of oxydized silver, and if so is a very early example of this 
 kind of work.
 
 524 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ordinary Wire-workers were at that period, as we have already shown, 
 ■on an intimate footing with the Pinners, and seem to have occupied the 
 same quarters and used the same ledgers. In 1565 the Wire-workers 
 framed a petition for union with the Chape-makers, by the name of 
 Wiremongers ; and in 1569, 10 Elizabeth, they and their old associates 
 the Pinners united with the Girdlers. The Pinners became an inde- 
 pendent Company in 1636 ; but of the iron and copper Wire-drawers 
 -we hear no more till, in 1702, an abortive scheme was brought forward 
 for amalgamating them, the Lacemen and Weavers with the Gold and 
 Silver Wire Drawers. 
 
 Of the Craft immediately under consideration the earliest notice be- 
 longs to the reign of Edward IV. (1461), when the members are included 
 among the foreigners who were obliged to restrict their shops to the 
 manor of Blanche-Appleton (or rather, perhaps, Blanche-Chapelleton) 
 adjoining to Fenchurch, where there seems to have been a sort of market, 
 accredited by Stow with giving its name to Mart (or Mark) Lane. The 
 historian's words are : — " Then have ye Blanch Aplcton, whereof I read 
 in the thirteenth of Edward the first, . . . This Blanch Apleton 
 was a Mannor, belonging to Sir Thomas Roos, of Hauielake, Knight, 
 the seventh of Richard the second, standing at the North-east corner 
 ■of Mart-lane, so called of a priviledge sometime enjoyed to keepe a 
 Mart there." The art was clearly of Continental origin, and long 
 remained in the hands of settlers from France or Flanders. 
 
 The present Association was probably an outgrowth from the Iron and 
 Copper Wire Workers, who joined the Girdlers, but eventually merged 
 in the Tin Plate Workers. In the list of City Gilds, as they stood in 
 1 501-2, the Wire Sellers are said to possess a prescriptive Livery of 
 twelve. Whether the same body, as in other cases, both made and sold 
 the goods, and the Wire Sellers are identifiable with the Drawers, we do 
 not certainly know. 
 
 The chief source of demand for the present article of commerce lay in 
 the occupation and requirements of the Broderer, between whose Gild 
 and that under notice an intimate relationship long existed. The Gold 
 and Silver Wire Drawers were the manufacturers of the material which 
 the Broderers so largely and profitably employed, while the fashion for 
 that kind of work prevailed ; and when the idea arose of introducing 
 richer tissues in place of ordinary colours in wool and silk, as in the 
 most ancient extant specimens from the eleventh century downward ; ' 
 and the interests and welfare of the two fellowships were necessarily 
 
 ' The Bayeux Tapestry is, no doubt, the oldest example which has been trans- 
 mitted to us of ordinary embroidery.
 
 THE GOLD AND SILVER WVKE DRAWERS. 
 
 D-0 
 
 bound up together. At the same time, the historian of the Company 
 has, perhaps, not kept the two crafts sufficiently distinct, as regards their 
 respective employments and specialities ; and not unfrequently cites the 
 Broderer as if he were identical with the other craftsman who, as a 
 manufacturer, was more directly connected with the Refiners and the 
 Spinners, and whose own particular industry appears to have been appor- 
 tioned between the working Drawers and the Stuff-men. 
 
 There is a considerable amount of confusion and difficulty attendant 
 on the task of tracing the progress of this body of artisans prior to its 
 attainment, in 1693, of a short-lived independence and comparative 
 prosperity. 
 
 The pernicious system of patents and commercial farms, which 
 reached its height under the first and second Stuarts, aggravated the 
 troubles of the Craft by placing it between two hostile influences, the 
 jealousy and rivalry of the Goldsmiths on the one hand, and the rapacious 
 court-jobbers and their tools on the other. 
 
 James I., equally weak, inert, and unprincipled, vacillated in this case 
 in a singular manner, as he was successively approached by the repre- 
 sentatives of one interest or another. The fundamental objection and 
 drawback to the encouragement of the trade in gold and silver wire were 
 the consumption which it invoh'ed of English bullion ; and in 1623-4 
 the King permitted letters patent to pass to certain persons therein 
 named, on condition that they should replace the waste by importing an 
 equivalent amount of foreign metal. These grantees, however, were 
 not the members of the industry, but monopolists ; ' and on this circum- 
 stance being made known, or at least being laid as a grievance before 
 the authorities, the charter was revoked. 
 
 The Goldsmiths, who exercised the same mistery, also threw difficul- 
 ties in the way of the establishment of the members of it with a separate 
 constitution. 
 
 The King himself professed to be much scandalized by the abuses 
 involved in the patents ; buf he was surrounded by creatures whose sole 
 aim was plunder. Men of all ranks competed for any privilege obtain- 
 able by appeals to the royal cupidity or weakness. One of the most 
 greedy, unscrupulous, and persistent of these schemers was Sir Edward 
 Villiers, to whom the King, having exacted from the patentees, in con- 
 
 ' In some cases the patentees were guilty of enhancing their profit by alloying the 
 gold and silver with lead. But there was every variety of deception. In 1630-1, a 
 maker of hatbands, named Grymes, was fined by the Star Chamber for using silver 
 mixed with copper thread, and silver and gold mixed with purl and oes of copper 
 double gilt. Burn's Star Chamber, 1870, p. 112. Spurious material was at the same 
 time imported from the Continent.
 
 526 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 sideration of their charter, an annuity of 1,000/., transferred the payment 
 as an indemnity to Villiers for the loss of other sinecures. 
 
 In 1650 an address was laid before the House of Commons by the 
 Refiners and Gold Wire-Drawers of London, praying to be made a body 
 politic, with one Master, three Wardens, twelve Assistants, and a Com- 
 monalt}' ; and in 1662-3 the King was moved by the Queen-mother and 
 the maids of honour to grant the former petitioners a patent, in the name 
 of trustees for their benefit, on account of the corruption of gold and 
 silver lace. But in neither instance did any substantial fruit arise from 
 these efforts. 
 
 The levelling tendency of the Great Fire, and the more liberal temper 
 which marked institutions after the Revolution of 1688, combined with 
 the commencing withdrawal of many of the Great Companies from an 
 active participation in business, made it possible for the Wyre Drawers 
 in 1693 to secure their long-cherished object ; and on the i6th June in 
 that year they were incorporated as " The Master, Wardens, Assistants, 
 and Commonalty of the Art and Mistery of Drawing and Flatting of 
 Gold and Silver Wire, and Working and Spinning of Gold and Silver 
 Thread and Stuffs of the City of London." 
 
 The jurisdiction of the new Company extended over London and 
 Southwark, and a three miles' radius from either; and all members of the 
 calling were obliged to be freemen. The governing body was directed 
 to consist of a Master, four Wardens, and not more than thirty-six 
 Assistants. Bye-laws were framed by the Executive in January, 1699- 
 1700, and were passed by the Judges on the 17th October following. 
 
 At this period the Company, though very far indeed from affluent,' 
 was in a tolerably satisfactory condition. In 1715, 358 were paying 
 quarterage; and in 1743, when it was proposed to forbid by Act of 
 Parliament the wearing of gold and silver lace, it was publicly stated 
 that no fewer than 6,000 persons (including women and children) were 
 dependent on the trade. 
 
 In 1 76 1, additional facilities were acquire'd for receiving apprentices ; 
 and in 1780 a Livery of 100 was granted. 
 
 The grades of membership are, Freemen, Liverymen, Stewards, As- 
 sistants, Wardens, Master. Women are not disqualified from becoming 
 members of the Freedom or Commonalty ; and widows of deceased free- 
 men are entitled to join on payment of 6s. 10^/. In 1882, there were 
 52 Freemen and 43 Liverymen. The Livery was returned in 1892 as 
 107. In the ten years 1870-9, there were 21 admissions to the Livery, 
 
 ' In the first year of its existence (1694), the total corporate expenditure did not 
 exceed 36/. i is. od.
 
 TllK GOLD AND SILVER WVRE UKAWKRS. 527 
 
 of which 12 were in 1879. In the same space of time three apprentices 
 were bound. 
 
 The Company has 1,000/. 3 per cent, stock, producing 28/. 10s. a year, 
 of which 100/. accrued under the will of Mrs. Christian Russell, Septem- 
 ber 20, 1723. The residue is the accumulation of surplus internal 
 revenue. In 1834 the assets were stated to be 775/. four per cent. Bank 
 annuities. In 1892 the income was returned at 65/., 3/. in trust inclusive. 
 
 The Company had, some years ago, when such schemes were rather 
 popular, the notion of organizing an industrial exhibition of gold and 
 silver wire fabrics, of which it is believed to possess a few specimens, 
 and of which others are in the hands of collectors or in museums. But 
 nothing further has yet been accomplished toward such an object. 
 
 It also owns a few official insignia and two or three pieces of silver 
 plate. The arms, of the grant of which there seems to be no precise 
 evidence, first occur in Maitland's Histoij, 1739, and are found on the 
 common seal of 1742. 
 
 The independent career of the Wyre Drawers in the sense of an exe- 
 cutive body was remarkably brief and uneventful, and under existing 
 circumstances their standing is purely social and municipal. 
 
 From our first knowledge of them in 1461 as a colony at or near 
 Fenchurch, down to the end of the seventeenth century, there is no 
 intimation or even hint of a Hall. But they appear to have migrated 
 at a subsequent period further westward. Upon their incorporation, 
 they engaged quarters at Plaisterers' Hall in Addle Street, where they 
 remained till 1696, when they removed to Broderers' Hall in Gutter 
 Lane, which they rented till 1709. The expense, however, proved too 
 heavy for their narrow resources, and they have since met at Bracy's 
 Coffee House in Silver Street, at Tom's Coffee House in Wood Street, 
 at the Half Moon Tavern in Cheapside, and other places. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 By the King. A Proclamation concerning Wyer, Thread, and other Manufactures 
 of Gold and Silver. [June 16, 1624.] A broadside. 
 
 The Humble Petition of the Refiners and Gold Wyer Drawers of London. To the 
 Supreme Authority of this Nation, the Parliament of the Commonwealth of 
 England. 1650. A broadside. 
 
 Proposals Humbly Presented to his Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector of England, 
 . . . and to the High Court of Parliament, . . . for the Regulating of the 
 Manufacture of Gold and Silver Thread and Wyer, and for the Passing an Act 
 against Transporting Gold and Silver. . . . Folio, 1656. 
 »*» Violet produced other works on this subject. .See Hazlitt's Collections and Notes, 1876-91.
 
 528 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Ube (Bunmafiers. 
 
 At some distance from the opening years of the seventeenth century, 
 the manufacture of manual fire-arms still remained in the hands of per- 
 sons unconnected with any special Union or Fellowship, and avowedly 
 dispersed among other Gilds, at an epoch when scarcely any division of 
 labour was without its separate organization ; and it further appears that 
 the operation of testing weapons or implements of this class was left to 
 blacksmiths and other incompetent persons, to the discredit of the calling 
 and the public peril. The records of the Brewers and the pages of 
 Stow contain the name of Edward Harvest, Brewer, who died in 1610, 
 and was described on his monument as " one of his Majesty's Gunners." 
 Whether he was also a brewer, or merely free of that Company, does not 
 appear, nor indeed, whether he was a maker of fire-arms or a cannon- 
 founder. But he probably held an official appointment under the 
 Crown, and was one of those who were opposed to the unprofessional 
 gunsmiths. He may have served Elizabeth in the same capacity, as he 
 was her contemporary rather than her successor's. 
 
 Just about the time when the long-standing quarrel between the 
 Blacksmiths and the Clockmakers was drawing to a close, the abuses 
 and dangers attendant on the gun manufacture were represented to the 
 Crown ; and it was likewise alleged that the weapons of London fabric 
 were the best of the kingdom, if the existing irregularities could be 
 corrected by the formation of the skilled and experienced makers into a 
 Company with proper authority. 
 
 These were the circumstances under which the charter of the Gun- 
 makers was delivered, March 14, 1637-8, to Henry Rowland, Gunmaker, 
 and si.xty-two other persons, all freemen of London, practising and using 
 the art, for themselves and all others who might succeed them, by 
 the name of The Master, Wardens, and Society of the Mistery of Gun- 
 makers of the City of London, with a licence in mortmain to 40/. a year, 
 a common seal, the right of making ordinances in writing, and of elect-
 
 THE GUNMAKERS. 529 
 
 ing officers, and the power of view, gauge, proof, trial, and marking of 
 all hand-guns, such proof or trial to be with good and sufficient gun- 
 powder and weight of bullet of lead sizeable to every several gun. 
 This jurisdiction extended over London and a ten miles' radius ; and all 
 persons making, using, or selling guns, dags, pistols, barrels, or locks, 
 were required to bring them to be examined and marked at the Com- 
 pany's Hall or other meet place appointed. The mark of the Company 
 was to be G P. 
 
 The Executive, in addition to the customary functionaries, was ordered 
 to consist of two or more of the Assistants, to superintend the processes 
 of proof and trial, and to be renewed from year to year. Henry Row- 
 land was nominated by the Crown the first Master, and Thomas Addis 
 and John Watson the first Wardens. A special clause was inserted, 
 saving any orders of the Privy Council and Council of War. Ordinances 
 agreeable to the charter were approved, and a Livery granted, in 1670. 
 In the Ordinances, Gunmakers' Hall is named as the place of meeting, 
 and each member is required to contribute 2s. 6d. to the annual dinner. 
 As the Company does not appear to have ever owned any premises 
 except the Proof House at Whitechapel, probably that is the spot in- 
 tended. 
 
 The governing body is in conformity with the charter ; but the staff, 
 besides the Clerk and Beadle, comprises the two View and Proof Assist- 
 ants, and the Proof-master, of whom the latter is not a member. 
 
 In 1882 the Liverymen numbered 32 and the Freemen 58. The 
 estate wholly consists of accumulated savings from the profits of the proof 
 business, representing the interest on nearly 30,000/.^ This is a solitary 
 case in which modern legislation has not interfered with an old institu- 
 tion, and the Gun Barrel Proof Act of 186S recognises the charter; 
 but the Company's establishment at Whitechapel is subject to the pro- 
 visions of the Explosives Act, 38 Vict. c. 17. In 1857 the Court of 
 Common Pleas upheld the title of the Gunmakers to stamp manufac- 
 tures apart from any rights of the Birmingham Proof House. 
 
 It may be predicated of this Association that it stands on very peculiar 
 ground, and is a Livery Gild in form rather than in spirit. It has no his- 
 torical and barely any municipal tie ; there is no religious atmosphere 
 around it, no romantic mystery, no antiquity, no striking personal dis- 
 tinction on the part of any of its members, no impressive vicissitudes. 
 It is a sober, discreet, practical, thriving syndicate, with a single aim and 
 an untiring eye to business ; and it has worked these two hundred years 
 
 ' In 1834 the Gunmakers returned their income at over 1,200/. a year. In the years 
 1870-9 it varied from over 4,000/. to rather under 3,000/. In 1S92 it was returned at 
 2,500/. 
 
 c.c. 67
 
 530 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 and more, down there at Whitechapel, ever since it was a rural hamlet, 
 for the public good and for its own, unaffected by Great Fire, undis- 
 turbed by Scire Facias and Quo Warranto. 
 
 trbe Ibomers [an5 Bottlers]. 
 
 The arms are ; — Argent on a chevron between three leather-bottles sable, and as many bugle-liorns, 
 ■stringed of the tirst. 
 
 This Gild certainly lays just claim to the distinction of having been 
 ■one of the most ancient among those of a similar character founded in 
 the City of London, and it is predicable of it, that its very lengthened 
 duration as a voluntary Brotherhood was parallel 
 witli its greatest prosperity, owing to the more 
 general employment, subsequently to the grant of a 
 charter, of other fabrics for domestic and commercial 
 purposes. 
 
 Stow merely says': "As for bottle-makers and 
 home-makers, the precedent times have remembered 
 them to be of antiquity, and two distinct Companies 
 combined in one ; but I finde no record that they 
 were at any time incorporated." 
 
 The fair originally granted by Henry III. in 1268, according to the 
 received tradition — though it has been alleged that it went back as far as 
 King John — to the Horn-makers, to be held at Charlton, near Woolwich, 
 for three days, was first kept in Trinity Week, but afterward changed to 
 the month of October, commencing on St. Luke's Day (October 18). 
 It acquired the name of " Horn Fair," and became in course of time a 
 rather disorderly festival, insomuch that " All is fair at Horn Fair," passed 
 into a popular saying. Here every species of article and utensil formed 
 of the material — drinking-horns, hunting-horns, powder-horns, ink-horns 
 — were on view and sale, and retailers replenished their stocks.^ We 
 
 ' Survey of London, 1633, p. 168. 
 
 - The fair was finally abolished in 1872. "An ink-horn phrase," or "to smell of
 
 THE HORNERS AND BOTTLERS. 53 1 
 
 shall presently see that two provincial fairs were also important marts 
 for this craft. 
 
 In 50 Edward III., the Homers were ranked among the forty-eight 
 Misteries of London, and were represented by two members on the 
 Court of Common Council. In the reign of Henry IV. it was found 
 that the large export of the raw material began to prove very detri- 
 mental to the native industry; and by statute 4 Edward IV. c. 8, strangers 
 and foreigners were precluded from buying unwrought horns of butchers, 
 tanners, and others, to the prejudice of freemen of the Company ; and 
 the power of search vested in the latter was enlarged to a radius of 
 twenty-four miles from London and to Stourbridge and Ely fairs. The 
 repeal of this Act in the first year of James I. was represented by the 
 Horners to be so fatal to their interests, that in the seventh of the same 
 reign and the third of Charles I. the privileges and powers of the Fellow- 
 ship were renewed, with certain exceptions as regarded the power of 
 search at Stourbridge and Ely fairs, but with an extension of authority 
 to check the exportation of unwrought horns. An indication of their 
 commencing decline in the fifteenth century is indirectly furnished by 
 their return of eight men-at-arms to the muster for the City Watch in 
 1469, as this was nearly the minimum quota. They do not present them- 
 selves at all in several of the official lists between that date and 1629. 
 
 It was not till 13 Charles I. (January 12, 1638) that the Horners, after 
 an existence of nearly four centuries, acquired their charter and bye- 
 laws. 
 
 They were incorporated by the name of the Master, Wardens, Assist- 
 ants, and Fellowship of the Mistery of Horners of the City of London, 
 with a common seal, and the other customary rights ; and the Company 
 embraced all free horners within the Cities of London and Westminster,, 
 their liberties and suburbs. Authority was also conferred to elect a 
 Master, two Wardens, and ten or more Assistants, and to meet in the 
 common Hall or other convenient place for the transaction of business. 
 
 Freemen were bound to reside in London or the liberties, or within 
 seven miles thereof, and to refrain, under a penalty of 40s., from buying 
 or taking any manner of unwrought work within twenty-four miles, and 
 from buying any horns, or parts of horns, of cutlers or other persons 
 within the realm of England and dominion of Wales. 
 
 In 1837 the Report of the Commissioners ranks this as the fifty-fourth 
 out of eighty-nine bodies. In 1846, the Court of Aldermen granted the 
 Horners a Livery of 60. The Company is not mentioned in the 
 
 the ink-horn," were terms formerly denoting a style which savoured of pedantry or 
 academical conceit.
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 returns of 1699 and 1724 ; but in 1882 the number of members was 
 given at 13, three freemen inclusive. In 1892 the Livery is returned as 
 17, and the total income as 99/.' 
 
 The Homers at present hold no property, but they had at one time 
 a warehouse and sheds in Wentworth Street, VVhitechapel, purchased in 
 1604 on lease at 4/. a year for looo years, the proceeds of which, on 
 their demolition for public improvements in 1881, were invested in 
 Consols, and appear to realize about 72/. a year. The only other sources 
 of income are the fees, fines, and quarterages. 
 
 The only privilege attached to the Freedom or Livery is the right to 
 vote for the parliamentary representatives of the City, if the person 
 reside within twenty-five miles, and for Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and other 
 civic functionaries under any circumstances. The fees payable are as 
 follows: — Upon taking up the Freedom, i/. i^s. 4.c/. by patrimony or 
 servitude; 35/. by purchase; upon admission to the Livery, 15/.; upon 
 election on the Court, 10/. There are other minor fees to the Clerk. 
 
 It was formerly the practice for certain delegates of the Gild to attend 
 at Leadenhall and other markets or fairs, and buy horns, which were 
 consigned to their depot at Whitechapel, and divided by lot among the 
 freemen, their widows and orphans, all of whom participated in the 
 monopoly then enjoyed under the charter. 
 
 But the premises above mentioned were already let in 1796 at a bene- 
 ficial rental of 30/. a year, and the trading operations of the Company 
 had, at or before that time, doubtless determined. 
 
 The practice, however, demonstrates that the followers of the Craft 
 were salesmen by retail as well as manufacturers ; and the probability 
 seems to be that they insensibly succumbed to competition in both 
 capacities with the Pouchmakers and Leathersellers, who dealt in the 
 same goods and enjoyed a more influential standing. 
 
 Moreover, about 1570, the establishment of Glass-Houses, commen- 
 cing with that in the disused Hall of the Crutched Friars, at Aldgate, 
 had the concurrent effect of bringing drinking-vessels of that material 
 into more general vogue ; and the emporium just named was already 
 established on a large scale in 1575, as we may infer from the mere store 
 of fuel on the premises, when it was burnt down in the autumn of that 
 year. In other words, at the time when the Horners became a corporate 
 body, glass had presumably grown an article in fairly general demand, 
 
 ' At the annual Court this year (Feb. 3, 1892), Mr. Samuel Parnwell, C.C, of Queen 
 Street, was elected Master for the year ensuing, Mr. W. S. Chapman, of Aldersgate 
 Street, and Mr. Ellis Hall, Enfield, being respectively appointed Upper and Renter 
 Warden. The Rev. R. F. Hosken, M. A., assistant master at Merchant Taylors' School, 
 was appointed honorary Chaplain.
 
 Tine IIORNERS AND UOTTLERS. 533 
 
 and was superseding wood ' and pewter, as well as horn, for many 
 domestic and commercial purposes. The Company succeeded in 1G38 
 to the superintendence of a declining industry. 
 
 Horn pots, or other vessels of the same fabric, were employed in the 
 fourteenth centur\-, it appears, to hold wine. In the King and the Her- 
 mit, a poem of that age, employed by Sir Walter Scott in his Ivanhoe, 
 the hermit bids his boy fetch a pot of this material, which is beneath 
 the bed in an inner room, that the king and he may drink together from 
 the contents. 
 
 Ink Horn Court, Petticoat Lane, without Bishopsgate, seems to hav-e 
 derived its name from the manufacturers of lanthorns, ink-horns, giggs, 
 spoons, and other things of horn even in Strype's time. The historian's 
 mother lived in Petticoat Lane, over against the sign of the Five Ink- 
 horns. 
 
 The Clerk to the Company stated in evidence before the Royal Com- 
 mission in 1883 that the Company had promoted an Exhibition of Horn 
 Work at the Mansion House in the previous year, and had laid out in 
 the object 200/., the result of accumulated savings. The movement was 
 widely encouraged and assisted ; but it had no influence on the fortunes 
 of the Gild. The collection brought together by the Company from all 
 quarters, and belonging to all periods, was unquestionably very interest- 
 ing, and it was visited by about 7,000 persons. A descriptive catalogue 
 was printed at the time, with the names of the contributors, among whom 
 were Her Majesty and several members of Archaeological Societies. 
 
 From a perusal of the Catalogue- we are apt to form a conclusion 
 that such an industry should be capable of revival ; but the Horners 
 are deficient in the requisite organization, and during sixty jears were 
 virtually in the hands of one Clerk, a most estimable gentleman, who 
 remembered Canning, and Peel's maiden speech in Parliament, yet as 
 unlikely a person to advance the desired object as could have been pos- 
 sibly found. 
 
 A number of very curious items was lent by various owners, some of 
 considerable antiquity, and prizes were given. We annex from the 
 Londesborough cabinet a representation of a cup made from the tusk 
 of the narwhal, but which was formerly supposed to be derived from the 
 horn of the unicorn. We have before us a punch-ladle of the early part 
 of the last century, with a silver-mounted whalebone handle and a horn 
 bowl. W'histles were also formed of horn. 
 
 ' See the account of the TURNERS, infra. 
 
 '^ Catalogue of the Exhibition of Works in Horn, Ancient and Modern, held at 
 the Mansion House, London, October 18, 19, and 20, 1S82. Svo, 1882. We have two 
 editions before us, one purporting to be revised.
 
 534 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Although the armorial bearings of the Homers explicitly testify to 
 the amalgamation with them of the at least equally ancient Gild of 
 Bottlers, the latter are not freely recognised as connected with them. 
 But, whether or not, such was unquestionably the fact long prior to the 
 charter of 1638. The two trades might very well have existed side by 
 side, till the introduction of pottery and glass interfered with the 
 demand for leathern vessels, which, even if the skin was not dressed 
 with oil on the inside, can never have been very satisfactory receptacles 
 
 for liquor, especially where the fermenting 
 processes remained active after bottling. 
 
 The idea of employing skins as vessels for 
 holding liquids is as ancient, at all events, as 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, where the hide of the 
 goat is described as applied to this purpose. 
 In Italy and Spain they employ the gourd 
 or calabash, which becomes as hard and im- 
 pervious as wood ; and in the latter country 
 the sherry is brought to market by the 
 peasants in pigs'-skins, which communicate a 
 peculiar flavour to the wine. 
 
 Bottle-makers, or manufacturers of leathern 
 hotels, are mentioned in some proceedings 
 between the Corporation of London and one 
 Nicholas Burle (i Richard II., A.D. 1378). 
 This Burle was a dealer in hides, and sold 
 them, among other customers, to bottle- 
 makers. The contention was raised by certain 
 cordwainers or bootmakers, who pleaded that 
 the hides were not only useless to them, but 
 to all other employers of the same material ; and two bottle-makers, 
 William Karlille and Thomas Tyrold, deposed that the hides were raw 
 and forfeitable, and were unfit for their business and any other alike, so 
 that the goods were declared forfeited.' 
 
 The leather bottle was made in a series of sizes, variously designated, 
 from the bombard oi one and a half gallons to the pint or half-pint. In 
 the time of Charles I., when Thomas Heywood published his Dissection 
 of a Drunkard, 1635, the plain bottle is stated to have been chiefly in 
 use among shepherds and country folk ; but they had them also 
 mounted in silver in ale-houses, both in the City and suburbs, while at 
 the Court there were the black jack and the bombard, which led to the 
 
 Riley's Memorials of London and London Life, i858, p. 421.
 
 TUK HORNERS AND BOTTLERS. 535 
 
 notion of the Frenchman that we drank our wine and beer out of our 
 boots. In the reign of James I., the Lieutenant of the Tower was 
 entitled to two bombards of wine out of every ship which came freighted 
 therewith to the Thames. A writer of that day, comparing the bottle 
 and the jack, says : — 
 
 When the bottle and jack stand together, O fie on't, 
 
 The bottle looks like a dwarf to a giant ; 
 
 Then have we not reason the jacks to choose. 
 
 For they will make boots when the bottle mends shoes ? 
 
 Among the curious tunes formerly in vogue was that of The Bottle- 
 Makers Delight, and it was to this that we are directed to set A 
 Song in Praise of the Leather Bottle, published about 1700 on a broad- 
 sheet. The sign of the " Leather Bottle " is still associated with Messrs. 
 Hoares' Bank in Fleet Street, over which it used to be seen suspended. 
 
 In the play of Mjiccdorus, 1598, the clown says that he shall go to 
 Thomas the butler for a jack of beer. In the Serving- Man's Comfort, 
 by J. M., 159S, where the writer is deploring the decline of ancient 
 hospitality, he inquires, among other points : " Where are the great 
 black jacks of double beer?" shewing, as we have said, not only that 
 the leathern vessel, like that of glass, was made of various capacities, 
 but that the jack was probably the next size to the bombard. 
 
 The late Mr. Thomas Willement, of Davington, Kent, used to shew a 
 jack, which was thought by him to have belonged to Oliver Cromwell. 
 But whether it was strictly a jack or a bottle, we cannot determine, as 
 we never saw the relic. 
 
 No doubt, even after the general introduction of glass and hardware 
 for drinking vessels and liquid measures, the fragility of both led 
 travellers, soldiers, officers on the march, and others who had not much 
 room to accommodate their stores, to retain the old leathern cases, of 
 which we yet preserve some trace in our flasks. 
 
 Archdeacon Nares, who published his Glossary in 1822, observes, in 
 reference to various meanings of the word jack : " A kind of pitcher 
 made of leather was similarly called a jack even within my memory." 
 This is, however, not quite explicit, as originally, at all events, the jack 
 was one of the larger vessels of a series. 
 
 We see that Mr. Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Times, 
 assigns the composition of the famous ballad of the Praise of the 
 Leather Bottel, on account of its metrical structure, to a very early 
 period. It was certainl)' written on the model of the more ancient 
 school of ballad poetry, and is by no means deficient in literary merit. 
 The author is not known ; but he was presumably a layman, who 
 parodied in the exordium and burden of his production the style of
 
 536 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 many of the familiar effusions of the wandering minstrel of these long 
 by-gone days. We are afraid that we must print it as it stands : — 
 
 The Praise of the Leather Battel. 
 
 'Twas God above that made all things — 
 
 The heavens, the earth, and all therein ; 
 
 The ships that on the sea do swim. 
 
 To guard from foes that none come in ; 
 
 And let them all do what they can, 
 
 'Twas for one end — the use of man. 
 
 So I wish in heaven his soul may dwell, 
 That first found out the leather bottel. 
 
 Now, what do you say to these cans of wood ? 
 Oh, no ! in faith they cannot be good ; 
 For if the bearer fall by the way. 
 Why, on the ground your liquor doth lay 
 But had it been in a leather bottil. 
 Although he had fallen, all had been well, 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 Then, what do you say to these glasses fine? 
 Oh, they shall have no praise of mine, 
 For if you chance to touch the brim, 
 Down falls the liquor and all therein ; 
 But had it been in a better botttrl. 
 And the stopple in, all had been well. 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 Then, what do you say to these black pots three 
 If a man and his wife should not agree 
 Why they'd tug and pull till their liquor spill, 
 In a leather bott^l they may tug their fill, 
 And pull away till their hearts do ache, 
 And yet their liquor no harm can take. 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 Then, what do you say to these flagons fine 
 Oh, they shall have no praise of mine ; 
 For when a lord is about to dine. 
 And sends them to be filled with wine. 
 The inan with the flagon doth run away, 
 Because it is silver most gallant and gay. 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 A leather bottel we know is good, 
 Far better than glasses or cans of wood. 
 For when a man is at work in the field. 
 Your glasses and pots no comfort will yield 
 But a good leather bottle standing by 
 Will raise his spirits whenever he's dry. 
 So 1 wish, etc. 
 
 At noon the haymakers sit them down 
 To drink from their bottles of ale nut-brown ; 
 In summer, too, when the weather is warm, 
 A good bottle full will do them no harm.
 
 TIIK INNHOLDERS. 
 
 537 
 
 Then the kids and the lasses begin to tattle, 
 But what would they do without their bottle ? 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 There's never a lord, an earl, or knight, 
 But in this bottle doth take delight ; 
 For when he is hunting of the deer, 
 He oft doth wish for a bottle of beer. 
 Likewise the man that works in the wood, 
 A bottle of beer will oft do him good. 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 And when the bottle at last grows old, 
 And will good liquor no longer hold, 
 Out of the side you can make a clout 
 To mend your shoes when they're worn out ; 
 Or take and hang it up on a pin, 
 'Twill serve to put hinges and odd things in. 
 So I wish, etc. 
 
 There were other versions of this song with the varying burden :- 
 
 And I wish his heirs may never want sack, 
 That first devis'd the bonny black jack. 
 
 Zbc Jnnbolbers. 
 
 We have told the early story of this body in the preceding division 
 of the present work, where we speak of the origin and development of 
 the Hostelers, and endeavour to explain the evolutionary process to 
 which we owed the Inn. 
 
 Subsequently to the recognition of the Fellowship under its existing 
 title in 1473, as elsewhere noticed, the nearest landmark is the approval 
 of Ordinances submitted to the City authorities ten years later (July 31, 
 1483). In 1 501, 17 Henry VII., the Innholders already possessed a 
 Livery of sixteen, which, — as well as the remainder of the executive 
 system, a Master and three Wardens, — relied upon prescription. In 1509 
 the Mayor and Aldermen confirmed the rules of the Brotherhood. In 
 1 5 1 5 they occur, among the forty-eight misteries then established, as 
 
 C.C. 68
 
 53S THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ranking between the Plumbers and the Founders ; and in that year 
 (December 21,6 Henry VIII.) they appear to have been incorporated 
 by letters patent. Our knowledge of this fact is due to the citation of 
 the former grant in the charter of December 21, 1663, 15 Charles II. 
 which at the same time refers to the Act of Common Council passed on 
 the 3rd of Ma}' immediately preceding, whereby all persons following 
 the vocation of an innholder within the City and its liberties were 
 bound to take up the freedom of the Gild. 
 
 The new charter dissolved the older one, and reconstituted the Frater- 
 nity of Innholders of St. Julian le Herberger and all other persons who 
 then, or might hereafter, hold, keep, or occupy any inn, hostry, petty ostry, 
 or livery stable, in the City of London or within three miles of the same, 
 by the stj-le of the Master, Wardens, and Society of the Art and Mis- 
 tery of Innholders of the City of London, with the customary powers. 
 There was to be a Master, three Wardens, and twenty Assistants. 
 
 The standing of the Company, long prior to its elevation to that 
 dignity, must have been very good. We have 
 already traced it back to the earlier part of the four- 
 teenth century, and have collected testimony con- 
 ducive to the belief that it remained during a vast 
 length of time a flourishing Association under a pre- 
 scriptive government. The apparent loss of the 
 original charter of 15 15 may explain why we are 
 OLD .\RMs. unable to fix the date of the union with the Inn- 
 
 holders of the associated Horse-Corsors.' Nor can we be actually sure 
 that the two bodies were already united in that year. But they were 
 so in 1520, when, in the precept from the Mayor and Aldermen to the 
 several Companies to contribute toward a provision of wheat, they were 
 assessed together at 30/. Sixty-one subscribers made up the required 
 sum of 1,037/. 2^- 4^-> So/, being the maxhimm quota. It began in 1543 
 to acquire real property by the ordinary indirect process in Coleman 
 Street, Moorgate Street, and elsewhere; and in 161 3 accrued the Dow- 
 gate Hill and Elbow Lane estate, including the first Hall or its site, 
 followed up by other bequests, concessions, or purchases, among which 
 may be enumerated the lease from the Merchant Taylors for 999 years 
 in 1804 at 20/ a year of certain property (7 and S, Elbow Lane, now 
 29-30, College Street) contiguous to the Hall.^ 
 
 ' In the Nortli-East and North of England and in Scotland the Corsor is still 
 known as the Couper. 
 
 - The Merchant Taylors' original seat was here ; and probably this transaction 
 refers to the houses erected on the same ground. The disused Hall stood long after 
 the Taylors' migration to Threadneedle Street.
 
 THE TABARD, SOUTHVVARK, IN 1720. 
 
 THE TABARD (OR TALBOT) IN 1841.
 
 540 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The latter falls under notice in or about the period of its original 
 conveyance (1613) to the new and present owners in relation to a 
 building which was alleged to be prejudicial to it — that is, was probably 
 too close. But the complainants, although they were supported by the 
 Lord Treasurer, were unsuccessful, as it was shown on inspection that 
 the structure was agreeable to the custom of London. 
 
 It was only three years after the settlement of the new constitution 
 in 1663, that the Hall perished in the Fire, and was rebuilt. Maitland, 
 writing in 1739, characterizes the second place of meeting as beautiful. 
 But it has since been superseded by a third one, for which between 
 3,000/. and 4,000/. were raised by voluntary subscriptions. 
 
 "^^ cdack DOS uair 
 
 THE BLACK BOY, CHELMSFORD. 
 
 The Company has received no charter beyond that of 1663, unless we 
 -admit that of i James II., 28 February, 1665-6, which was revoked by 
 the General Act of William and Mary, concurrently with the Order of 
 Common Council of May 7, 1685, conferring a Livery on the Innholders 
 and other Gilds. Consequently the grant of 1663 is that by which the 
 Company is governed, except in regard to its Livery, which is, as before, 
 by prescription, as virtually acknowledged and ratified by the Act of 
 1690. 
 
 The Livery, which in 1501 amounted to 16, was officially returned in 
 
 1699 as 120, in 1724 as 150, in 1880 as 134, and in 1892 at 122. The 
 
 -Court consists of the Master, Upper Warden, Middle Warden, Renter
 
 TIIK INNHOLDERS. 
 
 541 
 
 Warden, and twenty Assistants. There is a considerable trust estate, 
 independently of the corporate income, which during the ten years 
 1871-80 has shown a tendency to increase, and which will be further 
 benefited by the lapse of leases between 1910 and 1920. In 1892, the 
 aggregate annual revenue was stated to be 13S5/., of which 210/ were 
 in trust. 
 
 In those historical notices which have frequently rendered it possible 
 to judge directly or otherwise the progress and elucidate the growth of 
 
 CORNELIUS CATON, LANDLORD OF THE WHITE LION. RICHMOND, SURREY 
 (ABOUT 1750). 
 
 a Company, the Innholders are remarkably deficient. The nature of 
 the calling was perhaps naturally calculated to preclude its members 
 from gaining such prominence as often befell those connected with the 
 ordinary Craft and Merchant Gilds, as the Innholders occupied a some- 
 what anomalous position, hardly coming within either category. 
 
 In a transaction in which the Goldsmiths' Company was concerned in 
 I 53 1, there is a remarkable mention of Thomas Jones, an innholder at 
 the Star in Bread Street, who was rent-collector, probably for his
 
 542 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 London estate, to the Abbot of Reading ; and this person was evidently 
 of substantial character, as he became surety for some articles of value 
 to the Wardens of the Goldsmiths. 
 
 Some estimate may be formed of the rateable value of the corporate 
 estate by the assessment of 12/. iSi'. upon the Company for a current 
 ceremonial object in 1629, nearly a century after its incorporation. It 
 was then, if we may form an inference from the comparative amount of 
 its contribution, far from being a rich body, and, although the charter 
 of 1663 gave jurisdiction over the suburbs, was practically limited to 
 persons pursuing the business within the City itself 
 
 This Gild possesses (among other articles of plate) a very fine salt- 
 cellar of the time of James I., which is applied to the special purpose of 
 dividing the Court and the Livery at what are termed Livery dinners. 
 The latter literally sit below the salt. 
 
 There seems to be a tendency in one or two quarters to revolt against 
 the ancient prescriptive practice of giving this seat of precedence at 
 table to the Assistants, as the Livery often consists of persons of quite 
 equal social standing. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Articles of Direction Touching Ale-Houses. 410, 1607, 1608, 1609. With a Pro- 
 clamation prefixed on the same subject. 4to. 1618. 
 
 »** These .Articles deal with London and the suburbs. 
 
 A Form of License for keeping a common Ale-house or Tippling-house : with the 
 
 Articles to be observed by the Keeper. [James I.] A broadside. 
 A Form of License granted by Sir Thomas Walsingham, Sir Williain Wythines, and 
 
 others, justices for Kent, for Keeping a common Ale-house in that county. 
 
 [James I.] A broadside. 
 Certain Wholesome Observations and Rules for Innkeepers, and also for their 
 
 Guests, to be ti.\cd upon the wall of every Chamber in the house. By T. W. 
 
 [About 1630.] A broadside. 
 A Decree lately made in the High Court of Star Chamber, after consultation had 
 
 among the Judges. . . . 4to, 1633. 
 This partly refers to the charges of ordinaries, tavern-keepers, and petty Ostryes or Hostelries. 
 
 Taylor's Travels and Circvlar Peramhvlation through, and by more then thirty 
 times twelve Signes of the Zodiacke, of the Famous Cities London and West- 
 minster. With the Honour and Worthinesse of the Vine, the Vintage, the Wine, 
 and the Vintoner ; with an Alphabeticall Description of all the Taverne Signes 
 By John Taylor, 8vo, 1636. 
 
 The Honorable and Memorable Foundations ... of Divers Cities, . . . 
 Also, a Relation of the Wine Tavernes either by their signes, or names, of the 
 persons that allow or keepe them in, and throughout the severall Shires. By 
 John Taylor. 8vo, 1636. 
 
 An Useful Table for all Victuallers and others dealing in Beer and A\t Calculating 
 the price of any number of barrels at a certain price per barrel. 1685. A 
 broadside.
 
 THE JOINERS. 
 
 543 
 
 Several Orders Made and agreed upon by the Justices of the Peace for the City and 
 Liberty of Westminster, \'pon Monday, the 10 day of March, 1655. Concerning 
 the future Licensing of all Innkeepers, Victuallers, and Ale-house-keepers, within 
 the said City and Liberty. Folio, [1656.] 
 
 A Vade Mecum for Malt- Worms : or, a Guide to Good Fellows, being A Descrip- 
 tion of the Manners and Customs of the most Eminent Public Houses in and 
 about the Cities of London and Westminster. Dedicated to the Brewers. In 
 two parts. 8vo, [1720.] With woodcuts of the tavern signs. 
 There is a second edition of the First ['art. .X Third Part was announced, but is not known. 
 
 OTe Jotucrs. 
 
 FROM STOW, 1633. 
 
 FROM MAITL.\ND, 1739. 
 
 That the Joiners possessed Ordinances before 1309 under the appro- 
 bation of the City authorities, is proved by proceedings taken in that 
 year ; in which it is prayed that the regulations in former use might 
 be renewed, so that the Ordinances were not only framed by the Gild 
 itself, but allowed by the Court of Aldermen at an earlier date ; and 
 we find that the governing body was composed of six Wardens or 
 Overseers, whose function it was to exainine all goods made, and to 
 affix to them a stamp in token of authenticity. Such a precaution was 
 perfectly necessary, no less than that which restrained a joiner or other 
 artificer from overstepping his legitimate province, as complaint was 
 made that truant apprentices and deceitful persons resorted to the 
 woods near the City, and there made the bows of saddles of green stuff 
 unfit for the purpose, selling thein to unscrupulous painters or saddlers, 
 who foisted them on the unwary. 
 
 There is no direct allusion to such a thing ; but it is to be shrewdly 
 suspected that these practices owed their rise and success to the en- 
 hanced cost of saddles, and that the motive was iindersale ; for in 1350 
 the King is heard to complain to the Cit\- of the dearness of these 
 articles — a serious consideration in the aggregate or for those who had 
 to find cavalry equipments.
 
 544 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In 1376, 50 Edward III., the Joiners were represented on the Com- 
 mon Council by two members, the mdxinimn being six. In 1469 they 
 engaged to find for the City Watch thirty men-at-arms, a quota indi- 
 cative of growing consideration and prosperity ; and in 15 15, among the 
 forty-eight Gilds enumerated in an official return, they appear between 
 the Blacksmiths and the Wiresellers. The Company was incorporated 
 by letters patent, 13 Elizabeth, April 14, 1570, as the Master, Wardens, 
 and Commonalty of the Faculty of Joiners and Ceilers or Carvers of 
 London. This grant was ratified July 20 the same year, and these 
 instruments, with the exception of the ephemeral one of James II., are, 
 with the bye-laws, drawn up and approved by the Lord Keeper and the 
 Judges shortly after, the only muniments of the kind in the possession of 
 the Company. The charter of 1570 vested in the commonalty the right 
 of annually electing, on the day of St. James the Apostle, a Master and 
 two Wardens, and gave jurisdiction within the City and over a compass 
 of two miles, rendering freedom of the Company obligatory on all 
 craftsmen. In the contemporary bye-laws, we see that the same prin- 
 ciple of election by the whole body of the mistery was extended to the 
 Assistants, twelve in number, whose places were to be filled, as vacancies 
 occurred, from the general body. Some years later, a serious con- 
 troversy, culminating in a law-suit, originated in the contention of the 
 freemen or Yeomanry that the executive functions ought not, under the 
 charter, to be undertaken by any but craftsmen ; but on the matter 
 being referred to two aldermen as arbitrators, it was settled, adjudged, 
 and finally exemplified under the Great Seal, that the elections of 
 officers should be conducted as heretofore, and that candidates should 
 be taken, irrespectively of calling, from the Court and Livery. These 
 proceedings spread over several years (161 3-21), and necessarily entailed 
 heavy expense. 
 
 The decision of course preserved the unusually liberal constitution 
 intact ; and the Court of Livery, which meets twice a year, or oftener 
 if necessary, is the body whose voice controls the Master, Wardens, 
 and Assistants. 
 
 The bye-laws, originally framed in 1570, were confirmed in 1605 and 
 1740 ; but in the minor details many alterations have since been made 
 by the Court. 
 
 In 1882 the Livery numbered 90 and the freemen about 100. In 
 the returns of 1699 and 1724, the former is said to amount to 190 and 
 286 respectively. In 1834 the corporate income was about 700/. a 
 year; in 1871,948/.; in 1880, 1,312/.; in 1892, 1300/ The Joiners are 
 interested in the Salters' Irish Manor of Magherafelt to a small extent. 
 There is no trust estate.
 
 THE JOINERS. 545 
 
 Stow's Continuator (1633) saj's : " In Thames Street, on the Thames 
 side West from Dovvngate, is Greenvvitch Lane, of old time so-called, 
 and now Friar Lane, of such a sign there set up. In this lane is the 
 Joiners' Hall, and other faire houses." 
 
 The Hall, of which Cunningham ' mentions the Jacobean doorwaj' 
 and screen as of architectural interest, was in the parishes of All 
 Hallows the Great and St. Martin's in the Vintry. In 1850 it was let 
 to a packer. Joiners' Hall buildings occupy the site. The Company 
 does not seem to know how or whence it acquired the property. 
 
 The Joiners as a Craft differed from the Carpenters in being techni- 
 cally limited to the subsidiary adaptation of wood-work to the purpose 
 of forming doors, window-frames, wainscot, and other parts of a building 
 which required to be planed and moulded. This line of distinction was 
 preserved within a measurable period in specifications and estimates ; 
 yet in an official list of 1629 the Planers are entered as a separate body, 
 and as paying their own share of a municipal assessment — about a 
 moiety of the amount paid by the Joiners. The Planers probably 
 retained the same sort of independent rank as the Sawyers, with whom 
 we have coupled them in a brief notice elsewhere. But although from 
 the sum levied upon them they were evidently a numerous and thriving 
 body, this is the only formal or public mention which we have encoun- 
 tered of them. The Carpenter took the whole contract and reserved to 
 himself the roof, with its manifold details ; and the Joiner was his sub- 
 ordinate and servant. But, from the profusion of wood employed in 
 ancient architecture and the exclusive dependence on local labour the 
 calling was necessarily under old conditions a fairly advantageous one. 
 
 From the account for rebuilding Ironmongers' Hall in 1587 it is to 
 be inferred that the Joiner by that date had begun to undertake certain 
 carving and designing work ; for one of the charges is, " For cutting of 
 4 armes and other worke about the parlor," for which the Joiner had 
 4/. los. 8d. — a high figure for ordinary labour of his class. 
 
 Naturally the members of the craft varied in qualifications and in the 
 scale of pay demanded. There were the skilled carvers and cabinet- 
 makers and those who merely executed minor repairs. In the Gold- 
 smiths' accounts, July 6, 1666, 24.^'. are paid to Smailes for work done 
 for tlie year past. 
 
 At Carpenters' Hall are preserved two interesting specimens of 
 domestic furniture, an octagonal table of carved oak, dated 1606, and a 
 massive carved chair of solid mahogany of later date, both presumably 
 
 ' Handbook to London, 1850, v. Joiner^ Hall. It appears more probable that the 
 work belonged to a later period, perhaps about 1670. 
 
 C.C. 69
 
 546 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the work of early members of the Joiners' craft ; similar relics are of 
 ■course to be found in our museums and private collections ; and in the 
 
 accounts for furnishing Saddlers' Hall after the Fire we encounter an 
 order for a dozen and a half of Turkey work chairs for the use of the 
 Court. 
 
 71 fv 
 
 :ii k: 
 
 SPECIMEN OF ELIZABETHAN WOOD-CARVING PRESERVED AT CARPENTERS' HALL. 
 
 In 1612-13 the Joiners prevailed on the Corporation to grant to them 
 power of search and survey over the Coachmakers, Trunkmakers, Gun-
 
 THE JOINERS. 547 
 
 Stock, Flask, and Jewel-box Makers, Cupboard Makers, and Box- 
 makers, " so far as their skill and judgment extended." 
 
 In 1632 a dispute between the Carpenters and Joiners led to a settle- 
 ment, by which it was clearly laid down what descriptions of work 
 belonged to each Companj-, and to the latter were assigned and 
 reserved : i. All sorts of bedsteads, except boarded bedsteads nailed 
 together ; 2. All sorts of chairs and stools made with mortices or 
 tenents ; 3. All tables of wainscot, walnut, or other stuff glued with 
 frames, mortices, or tenents ; 4. All sorts of forms made of boards 
 pinned or glued ; 5. All sorts of chests, framed, dovetailed, pinned 
 or glued ; 6. All sorts of cabinet cupboards and presses similarly 
 constructed ; and so forth, the Joiner taking in his department shop- 
 windows, doors, picture-frames, sign-boards, coffins of wainscot, pews, 
 pulpits, and all sorts of carved work made without the plane. 
 
 But the controversy lingered over a long series of years ; and after the 
 Great Fire there is extant an answer by the Court of Aldermen to a 
 petition preferred by the Joiners, July 9, 1672, in which the Court points 
 out the large field then open to all Crafts, and also mentions that the 
 Joiners, in common with the Wheelwrights, Cartwrights, Box-makers,. 
 and others, had originally sprung from the Carpenters. 
 
 It is in immediate relevance to this point, that we have to bear in 
 mind the conspicuous part borne by a member of the Joiners' Craft in 
 the political history of the last quarter of the seventeenth century and 
 his tragical fate. Stephen College, known as the Protestant Joiner, had 
 a leading share in the important work of re-edification after the Great 
 Fire, and was, from the prices paid to him for his work and from the 
 still surviving examples of it, a man of high standing in his calling. 
 We notice in another place that for wainscoting Stationers' Hall in 
 1674 his charge was 300/. ; and the evidence of his skill and taste are 
 yet before us in an admirable state of preservation. 
 
 College or Colledge, who was hanged at Oxford for high treason in 
 1 68 1, was the predecessor of the more famous Grinling Gibbons, of 
 whose masterpieces so many have come down to us. Gibbons worked 
 not only in London, but was employed by the nobility and gentry 
 throughout the country. There is a good deal of his carving at Pet- 
 worth in Susse.x.
 
 548 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Z\K Xcatbcrscllers. 
 
 This distinguished and now affluent Gild, which seems to have 
 evolved from the White Tawyers (of whom some account has been 
 already furnished), and which in the only place, where its particular 
 province or department is explained, is said to engage itself in the 
 selling, sorting, ivhiting, and staking, of leather, first discovers itself 
 under its new and present name through the appreciable need of pro- 
 tection for its operations and interests. The Company refers the 
 earliest document expressly dealing with its concerns to the closing 
 years of the reign of Edward III. (1372), when the men of the mistery 
 approached the Court of Aldermen with a bill or petition for a more 
 stringent system of regulating the treatment and sale of leather. The 
 record is more than usually curious. It prays that no man of the 
 mistery of Pursers should put leather to sale for other than it was, 
 or foist on the people sheepskin or calfskin scraped and stained as 
 roe-leather, and that no dyer should be suffered to connive at such 
 deceit by taking fraudulent material for the purpose of colouring it. It 
 proposes that, in order to check and punish these and similar abuses, 
 two Leathersellers of Cheap and two Pursers of the Bridge should be 
 chosen by the common assent of the men of the two misteries, and 
 sworn before the Court. The demand was unanimously granted. Four 
 years later, the Leathersellers are returned as sending two of their 
 number to the Common Council. 
 
 We hear of the Gild in these days sparingly enough. It was in the 
 year just cited (1376) that it took part in certain parliamentary pro- 
 ceedings taken against one John Peech for monopoly and extortion, 
 
 ' We have been indebted for some information respecting this Company to the 
 History and Antiquities of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers of the City of 
 London. With Facsimiles of Charters and other Illustrations. By W. H. Black, 
 F.S.A. Folio, privately printed, 1871.
 
 THE LEATHERSELLERS. 549 
 
 and we may presume that it was comprised among the " fifty-one of 
 the more potent misteries " to the representatives of which on the 
 Common Council an oath was administered on taking their seats at the 
 board. 
 
 Bye-laws were drawn up b)' the Leathcrsellers, and approved, in 1398. 
 They enjoined respect to the authority of the masters of the trade, who 
 were thereby appointed to be chosen to protect its interests internally 
 and externally, and to present offenders to the Lord Mayor's Court. 
 Among the points on which the Articles insist, were that sheepskin and 
 calfskin were not to be dyed after the same manner as roe-leather ; that 
 no one of the trade should seek to sell lanyers of roe-leather or deer's- 
 leather secretly or in eve-cheapings ; that no man or woman should be 
 set to work at the trade, unless he or she were first apprenticed and 
 enrolled, save the wife and children of a freeman ; and that none should 
 work by night with hammer and shears, knife or file ; and transgression 
 against these and other similar ordinances was visited by a scale of 
 penalties varying from 40J'. to ^.od. 
 
 Between the promulgation of these Articles and the reign of Henry 
 VI. there was a period of considerable activity as regarded the leather 
 trade and the attempts of the City and Crown to diminish the irregu- 
 larities and abuses perpetrated bj- the several industries connected with 
 it. Of all these the Leathersellers, whose special province was ostensibly 
 the sale of the material in gross to others, were possibly less chargable 
 with the responsibilit}' than those, who were immediately concerned in 
 preparing the skins on the one hand and in manufacturing them into 
 goods on the other. 
 
 Yet it should be recollected that, as we have seen it to be the case 
 with the Merchant Taylors, the line between the craftsman and sales- 
 man was not in primitive days very distinctly marked ; and the most 
 ancient records of the Leathersellers appear to sustain the view that at 
 the outset they and the Tanners or Tawyers formed a common body, 
 from which the merchant Gild eventually segregated itself, and soon 
 found it advisable to strengthen its hands by an enlargement of its 
 authority both over its own constituency and over the allied and sub- 
 sidiary branches of the trade. 
 
 While the testimony in our hands points to the White Tawyers as the 
 ancestors of the Leathersellers, and as their precursors at London Wall, 
 we cannot help seeing in the Ordinances of 1635, how a gradual process 
 of incorporation or absorption tended to the aggrandisement and supre- 
 macy of the Gild before us, which ultimately, prior to its abandonment 
 of the practical side, unified all the scattered divisions of labour inter- 
 ested in the treatment of hides and furs.
 
 550 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The early connection of the Leathersellers with the preparatory pro- 
 cesses is exemplified by the terms of the lease granted in 1469 to 
 William Boteler of premises at London Wall as a tan-yard, where 2,600 
 goatskins and 1,000 kidskins might be dressed yearly, and by the fact 
 that Boteler was one of the Wardens of the Company in 1471-2. 
 
 But prior to the date of a charter, the Ordinances of 1 398 were re- 
 pealed and superseded by others in 1438-9, 1440, and 1443 ; and these 
 new Articles dealt primarily with the sale of fells or hides, both rough 
 and tawed or tanned, and with the cognate difficulty attendant on the 
 control and surveillance of the leather-dyers. 
 
 In 1444, August 19, 22 Henry VI., upon the application of Thomas 
 Bygge and fourteen others, who cited the existing Ordinances, a 
 regular charter was accorded to the Gild, conferring perpetual succes- 
 sion, a common seal, a licence in mortmain, the power to hold assemblies 
 and grant liveries, and other privileges, but reserving the presentment 
 of the Wardens to the Lord Mayor, as heretofore, for approval and 
 admittance. The main features in the instrument, perhaps, are the 
 general right of search for bad or false wares, which was extended to 
 all cities, vills, boroughs, places, fairs, cheapings, and markets through- 
 out the realm, and, secondly, the acknowledgment of a prescriptive 
 Livery. 
 
 At this period the Fraternity was beginning to acquire consequence 
 and consideration. Within a few months from the settlement of the 
 charter, it received by feoffment its first parcel of real property at 
 London Wall, consisting of a messuage with two shops and a garden, 
 and presumably yielding accommodation for the possessions and meet- 
 ings of the Gild ; and in 1447 the name meets the eye among eighteen 
 subscribers of 16/. each to the roofing of Guildhall Chapel. In 1469 it 
 supplied forty-four men-at-arms to the muster for the City Watch ; and 
 in the following year, under the will of Robert Ferbras, the last feoffee, 
 the Leathersellers came into possession of the whole London Wall 
 estate, of which an account is supplied below. In 1502 and 1517 suc- 
 cessive orders of the Court of Aldermen sanctioned the union with their 
 ranks of the Glovers- Pursers and the Pouchmakers, both important 
 bodies in their respective ways, and both conducive to the commercial 
 expansion and religious settlement of the Gild, in which they merged. 
 
 Some further particulars of these bodies will be found under our 
 accounts of them supra. 
 
 The accession of the Pursers in 1502 exercised a notable religious 
 influence ; for in the articles of agreement and union there is, besides 
 the stipulations that in lieu of the former connection of the Leather- 
 sellers with St. Mary Magdalen's Chapel, Guildhall, the joint Fellowship
 
 THE LEATHERSELLERS. 55 1 
 
 should be under the patronage of the Virgin at St. Thomas of Aeon,' 
 the one that their common Hall should likewise be of the Assumption 
 of Our Lady, and that the annual feast should be held on the day of the 
 said Assumption, provided that it fell on Sunday or Monday — if on 
 Saturday, then on the Sunday or Monday ensuing, if on any other day, 
 at such time as the Wardens might appoint. It was also laid down 
 that the united Gild should be partners in the suffrages hitherto per- 
 formed in the Charterhouse of London on behalf of the Glovers- Pursers, 
 as well as in the light and yearly obit maintained there down to that 
 time by the latter ; that the hangings in the Hall should be made of 
 the stories of Our Lady, and not of the Resurrection ; and that 
 the banners should be charged with the arms of the whole Fraternity, 
 agreeably to an approved pattern. 
 
 The work of consolidation was not yet complete ; for in 15 17, as we 
 have mentioned, the Pouchmakers followed the example of the Glovers- 
 Pursers, and arranged to join the union, bringing with them a consider- 
 able assortment of valuable effects, of which an inventory is extant, 
 besides the advantages accruing from their very extensive and multi- 
 farious business. It may be permissible to conjecture that the latest 
 member of the body had some inducement to take the course in a 
 community of religious usages ; for the Pouchmakers, like the Glovers- 
 Pursers, ranged themselves under the protection of the Virgin, and laid 
 equal stress on the Assumption as an object of ceremonial worship and 
 a titular distinction. 
 
 The varied nature and scope of the industry' pursued by the Pouch- 
 makers, of whom some account is given in the previous section, and who 
 had themseh^es absorbed the Mail-makers and Galoche-makers, may be 
 easily divined from the enumeration of the goods sold by them, which 
 occurs in the municipal ordinance of 1 5 17 for their alliance with the 
 Leathersellers ; and we seem to discern a clear aim, on the part of those 
 more especially concerned as vendors of leathern utensils or articles, at a 
 federal combination for the common security and profit. In the Ordi- 
 nances of the Leathersellers, 1635, there is quite an array of trades set 
 forth as having been separate branches, and as then (and long before, of 
 course,) forming part of the Leathersellers' Gild. These were the Fell- 
 mongers, Leatherdressers, Parchment-makers, Glovers, Pursers, and 
 Pouchmakers, of whom the last had taken over the two other bodies 
 just named ; and to these we may add the Leather-dyers, often named 
 in earlier documents. 
 
 The commodities on sale by the Pouchmakers, at the close of their 
 
 ' Where Mercers' Chapel now is.
 
 552 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 separate existence, include bellows, lanthorns, sconces, bags of all de- 
 scriptions, pouches, mails (portmanteaux), budgets (wallets), bow-cases, 
 cloth-sacks, the leathern fittings of chariots, leathern bottles and pots, 
 satchels for carrying food {ganie-viauiices), and trussing coffers. 
 
 The reign of Henry VII. witnessed several measures on the part of 
 the Court of Aldermen or the Common Council for the consolidation 
 and improvement of the leather industry. In 1488, ordinances were 
 made to regulate the sale of tanned leather at Leadenhall, and for the 
 better government of the Pouchmakers and Pursers ; and in 1493, 1501, 
 and 1 502, others were framed and published for the further guidance and 
 control of the Leathersellers and Pouchmakers. 
 
 At the coronation of Henry VIII., the Leathersellers had been 
 reckoned as the eighteenth Company, and had been allotted fifteen 
 yards for their stand to view the procession ; but in 1515 they were of- 
 ficially declared to be fifteenth in precedence. Again, at the Mayor's 
 Feast at Guildhall in 153 1-2, they were represented by eight mem- 
 bers, beside their Wardens — a larger quota than some of the great Com- 
 panies. 
 
 There is an Elizabethan inspeximus or confirmation of the charter 
 of 1444, dated June 28, 1559, when William Allen, Alderman,' and three 
 other Wardens were the governing body. In this instrument the twofold 
 oversight on the part of all concerned was committed of reciting the 
 grant of 1444 as one of Henry VII. instead of Henry VI., and of con- 
 firming the obsolete Ordinances of 139S. It is very singular that the 
 officials responsible on both sides for the matter should have submitted 
 for the Queen's signature such a blundering piece of work. 
 
 The acting charter is that of July 24, 1604. Here the Company is 
 designated The Wardens and Society of the Mistery or Art of the 
 Leathersellers of the City of London ; the faculty 
 of electing the Wardens and the twenty-four Assis- 
 tants, now first instituted, vests in the Court by co- 
 optation upon the retirement or death of the persons 
 named in the grant as the first holders of these offices 
 by his Majesty's appointment ; and the fifteenth day 
 after Corpus Christi is declared to be the season for 
 the annual elections thereafter. Vacancies among the 
 
 OLD .\RMS. , .-,, r 1 1 r 1 
 
 Assistants were to be filled up from the ranks ot the 
 Commonalty or Freedom. The power of search was renewed, with a 
 limitation to the City of London, its liberties and precincts. The de- 
 scriptions of leather are specified as "all and singular the several kinds of 
 
 Afterward Sheriff and (1571) Lord Mayor.
 
 THE LEATHERSELLEKS. 553 
 
 skins and fells in English called buff-leather, shamoy [chamois]-leathcr, 
 Spanish leather, staggs leather rough or smooth, bucks leather, calfs 
 leather, sheeps leather, lambs leather, kidds leather, frized or grained, 
 dressed or wrought in oil, allum, shoemack or bark, or tawed ; " and 
 all parcels sold were henceforth to bear the arms or cognizance of the 
 Company — a stamp bearing the three stags. 
 
 The statute, 5 Elizabeth, c. 8., entitled " An Act touching Tanners, 
 Courriours, Shoemakers, and other Artificers occupyeing the cutting of 
 Leather," had ordained that the sale of tanned leather should be re- 
 stricted to Leadenhall and to Mondays, and to persons intending to 
 work it ; and by a later statute, i James I., c. 22, which re-enacted the 
 major part of the former, eight searchers and sealers of leather were to 
 be annual!}- appointed by the Court of Aldermen from members of the 
 Cordwainers', Curriers', Saddlers', and Girdlers' Companies. 
 
 By an Order in Council, April, 1634, the Lord Mayor was directed to 
 appoint three searchers for Bartholomew Fair ; and from the orders pub- 
 lished in consequence of the plague of 1593 we learn that it was an 
 ancient usage for the Leathersellers to occupy stations there outside the 
 ring of Smithfield. 
 
 In the charters of 1444 and 1559 there had been a licence in mortmain, 
 but not of a sufficient compass to enable the Company to hold the 
 conventual estate at Bishopsgate securely in the presence of all sorts of 
 unscrupulous intriguers and jobbers ; and in 1614 heavy charges, 
 including a gratuity of 125/. to the King, were incurred in supplying 
 this defect and placing the tenure of the St. Helen's and other property 
 on a clear basis. 
 
 With the exception of the charter of 1444, the fault)- inspexinms of 
 1559, and the new grants of 1604 and 1614, the Leathersellers do not 
 seem to have ever possessed any concessions from the Crown of a con- 
 stitutional or permanent character, that conferred by James II., or the 
 surrender in 1685, having been annulled by the Act of 1690. 
 
 The only set of bye-laws, posterior to those of 1398 and 1488, is that, 
 w-hich was sanctioned by the Lord Keeper and Judges, 1 1 Charles I. 
 Mr. Black points out that in the preamble these new Articles are 
 wrongly described as having been made by the Company on Tuesday 
 the 24th, instead of the 14th, April, the Court Book reading xiiijtii, and 
 the 24th not falling that year on a Tuesday. 
 
 In 1591, a very serious dispute arose between the Government of 
 Elizabeth and the City, in regard to the Patent granted by the Queen 
 to Mr. Edward Darcie, of the Privy Chamber, for the Search and Seal- 
 ing of Leather. The Leathersellers bitterly complained of the hardship 
 and vexation imposed on them by the rigorous execution of the mono- 
 
 C.C. 70
 
 554 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 poly ; and, the Corporation espousing the cause of the Company and 
 Trade, the Queen offered to revoke the grant on payment of 4,000/. 
 
 Darcie attended the conference held at the Mayor's house to consider 
 the matter ; and such high words were exchanged that he committed an 
 assault on one of the Aldermen, which was reported to the Council as a 
 grave insult to Her Majesty's Lieutenant, and, of which the knowledge 
 spreading among the apprentices and others of the City, the offender 
 had to be safe-guarded out of the precinct. 
 
 This imbroglio lasted till 1595. 
 
 The present Company in fact shared the common fate of all simi- 
 larl}' situated and constituted bodies, and to a certain extent purchased 
 rather dearly the privileges which conferred on it power and prosperity. 
 From the periodical exactions of the Crown, apart from more or less legi- 
 timate appeals for public objects, there was scarcely any respite. Even 
 before the times of the Civil War and Great Fire, with their almost over- 
 whelming incidences and consequences, the Leathersellers were by their 
 own admission at a very low ebb about 1620, when James I. undertook to 
 preside in person for the settlement of a dispute between them and the 
 Earl of March, who sought at the hands of the King a monopoly ex- 
 tremely prejudicial to the Gild. How it was settled, does not transpire 
 in the record ; Lord March died in 1624. 
 
 The governing body follows the charter of 1604, and is composed of 
 four Wardens, of whom one is Master, and twenty-four Assistants. Pre- 
 viously to 1685, there was no recognised Livery, although in 1501-2 it 
 existed by custom, and numbered at that time 33,' and in the charters 
 of 1444 and 1604 an express power was inserted, "to grant Liveries." 
 But on May 6, 1685 the Court of Aldermen granted one in due form, 
 limiting it to thirty fit persons, exclusively of the Court as above defined ; 
 and on the nth the chosen members were sworn in at Guildhall. But 
 the body was enlarged at subsequent dates, and has varied from time to 
 time. In 1 501-2, we see that it amounted to 33 ; in 1699, it was 169 ; in 
 1724, 186 ; in 1882, 139 ; in 1892, 141. A Liveryman must have served 
 or fined as Steward, before he can come on the Court. The fines pay- 
 able by an Assistant and a Master on election (10/.) are carried to the 
 Benevolent Fund, for the relief of distressed members of the Court. 
 The Steward is bound to find 12/. for the dinner on Lord Mayor's day, 
 and to hand 8/. to the Fund. 
 
 Upon the election to the Livery it was formerly customary to apprise 
 the new member of the fact by letter, and to enclose a pattern of the 
 
 ' In the return to Parliament in 1725 the Company confessed its inability to trace 
 an authority for a Livery.
 
 THE LEATHERSELLERS. 555 
 
 suit and colour, which he was required to procure, before he presented 
 himself for formal admission. This bore the cognizance of the Company 
 and is attached, in an extant specimen of the early part of the i.Sth 
 century, to the left-hand margin of the communication. 
 
 The property of the Leathersellers, which has largely i^^, j^ 
 increased in value since 1834, mainly consists of estates at \^-, 
 London Wall, Bishopsgate, Lcwisham, and Sydenham, and 
 of a sub- share of the Fishmongers' Irish manor. A very 
 inconsiderable proportion is held in trust, owing to the most 
 important part — the Bishopsgate possessions — having been ! 1 
 
 obtained to the corporate use. In 1882 the corporate hf^l 
 revenue was stated to be 16,395/., the trust, 2,333/.,' whereas — 
 
 in 1834, of less than 4000/. a year, 1,500/. was set down as 
 trust income. This is another way of saying that in the interval the St. 
 Helen's rental has enormously risen. 
 
 But the Company has voluntarily expended large sums in improving 
 and developing its educational charities, and has supported the City 
 and Gilds' Institute and many other undertakings.- Some portion of 
 the Bishopsgate estate was derived from Roger Daniel, King's printer, 
 and a Master of the Company, under his will dated April 28, 1625. In 
 Gracechurch Street and Great Eastcheap there were also some early 
 acquisitions. The latter is noticeable merely as having been a messuage 
 then called T/ie George on Horseback, left in trust in 16 19, and situated 
 in what is at present known as King William Street. 
 
 The London Wall estate was composed of two distinct properties 
 obtained at different periods and under different circumstances. What 
 Mr. Black calls the Western Estate, at one time constituted the property 
 of William Godale, Citizen and Currier, whose will was proved in 1331,. 
 and was left by a later possessor, Nicholas Rumbold, Citizen and White 
 Tawyer, in reversion after the death of his wife, to two of the Brotherhood 
 of White Tawyers, subject to the performance of certain obits in the 
 
 ' In 1892 the aggregate income was returned as 18,500/., of which 3,000/ were in 
 trust. 
 
 - In February last, the Company voted and distributed donations of from 5/ 5^. to- 
 21/, to 140 charitable and other institutions, amounting in all to 1,769/. 5J., viz. : 
 General hospitals, 257/. 5 j. ; special hospitals, 372/ 15.?.; convalescent homes, 115/ 
 \os. ; dispensaries, 42/ ; surgical appliance societies, 36/ 15.?. ; orphanages, 199/ los.; 
 homes, etc., for relief in affliction, 126/ ; homes, etc., for the poor, 152/ ^s. ; benevo- 
 lent societies, 241/ \os. ; prisoners' aid societies, 42/ ; penitentiary societies, 21/ ; 
 missions, etc., 126/. ; general, 36/ 15^. The Company have also given 136/. io.f. in 
 donations of 21/. and 10/. lof. among the poor-boxes at eleven metropolitan poUce- 
 courts. These donations are in addition to grants made from time to time during 
 the year for special objects, such as the City and Gilds' Institute for General Purposes, 
 and for the Leather Trades' School, the Volunteer Patriotic Fund, and other charities.
 
 556 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 church of All Hallows on the Wall. The reversioners, however, owing 
 to their incapacity to hold lands, did not succeed on the demise of the 
 widow ; and after a great deal of trouble and delay, and a series of 
 feoffments, the property, with the Eastern Estate, devolved on Robert 
 Ferbras, Citizen and Surgeon of London, who conveyed the whole to 
 the Company under his will, November 4, 1470. 
 
 The Eastern estate, which was contiguous to the church of All 
 Hallows on the Wall, and which included the site of the first Hall of 
 the Brotherhood, passed into the hands of the Leathersellers in 1470 
 under the will of Robert Ferbras above-mentioned, the last of a line 
 of feoffees, who had held the property till the Gild became capable 
 under its charter of holding realty to a certain value. Altogether, 
 the possessions in this quarter were fairly extensive upon the union 
 of the two divisions in the manner described. The Hall, which be- 
 longed to the eastern one, possessed a parlour, a basement occasionally 
 let to other bodies by the day, the refectory above, adorned with hang- 
 ings illustrative of the History of the Resurrection,' a kitchen, and a 
 garden ; but the latter was alienated in 1477-8. From the lists of plate 
 and other chattels made in 1488 and 1504, we may infer that the other 
 appointments corresponded. 
 
 The building was at no great distance from Armourers' Hall, and in 
 fact formed one of a group of such seats, which studded that then 
 outlying part of the metropolis. The isolation was dictated by the 
 nature of the industries ; and the vicinity of the Walbrook rendered the 
 spot convenient for many manufacturing purposes. 
 
 The relationship of the Leathersellers to the church of All Hallows 
 was an inheritance from the White Tawyers, who so early as 1346 
 -associated themselves with it ; and the original place of assembly in the 
 present case partook of the composite character, which those of so many 
 of the more ancient Gilds assumed in their inception — that of bodies of 
 a partly religious and partly commercial complexion. It seems to have 
 been their invariable rule to shelter themselves under the tutelary 
 influence of the nearest religious establishment, and even to employ it 
 as a substitute for a meeting-house and a muniment-room. 
 
 The fiduciary element equally entered into the primary ownership of 
 the London Wall and Bishopsgate properties ; but the conveyance of 
 1470 probably released the former from its obligations in a religious 
 direction. Both before and subsequently to the removal to St. Helen's, 
 in or about 1543, portions of the estate at London Wall were sold for 
 
 ' Under the agreement with the Pursers in 1502 these were to be replaced by 
 others symbolical of the Assumption of the Virgin.
 
 THE LEATHERSELLERS. 557 
 
 various reasons ; the old Hall itself was divided after a certain 
 interval into tenements ; and on the greater part of the land was 
 eventually erected the block known as Leathersellers' Buildings. 
 
 The Leathersellers and their predecessors, the White Tawyers, had 
 been settled at London Wall not less than two centuries, when Sir 
 Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, Knight, exchanged the manors of 
 Brampton and Hemyngford-Grey in Huntingdonshire with Henry VHI. 
 under letters patent of March 29, 1542, for the site of the dissolved 
 Benedictine Prior)- of Black Nuns at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, founded 
 in 1 2 10 by the wealthy goldsmith, William Fitzwilliam, with all the 
 buildings then thereupon ; and it happened that, a year later, the 
 Leathersellers having secured the promise of about 350/. from John 
 Haselwood toward the object, concluded with Cromwell for the purchase 
 of the Priory and its appurtenances as a common Hall. The negotiation 
 was completed on the 28th April, 1543 ; and in order to defray the cost 
 (380/.) and attendant expenses, some of the tenements at London Wall 
 were sold for 270/. The new owners had not entered into actual pos- 
 session on the 1 6th October, although they had taken over the premises 
 on the 9th May. 
 
 There is not the slightest reason to doubt that the Company con- 
 tented itself with the place as it found it, employed the monastic 
 refectory as its dining and meeting room, and accommodated the 
 almspeople in some of the disused apartments or offices. 
 
 In his will, January 16, 1543-4, John Haselwood, to whose generosity 
 his presumed brethren were under such a weighty debt, records the 
 previous gift to the Master and Wardens of 300/., a bason and ewer of 
 silver of the value of 20 marks (13/. I3J'. 4^/.), a standing cup and cover 
 gilt of the value of 6/., and a sow of lead weighing 1 1 cwt. and three 
 quarters,^ to enable them to purchase the Priory of St. Helen's, Bishops- 
 gate, to make therein their common Hall, and " to the intent and purpose 
 that they and their successors for ever should be bound to me and my 
 executors by a sufficient writing obligatory, to be advised by mine 
 executors, to purchase as much land and tenements or yearly profits for 
 the yearly living and payments to be paid for ever to four beadmen 
 and three beadwomen or almswomen, that is to say, to each of them 
 eightpence weekly, and to every one of them two sacks of coals, each 
 sack containing a quarter, to be delivered to each of them between 
 Hallowmass and Christmas, over and besides their dwelling houses to 
 be provided for them by the Master and Wardens, rent-free, within the 
 site of the said late monastery of St. Helen's." 
 
 The premises originally consisted of the dining-hall, with extensive 
 
 ' See what we have said under the account of the Plumbers' Company.
 
 558 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 crypts and cellars of the most solid and beautiful fabric, the sitting and 
 sleeping apartments of the Prioress and Sisterhood, a garden and a dove- 
 cote. The frontage was let to several tenants. This property was 
 designated Little St. Helen's, and lay north of the Church, the close, 
 which was situated to the south, being known as Great St. Helen's. 
 
 The Company still retained the Nuns' Hall as their place of 'meeting 
 and entertainment, when Newcourt compiled his Rcpertoriuin in 1708. 
 Maitland, writing in 1739, says: "This Hall, considering the antiquity 
 of its building,^ has some of the best joiners' and plaisterers' work in the 
 kingdom. The screen is magnificent, adorned with six columns of the 
 Ionic order, enrichments, etc., with ceiling of fretwork. The entrance 
 into the Common Hall is up a handsome flight of stone stairs from the 
 courtyard." A printed document of 1799 dwells on the antique fittings 
 of the Refectory, " the Purbeck pavement, the curious and ornamental 
 Gothic embellishments and carving, and the King's coat of arms richly 
 carved and gilt. It was here that in 1769 the wardmote of Bishops- 
 gate assembled, and elected the celebrated James Townsend, Esquire, 
 M.P., subsequently Sheriff and Lord Mayor, their Alderman. 
 
 There are no longer any vestiges of this fine old place and its 
 adjuncts. By a resolution of a committee of the Court of the Company 
 in 1797, the entire pile, to the very cellarage, was demolished and swept 
 away two years later. A more ruthless and unpardonable act of 
 ignorant vandalism was perhaps never perpetrated. According to the 
 auctioneer's prospectus the stone and brickwork " arising from a part of 
 the Ancient Priory of St. Helen's, called the Nuns' Hall, founded in the 
 year 1210," was in an astonishing state of preservation. The "curious" 
 were invited to view the site, before it was cleared ; and the fortunate 
 result was, that some drawings were made of the crypt, vault, kitchen, 
 and other portions of the structure. These are faithfully reproduced in 
 Mr. Black's most interesting volume. 
 
 With that episode the historical career of the Leathersellers terminates. 
 Their second seat in Bishopsgate was at the eastern end of Little St. 
 Helen's, in an old house, which was adapted for the purpose, but which 
 necessitated the resort on occasions, when space was needed, elsewhere. 
 This structure was destroyed by fire in 18 19, and a large portion of the 
 contents perished in the flames. Even the common seal was not 
 recovered till some weeks after among the ruins. Some of the Com- 
 pany's papers and parchments were saved,^ together with a few pieces 
 of plate. 
 
 ' The antiquity was the reason. 
 
 " But many were burned, including those connected with the purchase from Crom- 
 well in 1543.
 
 THE LEATHERSELLERS. 
 
 559 
 
 Till the house was rebuilt, the use of Brewers' Hall was obtained, and 
 the new building was not ready for occupation till 1822. It partook of 
 the inadequate character and proportions of its predecessor, or at least 
 its owners became dissatisfied with it, and in 1878 erected a fourili I Tail 
 immediate!)' opposite, reserving the other pile for offices. 
 
 The Company has severed itself from its primitive Bishopsgate, no 
 less than from its London Wall, traditions, and is on purely modern 
 lines. Even the pump, made in 1679 by Caius Gabriel Cibbcr in 
 satisfaction of his Livery-fine, has necessarily disappeared with the court- 
 yard, in which it stood, surmounted by a mermaid pressing her breasts. 
 On festive occasions these were made to give forth wine. 
 
 I.KATHEKSELLEKS' HALL IN 1842. IXTLKIOR VIEW. 
 
 The almspeople, on whom Haselwood laid such stress, have been re- 
 moved to Barnet, as their accommodation on the spot was found to be 
 inconvenient. But the Company, in lieu of the amount prescribed for 
 them (12/. 2s. 8c/.), now distributes nearly 400/. a year among the seven 
 persons periodically chosen to enjoy the benefaction. Yet it ma}' be ques- 
 tioned whether in these larger figures allowance ought not to be made for 
 the fact that a local residence was a distinct proviso in the arrangement. 
 
 A certain index to the standing and resources of a Gild, both in its 
 corporate and individual or personal capacity, may be found in the 
 power to acquire and retain costly effects in the nature of plate or 
 otherwise. The Leathersellers, prior to their removal to Bishopsgate,
 
 560 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 possessed a very extensive and valuable assemblage of silver objects 
 and a considerable accumulation of miscellaneous property, the evidences 
 and other muniments inclusive. There are inventories among the 
 archives of the Company belonging to the years 1488 and 1 504, and 
 they are printed at large by Mr. Black. The ancient collection of plate 
 was kept, it appears, intact till 1545, when it was compulsorily sold to 
 meet urgent pecuniary claims in connection with some portions of the 
 estate. A second one was doubtless formed by the liberality of private 
 donors or testators ; but there is nothing now in the Company's hands 
 older than 1640. 
 
 The Company, like the Fishmongers, Merchant-Taylors, and others, 
 counted among their possessions at an early period one of those funeral 
 palls, which were used to cover the remains of departed brethren, and 
 which were, as we have elsewhere shown, among the more costly and 
 sumptuous of the productions of the Broderers or Embroiderers. The 
 hearse-cloth of the Leathersellers does not occur in the inventory of 
 1488 ; and in the first mention of it nothing is said of its texture or ap- 
 pearance. It is simply described as " a herse-clothe to lay upon corses." 
 In 1556, however, a member presented a new pall of black velvet and 
 cloth of gold, with the images set with pearl and the inscriptions in letters 
 of gold ; whereupon the old cloth was handed over to the yeomanry. 
 
 In these, as in other matters the fashion changed, and in 1559, only 
 three years later, another brother gave " a fine herse-clothe, with a case 
 covered with lether, bound with yerne." 
 
 The Master's and Wardens' garlands of rich embroidered work, the 
 gift of William Green in 1539, survive as witnesses of the far more 
 numerous treasures, which once existed, and which were either destroyed 
 by use, or perished in the Fire of 18 19. These beautiful examples of 
 early English taste are figured in the History of the Company on a 
 scale almost, if not quite, equal to the originals. 
 
 They are thus specifically described in the Company's Books under 
 Sept. 23, 1540: "Item iiij Garlandes of clothe of tycchewe, of the gift of 
 William Grene, both lining and making ; and the Maysters Garland 
 hathe a gyltyde bruche of the Assumption of our Lady, with ij. roe- 
 bucks gyltyde, with a goat and a ram, and ij. bucks' heads of silver parcel 
 gyltt ; and in like manner be the other iij. garlandes with silver broches, 
 according as is afore said. The which brochys be at the cost of the 
 whole Craft, and be not parcel gyltt as the Masters Garland is, but 
 white silver." 
 
 Hence it appears that the brooches were an addition by the Company; 
 but they were subsequently replaced by the cognizance of the three stags. 
 
 The custom of crowning the officers dated long before 1 540, however ;
 
 THE LOKINEKS. 56 I 
 
 for under 1487-8 it is noted in another of the inventories that "the gud- 
 vvyffe Curtes hathe gevyn to y Crafftt a garland of purpull velvett, lynyd 
 wyth red syiver and gyltt ; and on y ffor-frountt standysch a gyltt 
 robuk of silver and gyltt. . ." 
 
 We must be thankful and glad that the specimens of 1540 have been 
 rescued from destruction. Between the two points of time there wa.*; 
 beyond doubt a continual succession of these ornamental insignia by 
 gift or otherwise. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A liuing remembrance of Master Robert Rogers, Marchant Adventurer and Leather- 
 seller of London, deceased, who declared the fruites of his faith by his most 
 Christian and charitable workes. And left this life at his house in Bassings Hall 
 the 22nd of September, and was buried in Christ Church on Thursday, ist Octo- 
 ber, 1601. A broadside. 1601. 
 ,% Anne.\ed is a list of his legacies to various charities, amounting to 2,960/. 6s. 8d. To his Com- 
 pany he left 700/. in trust for various purposes, including an annual distribution in August of 50c 
 good Kentish billets, or 75. in money, to each of the almspeople. 
 
 Leather: A Discourse rendred to the High Court of Parliament. Of the Generall 
 
 vse of Leather. The generall Abuse thereof. The good that may arise to Great 
 
 Brittain from the Reformation. The seuerall Statutes made in that behalf by 
 
 our Ancient Kings. 4to, 1629. 
 To the Right Honorable, the High Court of Parliament, sitting at Westminster : 
 
 The Illegal and Immodest Petition of Praise-God Barbone, Anabaptist and 
 
 Leather-seller of London. 1660. A broadside. 
 The Picture of the Good Old Cause, drawn to the Life in the Effigies of Master 
 
 Prais-God Barebone. 1660. A broadside. 
 A Song in praise of the Leather Bottel. To the tune of the Bottel-maker^ Delight. 
 
 A broadside. [Charles II.]. 
 
 "Cbe Xoriners. 
 
 This Fellowship, in common with many others, enjoyed the greatest 
 prosperity, while it remained in the condition of a voluntary Union. It 
 is perfectly manifest that, when its members first occur to our notice, 
 
 c.c. 7 1
 
 562 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 they were a constituted and recognised body ; although in the Ordin- 
 ances of 45 Henry III. (1260), there is no reference to any antecedent 
 code, and the four Wardens named in it appear to be a new departure. 
 The Articles are, moreover, only eight in number, and are confined to 
 general and leading principles. They provide against working by night, 
 on Saturday afternoons, and on certain festivals of the Church ; that no 
 old lorinery was to be repaired, unless it was specially so desired by 
 some chief man or lady of the land, or some good man of the City ; that 
 foreigners, coming to work in the City, should pay half a mark to the 
 Chamber of London and 2S. at least to the Fellowship's box, and should 
 agree to observe the Ordinances of the Craft; that, in order to ensure 
 obedience to the Ordinances, four good men should be elected by the 
 Commonalty and approved by the Mayor and the rest of the Barons of 
 the City ; and that, by the assent of the whole Craft, a Bridle should be 
 presented at Easter yearly to secure the maintenance of these provisions. 
 This instrument was a bipartite indenture, one copy to be on record 
 in the Chamber of London, the other to be kept by the Gild, and they 
 were sealed by the Masters of the mistery for 
 fuller surety. Occasional notices occur of the 
 renewal or confirmation of these bye-laws, and of the 
 continuance of the government by Wardens, down 
 to 1570. In 1 5 II, foreign competition seems to 
 have begun to make itself sensibly felt ; and 
 agreeably to the protectionist policy then and so 
 long after predominant, a check was imposed by 
 the Corporation on the sale of French bits other- 
 wise than in gross to free retailers. The municipal order of 1570 
 equally deals with this subject, and for the first and last time confers 
 the right of search in certain cases, but not of seizure. This privilege, 
 so usual among those bodies which we describe, was never enjoyed 
 by the Loriners, save in this instance and to this limited extent. 
 
 In a document of 1327 they are mentioned as workers both in copper 
 and in iron. To the muster for the City Watch in 1469 the Gild is 
 returned as engaging to supply fourteen men-at-arms. The maximum 
 was 210. Returns of 1501-2 and I53i-2name it among those'which 
 had no Livery. 
 
 The memorials of the progress and transactions of this Association 
 are exceptionally scanty, owing, perhaps, to the absence of a settled 
 constitution and of a place for the deposit of records. The only charter 
 granted to it was in 171 1, when five centuries or upward had elapsed 
 from the original rise and existence as a Fellowship. Hereby the Exe- 
 cutive was fixed at a Master, two Wardens, and 2i Assistants, and seven 
 
 OLD ARMS.
 
 THE LOKINERS. ^63 
 
 were to be a quorum. The Livery is unlimited, and there is a licence 
 in mortmain to the unusual extent of 500/. a year. 
 
 The Company, however, has never possessed any real estate. In 1834 
 its income was returned at about 412/. a year, arising from dividends 
 and fees. From the accounts published in 1884 it appears that out of 
 the corporate savings 13,000/. in consols and railway stock had then 
 been acquired ; and in 1892 the revenues are given as 1200/. a year. 
 But about 1874 a marked impulse was given to the numbers and 
 resources of the Company by the accession of freemen and liverymen 
 for the purposes of social intercourse and of the municipal and parlia- 
 mentary franchise; and in 1882 the former were estimated approxi- 
 mately at 1,391 and the latter at 438,* figures which at once explain the 
 large increase in the annual receipts. In 1724 the Livery was only 79. 
 Of those Companies, which have entered on such a line of policy and 
 have successfully carried it out, the Loriners and Spectacle-makers 
 probably stand foremost. 
 
 In 1 89 1, the Registrations at Guildhall exhibited the maintenance of 
 the electoral ascendency of the Company, the voting power being gradu- 
 ated, for example's sake, as follows : — 
 
 Loriners . 
 
 . 434 votes. 
 
 Fishmongers 
 
 . 302 votes. 
 
 Haberdashers . 
 
 • 354 „ 
 
 Merchant Tavlors 
 
 ■ 219 „ 
 
 Spectaclemakeis 
 
 • 317 „ 
 
 Turners 
 
 • 215 „ 
 
 The Loriners have had the honour to reckon among their members 
 five passed Mayors, besides Sheriffs and other eminent functionaries. 
 Upon the last occasion (1883) when a Loriner filled the Maj-oralty, his 
 brethren celebrated the event by the presentation to him of a handsome 
 and massive loving-cup, 16 inches in height, ornamented at its base with 
 spurs and stirrups, the handles formed of horses' bits and rosettes, and 
 the bits attached to the cup by bridles. On the cover was engraved the 
 coat of arms of the Company. 
 
 In 1891 the freedom was for the first time conferred upon the Queen's 
 Loriner, Mr. N. G. Chavasse, successor to Mr. Benjamin Latchford, of 
 Upper St. Martin's Lane, the oldest business of the kind in London. 
 
 There was formerly, opposite the northern extremity of Basinghall 
 Street, at London Wall, a Hall belonging to the Gild. It is described 
 by Maitland in 1739 as "small, but convenient." As the affairs in the 
 last century declined, prior to the modern revival, this building was let 
 to a succession of tenants, chiefly for religious purposes, and was eventu- 
 ally demolished. In 1767 we find the Loriners engaging Founders' 
 
 ' The Livery fine is 15/. 14^^. 6d. In 1892 the numbers were 430.
 
 564 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Hall, Lothbury, for their monthly courts and annual dinner, at 10/. a 
 year. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The fower chiefyst olfices belongyng to Horsemanshippe. By Thomas Blundevile. 
 4to, [1566], 1580, 1597, 1609. 
 ^*# Tlie fourth book relates to the Ferrer or Farrier. There is a series of woodcuts of bits in use. 
 
 Richardi Sadlerii de Procreandis, Eligendis, Alendis, Frsenandis, et Tractandis 
 Eqvis Experientia. 4to, 1587. 
 
 Zbc Masons. 
 
 The Act 5 Elizabeth (1562-3) may perhaps be the first in which the 
 present trade is specified as a distinct occupation, and persons following 
 it are enabled and even required to take apprentices. We shall supply 
 some testimony below in favour of the belief that the Masons represent 
 in a modified form a Society which once rose to exceptional eminence, 
 and acquired even formidable power. They enjoy the unique distinction 
 ■of having laid the basis of a social cult, which has immeasurably out- 
 stripped its founders, and left behind it the lines which they were content 
 to observe. 
 
 But the names of Simon de Pabingham and Richard de Wetham are 
 cited in 1298 as those of two master-masons between whom a reconcili- 
 ation was effected through the good offices of the authorities, with the 
 proviso that, if either infringed the conditions, he should pay 1 00 shillings 
 toward the fabric of London Bridge. 
 
 Again, in 1332, Master William de Rameseye, who was the master- 
 mason in charge of the new works at St. Paul's, was exempted by an 
 order of the Court of Aldermen from serving on juries, inquests, and 
 assizes, and from being summoned for any purpose, so long as he re- 
 mained in the service of the Church. 
 
 The parent code of bye-laws for the Masons was apparently granted
 
 THE MASONS. 565 
 
 in 1356, and shews that the workmen were divided into two classes, 
 hewers and light masons or setters. The special articles are two: — i, 
 that no one should take work in gross without tendering proper security 
 for its completion ; 2, That all apprentices should work in the presence 
 of their masters, till the)' perfectly learned their calling. In the Returns 
 of 1376, where the number of members returnable by the Gilds to the 
 Common Council is set forth, the Masons are said to be entitled to four 
 representatives, and the Freemasons to two, as if they were independent 
 Societies. In later and indeed other Returns the Freemasons are miss- 
 ing ; there maj- have been an unrecorded fusion, or even a clerical 
 error. 
 
 In the list of Craft-Gilds in 142 1-2 among the Brewers' archives the 
 Masons stand thirty-eighth among 112. They immediately precede the 
 Carpenters. To the Muster for the Watch in 1469 
 their return was twenty men-at-arms, a proportion 
 equal to that, not merely of the Painters and 
 Scriveners, but of the Salters. In 1 501-2 they 
 occur as forty-first, with a Livery of eleven, and 
 in 1 509 as forty-second, in each case being between 
 the Weavers and the Bowyers. When the order 
 of precedence, however, was settled in 1 515, they 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 were lifted up to the thirty-third place, between 
 the Curriers and the Plumbers, and left the Weavers and Bowyers far 
 below them. At the Mayor's feast in 153 1-2, they rank fortieth, but 
 do not appear to have been numerous, as they were represented by a 
 single member besides the Wardens, and were allotted only one mess. 
 In the reign of James I., when assessments were made on the Companies 
 for sundry public objects, their comparative insignificance is betrayed 
 by the modesty of their quota; but in 1629, when the City prepared 
 to do honour to the King's coronation, the Masons subscribed 5/. js. 6d., 
 which by comparison signifies intermediate progress. 
 
 No charter is at present known anterior to that of September 17, 
 1677 ; but there the petitioners are cited as the Master, Wardens, and 
 Assistants of the Company of Masons. The early accounts among the 
 archives, commencing with 1620, were kept in the name of the Master 
 and Wardens. There was a Livery in 1 501-2 ; and the existence of a 
 grant of arms by Clarencieux in 1473 and its purely accidental recovery 
 from oblivion in 1871 ^ may warrant the conclusion that of its other 
 
 ' It was found in the possession of a collector at Clerkenwell, and was eventually 
 purchased by the Company for 7/. ys. oiL, and presented to the British Museum. 
 The circumstances form the subject of a short paper read before the Society of 
 Antiquaries by Mr. H. H. Burnell, F.S.A., then Master, February 15, 1872.
 
 566 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 muniments the Gild has been equally neglectful, or that it was a 
 Company by prescription. 
 
 In the Book in Metre of the Rich Merchant Man called Dives Prag- 
 maticits, 1563, where all the trades of London are enumerated, including 
 many subordinate callings hardly now recognised, the author, Thomas 
 Newbery, refers to the craft as " free masons " ; and in the Accounts the 
 designation Free Mason occurs down to 1655-6, when Mason only is 
 used. At that time the Society or Fellowship is termed in the records 
 the Worshipful Company of Masons of the City of London. The pre- 
 fix was, perhaps, intended to denote no more than its position as a 
 privileged and philanthropic body. 
 
 The charter of 29 Charles II. (1677), although it does not refer to an 
 antecedent one, mentions the applicants as an organized Association, and 
 rehearses the Act of Elizabeth, acknowledging the trade to be an inde- 
 pendent art and business. It declares the existing constituency a body 
 politic with perpetual succession, a common seal, an unlimited licence 
 in mortmain, the right of making ordinances, and the power of search 
 and control within seven miles of the Cities of London and Westminster, 
 wherever any stones to be used in masonry should be brought, in order 
 to see that such be of proper measure and truly wrought. 
 
 The bye-laws here authorized were drawn up and passed by the Court 
 of Aldermen and the Judges in the year immediately following, and 
 there was no other grant, save that of James II., subsequently revoked 
 by the Act of William and Mary, and an inspeximus of i Anne. When 
 the last returns were made, the government was conducted by a Master 
 a Warden, a Renter Warden, and seven Assistants. Three vacancies 
 which had occurred on the Court had not been filled up. In 1 501-2, as 
 we have seen, the Livery numbered 11 ; in 1724 it was returned as 63, 
 in 1882 as 41, and in 1892 as 45. But persons admitted to the Freedom 
 have of late years been forthwith taken up into the Livery, which there- 
 fore forms, with the Court, the entire Company. 
 
 The total income was stated in 1834 to be about 300/. a year; in 1882 
 it had apparently risen to 400/., and in 1892 to 550/. This, with the 
 exception of one charity under the will of Joshua Marshall, a Master of 
 the Company in 1678, is wholly corporate, and proceeds from property 
 in Bishopsgate Street, at Stoke Newington, and in Ireland, the Masons 
 having an interest in the Mercers' Manor. The Marshall benefaction 
 produces about 125/. a year for poor freemen and their widows. On 
 the expiration of the Stoke Newington lease in the ne.xt century, a 
 further improvement in the receipts may be probably expected ; and 
 the accounts for 1871-80 exhibit a tendency to economical administra- 
 tion.
 
 THE MASONS. 567 
 
 The Hall was formerly in Masons' Alley, Basinghall Street, where 
 Masons' Hall Tavern now stands, and is named by Maitland as the 
 place of assembly in 1739. But it no longer exists. Possibly, if the 
 antecedents of the Bishopsgate property in Masons' Court were known,' 
 it might be found that that was an earlier seat of the Company similarly 
 abandoned, and converted to other uses. 
 
 The question of assuming the designation of Freemasons, or rather. 
 Free Masons, suggests one or two remarks. The practice, which might 
 in the absence of the development of the Masonic movement, have 
 attracted no more notice than that of terming the members of another 
 Gild Fi'ee I'ir/tners, was, as we have seen, followed as far back as 1376, 
 and continued in the books of the Company down to 1655. But it was 
 not recognised in the charter, in the grant of arms, in the bye-laws, or 
 in any Act of Parliament known to us, save the 3 and 3 Edward VI. 
 cap. 15, where the expression signifies no more than a freeman. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the excessively ancient institution, both in England 
 and abroad, of a Brotherhood and Sisterhood among members of the 
 Craft and their kin, and the establishment for their government and 
 security of benevolent and philanthropic canons as between themselves, 
 and of injunctions to secrecy in all matters done or said in their lodges 
 and Cliaptcrs relevant as well to the Trade as to the Fraternity, we have 
 the nucleus of modern Freemasonry, which adopted and remodelled a 
 system appurtenant to archaic society, and of which the Gilds have 
 preserved the only features of enduring value — fellowship and alms. 
 
 The earliest English document treating of this subject serves to assist 
 us in discovering how such a superstructure was built on the primitive 
 conception of mediaeval trading communities knit together for the sake 
 of protection and support in the exercise of technical and purely civil 
 pursuits. 
 
 It is a fourteenth-century poem of a secular complexion, in which the 
 precepts delivered and the terminology are not dissimilar in character 
 and purport from the Ordinances of the London and other Gilds. They 
 comprise the leading principles of conduct on the part of apprentices 
 during their seven years' service, including their confidential obligation, 
 and lay stress on honourable relations among master-artificers. Lodges 
 are mentioned as the seats of the Craft, but not Chapters, which were of 
 ecclesiastical origin. There is no allusion to symbols or cryptography, 
 nor any approach to mysticism. The whole manual is practical and 
 straightforward. 
 
 ' An inquiry has been addressed to the Clerk of the Company on this subject 
 through a member, without ehciting any information.
 
 568 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In 3 Henry VI. the influence of the Masons, through what are termed 
 " their yearly congregations' and confederacies," became so marked, and 
 exercised so great an effect on operative handicrafts, that an Act of 
 Parliament was passed to forbid these meetings and unions on pain of 
 conviction and punishment for felony. At this time the Craft possibly 
 extended its cognizance beyond the province to which we understand it 
 as confined, and from the necessity which was felt in the course of the 
 same reign, of making a proviso that in all Ordinances framed by the 
 Gilds there should be nothing prejudicial to the rights of the Crown — 
 a safeguard reduced to legislation in 19 Henry VII. — it maybe sus- 
 pected that the Masons' Gilds all over the kingdom had overstepped 
 constitutional limits, and brought upon them this statute of Henry VI., 
 which was only repealed, so far as it was repealed at all, by 2 and 3 
 Edward VI. cap. 15, permitting free masons to follow their craft in any 
 town, whether free of it or not, if they were so of some given place.- 
 
 TTbc /FDuslciaiis or /llMnstrels. 
 
 Thls was an Association formed some time before its original incor- 
 poration, April 24, 1472-3, apparently under the name of the Society 
 of Minstrels. The charter does not seem to be in existence ; and the 
 Company did not seek or obtain another till July 8, 1604, when it was 
 erected into a body corporate and politic by James I., by the style of 
 The Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Art or Science of the 
 Musicians of London, with perpetual succession, a common seal, a 
 licence in mortmain, and other usual privileges, including the power of 
 
 ' This expression was used to denote the meetings of the Mercers' Company at the 
 outset. 
 
 ^ But in 1506 John Hylmer and WiUiam Vertue, described as free masons, were 
 engaged to vault with freestone the roof of the College Royal of our Lady and St. 
 George at Windsor Castle.
 
 THE MUSICIANS OR MINSTRELS. 569- 
 
 making bye-laws for the rule and government of the mistery within 
 three miles of London. 
 
 Under this grant, the only one at present extant, the Master, two 
 Wardens, and fourteen Assistants were appointed and named ; but we 
 do not observe any person of note among them. William VV'arren, one 
 of the Assistants, however, had been made Master in 1594, under the 
 old ri'gimc, and had experienced difficulty and opposition on the part 
 of certain of the members in entering on his position. Beyond the bare 
 fact that there was a previous grant in 1473, and that in 1602-3 it is 
 classed as the fifty-second in rank, the present is the sole trace of the 
 Gild prior to its revival. But we suggest that the Minstrels' Gallery in 
 many of the ancient Halls owed its designation to the source, whence 
 the Companies most probably engaged the band or orchestra on 
 festive occasions. 
 
 The bye-laws, sanctioned in the charter, were approved by the Lord 
 Chancellor and the Judges August 25, 1606. Besides the ordinary 
 provisions, they are of interest on one or two special accounts. They 
 shew that the Company included Dancing in its province and jurisdic- 
 tion, and one of the Articles prohibits any freeman from playing on 
 any instrument, morning or evening, under any nobleman's, knight's, or 
 gentleman's window or lodging in London and the suburbs and liberties 
 thereof, without leave of the Court. 
 
 These ordinances constituted a Livery unlimited in number. In 
 1699, it was returned at 17 ; in 1724, at 30; in 1739, at 31 ; in 1880, 
 the Court (13) inclusive, at 49 ; and in 1892, at 50. 
 
 The aggregate income from rentals was in 1880 stated to be 336/, and 
 in 1889 and 1892, 400/. This property consists of freeholds at Clapton 
 and elsewhere and Government Consols. But the Company is also sup- 
 ported by occasional receipts from internal sources. In Maitland's time 
 (1739) the fine on admission by patrimony or servitude was ^os. It i.s 
 at present 3/. 17 s. 6d. 
 
 The Musicians contributed, February 25, 1602-3, — -to the assessment 
 on the Companies of 10,000 quarters of corn for storage — 5 quarters,, 
 the Merchant Taylors heading the return with 936 quarters ; and 14 
 February, 1603-4, their quota toward the expense of receiving James I. 
 and his Queen on their passage through London was 4,s., the minimum 
 amount subscribed. They occupy a similarly humble position in 1629, 
 when a levy was raised by the municipality to defray the charges 
 attendant on the coronation of Charles I. 
 
 They were co-partners with the Fishmongers in the purchase of the 
 Ulster estate in 161 5, and in common with the Bowyers, Fletchers, and 
 Woolmen, were subscribers of 20/. 
 
 c.c. 72
 
 5/0 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The breffe and plajrue instruction to lerne to play on the gythien and also on the 
 
 Cetterne. Licensed in 1558-9. 
 The Comendation of Mlisyke by [Thomas] Churchyard. Licensed in 1562. 
 
 A Briefe and easye instruction to learne the tableture, to conducte and dispose the 
 hande vnto the Lute. Englished by J. Alford Londenor. 4to, 1568. 
 
 The Praise of Musicke. By John Case, of Woodstock. 8vo, 1586. 
 
 Apologia Musices. By the same. 8vo, 1588. 
 
 Diuers & sundry waies of two parts in one, to the number of fortie, vppon one 
 
 playn-song. By John Farmer. 8vo, 1591. 
 The pathway to Musicke, whereunto is annexed a Treatise of Descant. 4to, 1596. 
 A new Way of making fowre parts in Counter-point. By Thomas Campion. 8vo, 
 
 [1613.] 
 A Briefe and Short Instrvction of the Art of Mvsicke. By Ralph Bevin. 4to, 
 
 1631. 
 The Principles of Musik. By Charles Butler. 4to, 1636. 
 Kenatus Des-Cartes E.xcellent Compendium of Musick. Translated by Viscount 
 
 Brouncker. 410, 1653. 
 A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick for Song and YioU. By John Play- 
 ford. 8vo, 1654. Often reprinted. 
 The Division — Violist : Or An Introduction to the Playing upon a Ground. By 
 
 Christopher Simpson. Folio, 1659. 
 The Well-tuned Organ. By Joseph Brookbank. 4to, 1660. 
 A Compendium of Practical Musick in Five Parts. By Chr. Simpson. 8vo, 1667. 
 
 Other editions. 
 Chelys. The Division — Viol : Or, The Art of Playing upon a Ground. By the 
 
 same. Folio, 1667. 
 A Short Explication of such Foreign Words, as are made use of in Musick- Books. 
 
 !2mo, n.d., and 1725. 
 Many other works on Music. Musicians, and Dancing, will be found in the General Inde.x to 
 Hazlitt's BibHography. 
 
 In 1662, a licence was granted to George Bayley, of London, musitioner, to make show of a play 
 •called Noah's Flood.
 
 THE NEEDLEMAKEUS. 
 
 3/ 
 
 TL\K IWccMemal^crs. 
 
 The manufacture of needles, when we had sufficient use for such 
 implements to encourage the formation of a home industry, in com- 
 petition with the imports from Spain and Italy, should have grown 
 into as extensive a business as that in pins. But the strong organized 
 influence of the Haberdashers, if not of the Mercers and Drapers, 
 seems to have checked the prosperity and independence of both these 
 subsidiary crafts, and although the Needlemakers preserved their status, 
 their position was never a prominent or thriving one. The profit went 
 to the shop-keeper. 
 
 The very early story of the Devil among the tailors of Birchin Lane, 
 which has been mentioned under the account of the Merchant Taylors, 
 demonstrates the antiquity of the introduction into this country of 
 Spanish needles, with which all the operatives, down to the appren- 
 tices, are represented as supplied for the purpose of their work. 
 
 Stow mentions in Cheap Ward Needlers' Lane, which has the 
 appearance of a name derived from a craft ; and when we look at the 
 Needlemakers' cognizance, above given, we are tempted to speculate 
 whether TIiree-Ncedle Street, the original name of Threadneedle Street, 
 is not connected with an ancient centre of the industry in proximity 
 to the Taylors and Drapers. 
 
 In 1628, the Needlemakers solicited, in common with the Clock- 
 makers, association with the Blacksmiths ; but in both cases the pro- 
 posal seems to have been rejected. 
 
 In 1629, they made complaint to the Court of Aldermen of the 
 deceitful manufacture of bad needles with an engine, which was shown 
 by the evidence of experts belonging to the Haberdashers and Taylors 
 to be dangerous to the workmen employed. This engine was the 
 property of aliens residing outside the City, who refused to obey a 
 summons to appear ; and it was said that it deprived many of their 
 means of living — perhaps, by economizing labour.
 
 572 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The Company dates back its origin to the reign of Henry VIII. 
 But that is merely an approximate calculation. It was doubtless, like 
 no inconsiderable proportion of these communities, a Company by pre- 
 scription centuries before its receipt of a charter from the Protector 
 Oliver Cromwell, November lo, 1656. This grant was followed and 
 superseded by a second of February 9, 1664, from Charles II., wherein, 
 on the petition of fifteen persons, all members of the trade, the Company 
 is incorporated under the title of The Master, Wardens, and Commonalty 
 of the Art or Mistery of Needlemakers of the City of London, with the 
 customary privileges, and with a mandate to the Corporation to enroll 
 the said charter, for the better protection and government of the 
 members. 
 
 The bye-laws were approved on the 20th June ensuing, and dealt 
 with the right of search, apprenticeship, hawking, and other cognate 
 points. 
 
 In 1658, an Act of Common Council prescribed that the Company 
 should be, and was, entitled to exercise the right of search over all 
 practising this art and mistery, and that no apprentices should be 
 bound to other than free Needlemakers, the term of service, whether for 
 seven years or upward, being arranged between the apprentice and 
 his master in each case beforehand ; and all penalties and suits arising 
 out of a breach of this order were to be heard in the Court of His 
 Highness the Lord Protector in the Chamber of London at Guild- 
 hall before the Mayor and Aldermen. 
 
 A Livery of 50 was granted in 171 2. In 1724 it was returned as 44. 
 But in 1874 and 1875 the Court of Aldermen successively raised it to 
 100 and 200. In 1880 it stood at 116, the number of freemen in that 
 year being estimated at about 150. In 1889 the Livery had decreased 
 to 10 1, and in 1892 to 90. 
 
 There is no property beyond the receipts from internal sources and 
 from interest on accumulated savings. In 1889 the total income was 
 stated to be 250/., and in 1892, 230/. The Company some years ago 
 endeavoured to promote the educational cause by subscribing to the 
 City and Gilds Institute. 
 
 In evidence furnished to the Royal Commission in May, 1883, the 
 Needlemakers rebutted the imputation, which had been cast upon them, 
 of having attempted to resuscitate the Company on political grounds ; 
 and it was explained that a number of gentlemen, desirous of joining a 
 City Gild, and having heard of the Needlemakers, decided on offering 
 themselves as candidates for election, by which proceeding the Livery 
 was enlarged under the sanction of the Court of Aldermen. The 
 ■Company had been on the point of dissolution and the question of
 
 THE PAINTERS OR PAINTER-STAIN ERS. 
 
 
 dividing the available assets was even mooted, when this circumstance 
 occurred, and produced a change of front. One of the witnesses 
 mentioned that he had had the Tin Plate Workers recommended to 
 him ; but he ultimately selected the other. There docs not appear to 
 have been any distinct notion in the minds of the new members, that 
 the body, which they thus joined, was more than a social club. The 
 practical side was not considered beyond an unsuccessful effort to 
 revive the needle manufacture at Redditch, in Worcestershire, in which 
 they expended all their funds. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 A Schole-Hovse for the Needle. Obi. 410, 1624. 
 
 The Needles Excellency. 4to, 1634, 1640. The former is the tenth edition. 
 A Proclamatiou Prohibiting the Importation of Foreign Needles. 14 August, 1687. 
 A broadside. 
 
 ITbc painters or ipaiiitcr=Staiucrs.^ 
 
 As early as 1284, a very remarkable entry in the City Records shews, 
 how Nicholas Bacon, painter, had purchased on bond from Hugh Motun 
 sinople, vermilion, and canvas, varnish and verdigris to the value of 20^. 
 
 One of the earliest footprints, so to speak, of the Painters is the share 
 which they bore in the long-subsisting feud between them, the Joiners, 
 and the Saddlers. In 1309, representations were made to the Court of 
 Aldermen, as we have already stated in our account of the Joiners, of 
 the abuses in the saddlery trade by the clandestine employment of 
 green wood in the construction of the trees, and the connivance of the 
 painter and saddler in vamping up this worthless material for sale ; and 
 in subsequent years affrays in the public thoroughfares, attended by 
 bloodshed, not unfrequently signalized the strained relations of these 
 
 ' See Some Accottnt of the Worshipful Company of Painters^ otherwise Painter- 
 Stainers. By John Gregory Grace, Master, 1880. 8vo, privately printed, 1S80. Mr. 
 Grace, of Wigmore Street, was an eminent decorator and zealous London antiquary. 
 We owe to him the famous collection of drawings and prints relating to London, now 
 in the British Museum.
 
 574 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 crafts. Pecuniary matters in the shape of claims and counterclaims some- 
 times formed the subject of dispute ; and we find the Loriners also 
 drawn into the quarrel by natural resentment at the interference of the 
 Saddlers with the metal fittings of the apparatus. The liability to 
 rupture was augmented by the investiture of each successive person, 
 through whose hands the work passed, with independent and exclusive 
 rights, often requiring nice discrimination ; and we have now crossed 
 over to the other extreme. 
 
 In 1467 (June 9), the Mistery of Painters having addressed a petition 
 to such effect to the Court of Aldermen, their Articles or Bye-laws were 
 approved, authorizing them to assemble in some honest place within the 
 City, and elect year by year two true, witty, and honest men free of 
 the Craft to be their Wardens, and at least six others to be assistant to 
 them, in governing the Craft, making search for false or bad goods, and 
 keeping the money, goods, jewels, and other necessaries. Mention is 
 made of a Beadle, the neglect of whose summons of the brethren to meet 
 in common Hall vi^as punishable by the levy of a pound of wax, half to 
 go to Guildhall Chapel, half to the light of St. Luke ; and there was 
 evidently a Livery by prescription, each member paying i6rt'. a year 
 quarterage. 
 
 There are the usual stipulations and penalties for the conduct and 
 control of the trade, besides one or two clauses of interest in respect to 
 technical points, namely, that no man should work any tinfoil, unless it 
 were sufficiently wrought with oil colours, and made for colours, and not 
 for gold, but that where it was used for church-work in any cloth of 
 gold, it should be truly wrought and gilt ; again, that none should paint 
 any church work, that is to say, work of entail [? intaglio] but with fine 
 gold, and no party-gold, unless the customer so wished it. It is curious 
 that sign-painting for places of business, as well as for inns, enters into 
 these regulations ; and it is laid down that " no manner of signs hanging 
 or standing in the weather " shall be wrought with fine gold and with 
 oil colours. 
 
 Looking at these Ordinances of 1467, we cannot doubt that they dealt 
 with the affairs of a body already in an advanced stage of organization, 
 which deemed it advisable, after a more or less lengthened period of un- 
 recognised internal autonomy, to seek official acknowledgment as a better 
 means of maintaining and asserting the authority of their officers with- 
 in and without. 
 
 An Act of Parliament passed at the commencement of the short reign 
 of Richard III. prohibited the importation by foreign merchants, among 
 a long catalogue of other goods, of beaten gold or silver wrought in 
 papers for painters and other purposes.
 
 THE I'AINTliRS OR PAINTER-STAINERS. 
 
 575 
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 Two years posterior to the formal proceedings of 1467, the Painters 
 occur as contributors of twenty men-at-arms to the C'it\- Watch ;' but 
 a circumstance is connected with this record wiiich 
 deserves particular attention. In the same list, the 
 Staincrs are named as independent furnishers of 
 fourteen soldiers or guards, and while in the return 
 of the Gilds taking part in the obsequies of Hcnr\- 
 VII. in 1485, the latter are absent, in 1501-2 we meet 
 for the first time with a reference to the Paiiiter- 
 Staiiiers, who are said in a municipal document of 
 that date to possess a Livery of 18. In the interval 
 between 1485 and 1502 there had been an amalgamation ; and in the 
 settlement of precedence in 1515 the united Gild is placed twenty-ninth. 
 But its existence and jurisdiction remained purely prescriptive beyond 
 the sanction of its Ordinances by the City. At the Mayor's Feast in 
 1531-2, it ranked thirty-ninth, and had five representatives and two 
 messes — a proportion which argues a growing measure of importance ; 
 and in the same year it acquired by gift a common Hall, hereafter to be 
 more particularly described. 
 
 It was not till 1581 (Jul)- 19) that the charter was obtained, incorpo- 
 rating the Fellowship as The Master and Wardens and Commonalty of the 
 Freemen of the Mistery or Art of Painters, commonly called Painters 
 Stainers, within the City of London and suburbs and liberties thereof," 
 with all the ordinar}^ powers as to mortmain, search, and internal govern- 
 ment. But no common seal is specified. A Master, two Wardens, and 
 tlieir Assistants are mentioned and authorized. The instrument is on 
 one sheet of parchment, with the conventional portrait of the Queen in 
 the upper left-hand corner as a sort of initial ornament. P"rom the Bye- 
 laws passed immediatel)- after (January 10, 158 1-2) we learn that at the 
 period when the grant of Elizabeth was received, there were two Wardens 
 and twelve Assistants, the Upper Warden, William Heme, esquire, 
 Serjeant- Painter to her Majesty, having however, recently deceased. But 
 the full complement was to be sixteen, besides the Master and Wardens. 
 Elections to vacancies vested jointly in the Livery and Court, and offices 
 might be held for two years or such shorter term as the Livery and Court 
 should determine. No person was compellable to serve as Master more 
 than four times, as Upper W'arden more than thrice, or as Junior 
 Warden more than a second time. 
 
 These Articles are no fewer than thirty-seven in number, and occupy in 
 the original three large sheets of parchment. The most remarkable are 
 
 See Riley's Memorials, 1S68, p. 91.
 
 )76 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 those which seek to provide for the exclusion from the calling of all in- 
 competent persons, inasmuch as for some time passed the interests of the 
 Company had severely suffered by unskilful and inexperienced prac- 
 titioners, not only in the mechanical branch of the art, but in the 
 higher department of portraiture and landscape. Some of the stringent 
 conditions, which meet the eye here, throw light on the testimony of 
 Stow about this time as to persons, who had not learned the business, 
 undertaking even to execute portraits of the Queen and nobility, which 
 seemed fair enough at first sight, but were not capable of bearing ex- 
 amination ; and this criticism applied equally to the materials employed 
 and the manual skill. 
 
 Even although in our early domestic architecture the more ordinary 
 and mechanical functions of the calling' were not yet much brought into 
 exercise, the field or scope of the Painter-Stainers was remarkably wide, 
 embracing decorative house-work on the one hand and the highest 
 branches of the artist's profession on the other. The fourth clause of 
 the bye-laws declares " that no person or persons whatsoever, English- 
 man or stranger, denizen or not denizen, freeman or foreigner, shall at any 
 time hereafter lawfully scrape, lay, or work anything to be sold with 
 varnish upon any wood, stone, paper, parchment, or vellum that is 
 grounded first with any kind of commixture appertaining to the art, 
 science, or mistery of painting or staining, or with or upon any kind of 
 colour or colours, oil, size, gum, gleere, glue, or any such-like thing 
 commonly used in the art or mistery ; " and the paragraph concludes by 
 describing the Association as in a decadent state. The seventh provision 
 touches the discredit and injury incurred by the intrusion of imperfectly 
 trained limners and painters of what were known as " painted cloths " 
 and " tables {tableaux)." As it is of special interest, we must transcribe 
 it :— 
 
 ^^ Item, it is ordained and constituted, forasmuch as the true workmanship and 
 knowledge of the said art and mistery of painting and staining cannot be attained, or 
 the exercise thereof be had, without many years and great dihgence, and that, not- 
 withstanding, many unskilful and unable persons in that science do intrude, usurp, 
 and unlawfully presume to use, exercise, and occupy the same art and mistery, and 
 having no sufficient skill do enterprise to portrait, counterfeit, shadow, and paint the 
 pictures, proportions, ensigns, and arms, and divers other great feats of workmanship, 
 as well of the Kings and Queens, predecessors and ancestors to the Queen's most 
 excellent Majesty, as of her Highness, as also of divers and many noble, honourable, 
 and worshipful personages and persons ... to the great slander and reproach 
 of the whole Company aforesaid . . . that therefore no person or persons before 
 rehearsed within the said Cities, suburbs, or four miles' compass, shall or lawfully may 
 
 ' What appears to have been known as "vulgar painting" is first treated, we be- 
 lieve, by John Smith, in a little volume published by him in 1676, and noticed at the 
 end of the present article.
 
 THE PAINTERS OR PAINTER-STAINERS. 577 
 
 occupy, use, or exercise the said art, science, or mistery . . . unless he or they 
 be free of the said art, or have been apprentice or shall be apprentice thereunto by 
 the space of seven years at the least or more, namely with a painter-stainer, or hath 
 heretofore occupied the said science according to the statute of the fifth year of the 
 ijueen's Majesty's reign . . ." 
 
 The thirty-seventh and last item is "The Oath of the Baylic or Bedyll" 
 the former being an exceptional term, and not usually understood in 
 such an alternative acceptation. 
 
 The Painter-Stainers, who thus combined industries not perfectly 
 reconcilable from a modern point of view, were in a sufficiently indifferent 
 plight in 1582 by their own admission; and although a special Act of 
 Parliament in the first year of the following reign was declaratory of 
 the charter and bye-laws, their affairs do not seem to have improved in 
 a financial respect during the next half-century. Their contributions to 
 various public objects in 1603, 1604, and 1629, betray very humble re- 
 sources. Stovv's Continuator (1633) re-affirms what the historian him- 
 self had stated in regard to the Craft, and tells us that the art of Stain- 
 ing had then departed out of England. 
 
 We obtain a glimpse of the Painter-Stainer at work in the account 
 of the expenses incurred by the Ironmongers' Company in 1566-7 at the 
 inaugural ceremony, when Sir Christopher Draper was chosen and ad- 
 mitted Mayor. Under date of October i in that year there is a record 
 of a contract with Richard Baker, painter-stainer, for making of the 
 pageant, and all manner of things incident to the same, as well the car- 
 penters' as painters' work, except the children and their apparel. For 
 his labour and skill he was to have 16/., and if he happened to find that 
 he had underrated the prime cost, lifis. more. 
 
 But Thomas Bullock, a second person of the same calling, was also 
 employed on the occasion to paint the banners and streamers, and " a 
 target-painter " at Aldgate, the escutcheons or arms. 
 
 The painter of old days was of course a Master, and occasionally 
 endeavoured, where he thought that his customers were rich, to realize 
 more than a reasonable profit; for we find that in 1629 Nathaniel Glover, 
 the contractor for certain work at Ironmongers' Hall, handed in an esti- 
 mate for 41/., and accepted 30/. 
 
 The name of George Knight, painter-stainer in Fenchurch Street, is 
 given in the Coopers' records under 1603 as that of the person who 
 made for the Company a new banner for the coronation of James I. at a 
 cost of 4/. I IS. \d. A few years before, there is a charge for the painter 
 who drew the Company's arms on a spare leaf in each of the books 
 given to his brethren by Mr. John Swayne. 
 
 In his Diary, under April 23, 1669, Pepys speaks of having been 
 
 c.c. ro
 
 578 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 present at the Council-Chamber, when the cause was being heard be- 
 tween Howard and Watson, alleged inventors of processes in varnishing 
 and lacquer, and the Painters, who claimed that they already performed 
 the same kind of work. But he omits to record the issue. 
 
 The constitution and government were somewhat modified by a charter 
 of James II. substituted for that of Elizabeth; and this appears, contrary 
 to the common practice and experience, to be the acting one. Under it 
 the Executive consists of a Master, two Wardens (Upper and Renter), 
 and thirty or more Assistants. 
 
 A common seal is specified, and the licence in mortmain, which, under 
 the antecedent concession, had been environed by some unusual restric- 
 tions in regard to the assent of interested parties, follows the ordinary 
 language. It deserves notice that one of the Wardens nominated 
 by James was Richard Wallis, the well-known arms-painter, and that 
 on the Court of Assistants occurs the name of Sylvanus Morgan, author 
 of the Sphere of Gentry and other works. 
 
 In 1502, as we have stated, the Livery numbered eighteen. In 1699, 
 it is returned as 159 ; in 1724, as 141 ; in 1880, as 144; and in 1892, as 
 130. In 1880 the Freemen were said to amount to 187. Of an estate 
 valued in the Parliamentary Returns of 1880 at 3,100/. a year, 2,300/. are 
 held in trust ; and in 1892 the corporate revenue is said to be reduced to 
 700/. 
 
 The Company was a subscriber of very inconsiderable amount to the 
 Ulster project of James I., and was associated in that matter with the 
 Goldsmiths. 
 
 We fail to detect any clue to the primitive whereabouts of this Gild. 
 It evidently maintained in 1467 a light or lights in a chapel or chantry 
 dedicated to St. Luke the Evangelist, and he was at the same period its 
 tutelary patron. The settlement in Oueenhithe Ward was a compara- 
 tively late event, when the Fellowship of Painters had probably existed at 
 least three centuries. The forfeiture of wax to the chapel of Guildhall 
 under a certain contingency favours the idea that the earliest home was 
 in that vicinity. 
 
 Painters' Hall in Little Trinity Lane, near Cannon Street, a neigh- 
 bourhood greatly affected in its aspect by modern changes, was pre- 
 viously the private residence of Sir John Browne, Serjeant-painter to 
 Henry VIII. by patent of 15 11, and Alderman of London in 1522. 
 Browne had come into possession of the premises in 1504; but the 
 property is traceable back to the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. 
 (1423-4), when it is found described as being situated, with its appur- 
 tenances, between the garden of Edmund Salle, clothworker, on the 
 north, the tenement of Ralph Mark, brewer, on the south, the highway
 
 Tin; rAINTKRS OR FAINTER-STAINERS. 579 
 
 of Huggin Lane on the west, and the highway of Trinity Lane on the 
 east. 
 
 Scarcel}- any information has survived respecting the Tudor structure. 
 It is repeatedly noticed in the Ordinances of 158233 " the Painters' 
 Hall," but naturally without any further details ; and the books of the 
 Company contain no entry relative to it prior to 1630 ; on the 2nd of 
 .April in which year it was directed that the wainscoting and bcautifj'ing 
 of the Hall should be presently put in hand, the plan of Mr. Paul 
 Isaacson being accepted. We indirectly glean that there was an upper 
 parlour, presumably in distinction from a lower one, and that the 
 former had the arms in the window or windows : for it was resolved to 
 adopt the same course in the window of the refectory, and to set up a 
 record in the same apartment in some prominent position, that these 
 improvements were made at this date. Between 1664 and 1666 the Hall 
 was much used by the Committee for the Relief of the Sick and 
 Wounded in the War ; and Evelyn, who was a member of this body, 
 notes having sat here on the i6th November, 1664, and the 3rd of Jul)', 
 1666, almost precisely two months before the building was consumed in 
 the Fire. Under the former date he writes : — 
 
 "Painters' Hall was lent us to meet in. In the great room were divers pictures, 
 some reasonably good, that had been given to the Company by several of the Wardens 
 and Masters of the Company." 
 
 The disaster was not repaired without considerable effort and delay ; 
 and the plate was ultimately mortgaged to meet the cost of reconstruc- 
 tion on the old site. The work was apparently completed in the spring 
 of 1670, when the Hall was let to the German Protestants on Sundays 
 and holy days for two years at 24/. a year. In the Company's books 
 there is an entry under September 30, 1667, shewing that they then inet 
 at the Cooks' Hall in Aldersgate Street, of which, in common with the 
 Saddlers and Stationers, they had probably arranged the hire till their 
 own was ready. 
 
 The first distinct impression of the aspect of the second building, 
 which is substantially identical with that now standing, is derived from 
 Hatton's Neiv Viezv of London, 1708, where the author says : — 
 
 " Painter-Stainers' Hall is situated in Little Trinity Lane. It is adorned with a 
 handsome screen, arches, pillars, and pilasters of the Corinthian order, painted in 
 imitation of porphyry, with gilded capitals. The panels of the wainscot and the 
 ceiling ' are embellished with great variety of history and other painture exquisitely 
 performed, as I. the portraitures of King Charles II. and his Queen Catherine, by 
 Howsman ; 2. the Fire of London ; 3. Endimion and Luna, by Palmaitier ; 4. 
 
 ' The decorations of the ceiling no longer e.xist ; nor does it seem to be known 
 when or why they were removed.
 
 580 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Orpheus fleaing Pan, by BruU ; 5. a piece of architecture by Trevit ; 6. another, 
 given by Mr. Thompson, the City painter ; 7. Herachtus and Democritus, by Penn ; 
 8. a landscape, by Aggas ; 9. Fish and Fowl, by Robinson ; 10. Art and Envy, by 
 Hungis ; 11. a piece of birds, by Barlow ; 12. a piece of fruit and flowers, by Ever- 
 brook ; 13. a ruin, by Grififier ; 14. Cambden's portraiture ; 15. a piece of birds ; 16. 
 The ceiling is fairly painted with Pallas triumphant, with the arts and fame (attended 
 by Mercury), suppressing their enemies, sloth, envy, pride, etc., done by Fuller ; and 
 there are several other pieces in the parlour." 
 
 Some of the pictures, at least, mentioned by Evelyn in 1664 were 
 presumably rescued in 1666. But as works of art the specimens 
 at present covering the walls of the refectory and of a small apartment, — 
 which may answer to the parlour of 1708, but has been considerably 
 modernized, — are of very secondary importance. 
 
 The character and province of the Company make it easy to under- 
 stand, how many of the entries in the minute-books are of exceptional 
 interest ; but they do not go back further than 1623. 
 
 In January, 163 1-2 we meet with the first minute of particular interest. 
 The Master and Wardens were desired by the Lord Chamberlain to 
 view the King's and Queen's barges, 270/. being demanded by John 
 De Cretz, Sergeant-painter to his Majesty, for the former, a new one, 
 and 40/. for the repairing, gilding, and trimming of the latter ; and to 
 arbitrate as to the value of the work. The award, — signed by the Master, 
 Wardens, three Assistants, and Henry Doddington, material-closer, 
 — was, that the King's was worth 250/. and the Queen's 32/. In the 
 following year, a similar commission was executed for Lord Goring, 
 who had employed Mr. Buckit to carry out some contract at his house 
 beyond St. James's Palace. 
 
 On the 17th May, 1635, we find that,— 
 
 " Mr. Inigo Jones, the King's surveyor, was invited to dinner, and very lovingly 
 ■came, and dined with the Company." 
 
 We may annex a few more extracts of peculiar pertinence, some, such 
 as no other Gild could well furnish : — 
 
 "Februarys, 1635-6. At this Court Mr. John Beston presented as a token and 
 memorial of his love to the Company a Round Salt, with an open cover gilt, waying 
 37 ounces." 
 
 " October 28, 1645. This day a faire silver bread bowle was presented to the 
 Company by Mr. George WiUingham (being his gift), with his name and the yeare of 
 our Lord engraven thereon." 
 
 It appears that the donor in the latter case gave the plate in remem- 
 brance of his wife, and that he had assisted his brethren on two occasions, 
 in 1642 and 1643, when Upper Warden, wherefore they now begged his 
 acceptance of twenty nobles {61. i^s. 4^'.) ; and he signified his inten- 
 tion of devoting the sum to the purchase for their common use of 
 another piece of silver.
 
 THE PAINTERS OR PAINTER-STAINERS. 58 1 
 
 When we come to October 26, 1647, there is a singularly interesting 
 item : — 
 
 " George Wyld, Doctor of Divinitie, Colonell Richard Lovelace, Thomas 
 Rawlins, Esqre., Graver of His Majes. Mint, and Mr. Peter Lillv, were all made 
 
 free at this Court." 
 
 From an entry under November, 1666, we learn that some of the brass 
 work from the old Hall had been sav^ed, and was sold as old metal, and 
 as we have already seen, as late as August, 1669, the plate was mort- 
 gaged to secure loans from members toward the rebuilding fund. 
 
 The right of search vested in the Company sometimes involved odd 
 situations or circumstances : — 
 
 " March 10, 1673-4. Ordered that the Painter of Joseph and Pottifer's wife and 
 the Fowre Elements be fined 3/. 6s. Sd., for such bad work." 
 
 Here is another glimpse of Sir Peter Lcly, made a freeman with 
 Lovelace and Rawlins in 1647, and of Greenhill, a less famous artist, 
 but one of great merit : — 
 
 "April 6, 1676, Mr. Lilly is desired to paint the King's picture, Mr. Housman, the 
 (2ueen's, Mr. Wright, the Duke of York's, Mr. Greenhill, the Duchess of York's." 
 
 The invitations to the annual dinner in 1687 were signed by Sir 
 Antonio Verrio and Sir Godfrey Kneller. 
 
 It has thus become manifest that the Painter-Stainers are entitled to 
 claim a very special and very high place among the Livery Companies 
 of London, by reason of the succession of distinguished individuals, who 
 have not been merely honorary associates, but freemen and officers, in 
 their time. No other similarly constituted body can point to such a 
 muster-roll : — Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Antonio Verrio, Sir 
 James Thornhill, Charles Catton (one of the founders of the Royal 
 Academy), Master in 1761, Sampson Camden, father of the historian, 
 Richard Wallis, Sylvanus Morgan, Richard Lovelace, the soldier-poet. 
 Sir John Browne and William Heme, Esquire, sergeant-painters to 
 Henr}- VHI. and Elizabeth, and Thomas Rawlins, Engraver to the 
 Mint under Charles I., poet and dramatist. 
 
 Morgan the Herald and writer was Master in 1676, and still re- 
 mained on the Court in 1685. He presented to the Company the 
 portrait of the illustrious Camden, while the latter, in remembrance of 
 his father, Sampson Camden, a liveryman, gave the silver cup, which 
 still testifies to the fact. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The First and Chief Grovnds of Architectvre. By John Shute, Painter and Archi- 
 tect. Folio, 1563.
 
 582 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 A Very Proper Treatise, wherein is briefly set forth the Arte of Limning. 4to, 
 
 1573. '581, 1583- 158S, 1596, 1605. 
 The Armes of all the Companies of the WorshipfuU Cyttye of London. Entered at 
 
 Stationers' Hall, i Dec, 1589. 
 A Tracte, containing the Artes of curious Paintinge Caruinge Buildinge. By Paolo 
 
 Lomazzo (a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci). Translated by Richard Haydocke. 
 
 Folio, 159S. 
 An Idea of the Perfection of Painting ; Demonstrated from the Principles of Art, 
 
 and by Examples. ... By Roland Freart. Translated from the French by 
 
 John Evelyn. Svo, 1668. 
 
 The Art of Painting. Wherein is included The whole Art of Vulgar Painting. By 
 John Smith, Clockmaker. Svo, 1676, 1687, 1705. 
 
 Londons Armory Accurately Delineated in a Graphical display of all the Arms, 
 Crests, Supporters, Mantles and Mottoes of every distinct Company and Cor- 
 porate Societie in the Honourable Citie of London. By Richard Wallis, Citizen 
 and Arms painter of London. Folio, 1677. 
 In this volume the arms are engraved on a very large scale and in a very finished style ; but it 
 does not give all the Companies, although it includes the Newfoundland, Canary, and one or two 
 others of unusual occurrence, as well as the Trinity House and the College of Physicians. 
 
 A Short Introduction to the Art of Painting and Varnishing. Probably by John 
 
 Smith. Svo, 1685. 
 A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing. By George Parker, Varnisher and 
 
 Japanner. Folio, 1688. With plates. 
 
 Ubc patten /IDahers. 
 
 The introduction of a contrivance for enabling pedestrians to traverse 
 the darl< and filthy lanes and alleys, with which the City formerly 
 abounded, was doubtless due to an observation of the Continental prac- 
 tice of employing the clog. The first tidings which we gain of such a 
 fashion coming into vogue in London is in 1400, when the Pouch-makers' 
 Gild either brought what are termed galoches into use, or obtained the 
 right of controlling the manufacture. This privilege almost necessarily 
 implies that 'Cde. galoche was secured to the foot by leathern straps, as 
 otherwise the Pouch-makers could not have claimed any interest in the 
 matter.
 
 THE PATTEN MAKERS. 583 
 
 During a certain period the Fellowship, thus entrusted with the liberty 
 of oversight or surveillance, probably limited itself to that function ; but 
 in 4 Henry V. (1416-17) the Pouch-makers and Galoche-makcrs were 
 united under one government, and so continued in the sixth )-ear of the 
 same reign. But in the ninth year the Galoche-makers no longer appear 
 bj- name, nor do \vc know what was their status between 1419 and 1469, 
 when we find the Patten-viakers a distinct Fellowship, with the power of 
 contributing to municipal obligations. Yet they did not obtain a charter 
 till 22 Charles II. (August 2, 1670), when they were incorporated under 
 the style of The Master, Wardens, Assistants, and Fellowship of the 
 Company of Patten-makers of the City of London, with a right of search 
 over a radius of ten miles, a licence in mortmain to 100/. a year, and 
 the power of passing Ordinances. Such Ordinances were drawn up and 
 approved in 1673 ; and in the following year the Court of Aldermen 
 resolved that all persons free of the Company were entitled to the 
 freedom of the City. 
 
 The employment of a medium for raising the wearer out of the 
 garbage and mire inseparable from ancient urban life, both here and 
 abroad, dates from a period even anterior to the first mention of the 
 galoche. At Venice the ladies used the chopine, of which an illustration 
 maybe seen in Mutinelli {Del costume Venesiaiio, 1831), and Coryat 
 furnishes an account of it in his Crudities, 161 1. In an English play 
 published in the same year {Rain Alley, or Merry Tricks) a lady is 
 described as going to church in her new chopines, which were probably 
 ordinary clogs or pattens. 
 
 The arguably foreign origin of the patten may be a ground for 
 crediting the statement of Stow, that the Church of St. Margaret 
 Pattens, Fenchurch Street, was so called from that being the quarter 
 where the makers of the article congregated, as we know that the same, 
 neighbourhood was the resort and seat of other alien industries, while, 
 as regards the likelihood of such a name being bestowed on a church, 
 we have the analogous case of St. Nicholas Flesh-shambles in Newgate 
 Street. 
 
 The charter of the Company fixed the government at one Master, two 
 Wardens, and twelve Assistants. The fine for admission to the Court, 
 originally 10/., has been raised to 50/. In 1724, the Livery was returned 
 as 35, in 1880, as 74, and in 1892, as 40. The number of existing 
 freemen is, as usual, unknown. 
 
 Li 1 834 the property was almost nominal (150/. Three Per Cents., and 
 400/. Three and a Half Per Cents.) ; but the income and estate profited 
 during many years by the higher scale of fines and by frugal expen- 
 diture. The shrinkage of the Livery since 1880 appears to betray, as
 
 584 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 in many similar instances, a reaction from this temporary and artificial 
 prosperity. 
 
 There is no plate worth mentioning, nor any other objects of general 
 interest. 
 
 Uhc ipewterers. 
 
 The arms of this Company were granted May 20, 1479, and are: — Azure: on a 
 chevron or, between three cross bars of pewter argent, as many roses gules, seeded 
 of the second and barbed vert. Crest: a mount vert, thereon two arms embowered, 
 vested and frilled argent, holding in both hands a pewter dish. Supporters : two sea 
 horses or, their tails proper. 
 
 The Company appears to have no motto exclusively belonging to it, 
 but to use that which also appertains to the Brewers : /;/ God is all my 
 trust. The two vocations were formerly sometimes found united in the 
 same hands. 
 
 The Pewterers existed in all probability, like the other Gilds which 
 we have been describing, long before they were incorporated ; and the 
 circumstance that they had become a more or less numerous and im- 
 portant body was in fact a necessary precursor to the appeal to the 
 Crown for a charter, which might recognise their existing, and protect 
 their future, rights. It is not, therefore, surprising that, in all the in- 
 stances which we have noticed, incorporation follows at a considerable 
 interval from the proved origin of a Fraternity ; for, in fact, that state of 
 development was a natural outcome from the slow growth of each, and 
 was rather a need of maturer than of early life. 
 
 Stow merely says : — 
 
 " The Pewterers were a Company or Meeting of friendly and neighbourly men, 
 in the time of King Eitward the fourth ; and in the thirteenth yeere of this King 
 became incorporated, January the 20. And from this King they have been still 
 confirmed by all Princes since : lastly, by King James." 
 
 Two agencies appear to have been instrumental in operating favour- 
 ably on the disposition of the Crown to grant an improved position to
 
 THE TEWTtRERS. 585 
 
 the persons engaged within the precincts of the City of London in this 
 vocation : the creation of the Dukedom of Cornwall in favour of the 
 eldest son of Edward III. in 1337-8, with its accompanying tendency to 
 draw attention to the mineral products of the district, and the abuses 
 committed by certain members of the trade in the manufacture of 
 pewter. In the 32 Edward III. (1348), we find a movement on foot for 
 obtaining at the hands of the Corporation some system of inspection 
 over the alloys and workmanship. 
 
 The earliest code of bye-laws for the Pewterers seems to be that of 1 348, 
 which starts by premising that " the trade of pewtery is founded upon 
 certain matters and metals, such as copper, tin and 
 lead in due proportions, of which three metals they 
 make vessels, that is to say, pots, saltcellars, esquelles 
 (porringers), platters, and other things by good folks 
 bespoken." The Articles provide for the limitation 
 of the trade to skilful workmen and true material, 
 for inspection by the Wardens prior to sale, and 
 for the hours of labour. "L" '^k.ms. 
 
 We gather from some proceedings at Guildhall in 1350, that the alloy 
 of tin and lead, allowed and recognised by the custom of the trade, was 
 in the proportion of 16 lbs. of lead to 1 12 lbs. of tin. 
 
 The charters of 1474-8 were confirmed, by iitspexnniis or otherwise, 
 by Henry VII. (May 19, 1505) by Henry VIII. (January 4, 1513), by 
 Philip and Mary (Oct. 4, 1555), by Elizabeth (Nov. 20, 1559), and by 
 James I. It was extended by Charles I. (March 14, 1639), and in 1674 
 Charles II. ratified all former charters. But it was not till the accession 
 of Queen Anne that the Company formally entered on the right of 
 making bye-laws for its own government. The last bye-laws were con- 
 firmed in 1766. 
 
 In the Founders' charter of 1614 the rights of the Pewterers are 
 specially reserved. This precaution, taken by the Commissioners for 
 Suits, perhaps, when the matter came before them for a report, strikes 
 us as reasonable ; but it is the earliest symptom of a commercial ap- 
 proximation carrying the liability to encroachment or trespass. 
 
 Besides the charter and bye-laws, various Acts of Parliament from 
 time to time collaterally prescribed and imposed the rights of search 
 and assay, and those of 25 and ^^ Henry VIII. interdict the hawking 
 of pewter by strangers, and give the Wardens of the Company or their 
 deputies power to inspect and oversee pewter throughout the kingdom, 
 to prevent the importation of foreign pewter, and to restrain any free- 
 man, under pain of disfranchisement, from going abroad to instruct 
 foreigners in the mistery. 
 
 ex. 74
 
 586 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In 22 Henry VI. (1433) it was represented that a large quantity of 
 faulty tin was brought into the City, the defects of which were not dis- 
 cernible prior to smelting. Some weight was attached to this complaint, 
 inasmuch as the Corporation in consequence bestowed on some select 
 •committee of Pewterers the right and power to assay all such tin as 
 was brought in, and to search for the same. But it was not till some 
 thirty years later that the followers of this industry received their first 
 charter (1473-4), which confirmed existing rights and established the 
 municipal independence of the Pewterers on a broader and more distinct 
 footing. 
 
 The parent charter of Edward IV. (20 Jan., 1473-4) granted to three 
 persons therein named the right of founding and establishing, in honour 
 of the Virgin Mary, a Fraternity or Gild of the Master, two Wardens, 
 and Commonalty or Freemen of the Mistery of Pewterers then dwell- 
 ing or thereafter to dwell within the City of London or the suburbs 
 thereof and of the brethren and sisters of the freemen of the same 
 mistery, and of others who, of their own pleasure, were willing to be of 
 the same Fraternity or Gild, to be one body and one community, to be 
 fit and capable in law of acquiring in fee and perpetuity lands and other 
 possessions, to plead and be impleaded in courts, to have a common seal, 
 and to possess the power of extending the right of inquisition into 
 matters touching the mistery throughout the whole realm of England 
 The last-named privilege seems to have been one which, from its width 
 ■of scope, met with resistance ; only five years later (18 Edward IV., 
 1478) a second charter renewed the injunction to all Mayors, Sheriffs, 
 Bailiffs, and others, being the King's officers, lieges, etc., to proclaim 
 searches by the officers of the Company, and to be assisting to them 
 therein. There is little doubt, however, that at this period, and long 
 afterward, evasion and deceit were extensively practised beyond the 
 immediate limits of the metropolis, and that no really effectual system 
 of control and surveillance was readily or generally established. 
 
 The Gild, subsequently to incorporation, had to contend with irregular 
 practices, and to guard against trespass and fraud, both within and 
 without. As early as 1555, it was ordered that no member should buy 
 tin of any tiler, labourer, boy, woman, or other suspected person, or be- 
 tween six and six ; and the Company in its palmy days neglected no 
 precaution to maintain the character and reputation of the English 
 pewter, which was largely used in private houses, in place of the more 
 precious metal, insomuch that it was common during the Stuart era to 
 speak of a person's " pewter," where we now should speak of his plate. 
 
 In his poem of London Lickpenny, composed about 1425, Lydgate 
 speaks of the clatter of pewter pots in the neighbourhood of East
 
 THE riiWTEKEKS. 587 
 
 Cheap. In the earl)' inventories of the Companies, as well as in those 
 of great houses, vessels and utensils of this material are of constant 
 occurrence. At the Inns of Court, down to a recent period, the mem- 
 bers dined off pewter. 
 
 Toward the close of the reign of Elizabeth (1598) letters patent, ob- 
 tained after four years' negotiation, confirmed the privilege of charging 
 a royalty on the smelting and casting of tin. This concession seems to 
 have arisen from the pressure of foreign competition, which serious!}' 
 affected the export of bar-tin. 
 
 In 1629 the importance of pewter for domestic and even ornamental 
 purposes had grown to such an extent, that the Company made suit to 
 the Board of Green Cloth to be placed on the same footing as the Gold- 
 smiths, in regard to the proper marking of articles of pewter, for the pro- 
 tection of buyers and owners, from whom it was frequently stolen in 
 large quantities, and transported by brokers beyond sea in barrels. The 
 stamps on early utensils in this material, placed in pursuance of this 
 appeal, and of an order made thereupon, probably differed from time to 
 time. On a spoon of seventeenth-century fabric before us occurs a 
 T crowned. The danger of the course recommended was illustrated, 
 however, by cases, where the Goldsmiths' silver-plate mark was fraudu- 
 lently placed on vessels of the baser metal by the negligence or over- 
 sight of the Wardens. 
 
 At the same time, the prosecution of the business within the precincts 
 of the City was not unattended by inconvenience and discomfort, and it 
 was found requisite to limit the times for carrying it on in order not to 
 disturb the inhabitants during hours of rest. In the Statutes of the 
 Streets against Annoyances, printed by Stow, No. 25 enjoins that " No 
 Hammer-man, as a Smith, a Pewtercr, a Founder, and all Artificers 
 making great sound, shall not work after the houre of nine in the night, 
 nor afore the hour of foure in the morning, under paine of three shil. 
 foure pence." 
 
 The Pewterers had their full share of participation in all the troubles 
 and exactions from which their fellow-citizens so grievously suffered 
 during the various intestine disorders and foreign wars from the 15th to 
 the 17th century, and seem to have experienced a lengthened interval of 
 depression. 
 
 To a certain e.xtent the contribution of personal service and money 
 for the King's wars constituted a part of the old feudal relationship be- 
 tween the Crown and its subjects ; but the City of London was thought 
 at all times a legitimate prey in all cases of extraordinary levies, and 
 was impoverished all round by the calls on every side for assistance both 
 in coin and kind. Indeed, had it not been for the phenomenal expan-
 
 ^88 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 sion of the country at large and of the metropolis itself as the centre of 
 trade, the Companies could never have rallied in many instances from 
 the blow inflicted on their financial prosperity by the Civil War and the 
 commercial stagnation which it produced. 
 
 The Pewterers are the fortieth of the 1 12 Craft-Gilds enumerated in a 
 list among the archives at Brewers' Hall (1418-40), apparently drawn up 
 in 1 42 1 -2. But, as we have before mentioned, the order of precedence 
 here is not to be taken as authoritative ; and indeed in 15 15, when this 
 principle was settled by the Court of Aldermen, they were directed to 
 rank as sixteenth. 
 
 In 1469 they are found contributing sixteen men to the muster for 
 the City Watch. In 1509, at the coronation of Henry VIII., they were 
 allotted twelve yards for their standing to witness and honour the pro- 
 cession. In 1 53 1-2, at the Lord Mayor's feast held in that year, the 
 Company is placed between the Leathersellers and the Cutlers. Once 
 more, in 1602-3 and 1603-4, ^.nd 1629, upon the occasion of municipal 
 assessments in aid of public objects, they are rated on a scale, which 
 enables us to presume that they were then in a fair pecuniary position. 
 
 In the contributory acquisition of the Irish Estate in 161 3-1 8 the 
 Pewterers took a sub-share of the Ironmongers' manor, which is now sold. 
 
 The Executive is composed of thirty-two members, the Master and 
 Wardens inclusive. All members of the Court must qualify themselves 
 before election by having served or fined as Steward. The Livery, of 
 which we first hear in 1 501-2, then consisted, according to an official 
 return, of 25 ; in 1699 it amounted to 108, in 1724, to 91, in 1882, to 70, 
 and in 1892, to 74. 
 
 The Master and Wardens are elected in August of each year. The 
 members of the Livery come on to the Court in their turn. The fees 
 payable are : — On taking up the freedom by patrimony, gs. id. ; by 
 servitude, 3.^•. 4^/., stamps not inclusive ; by redemption, 105/. ; on admis- 
 sion to the Livery by patrimony or servitude, 20/.; by redemption, 105/.; 
 on admission to the Court, 20/., besides Steward's fine, 20/. Freemen 
 and their widows and orphans are entitled, according to their age and 
 standing, to pensions varying from 12/. to 66/. 
 
 The average income for the ten years from 1870 to 1879 was returned 
 to Parliament as 3623/. 8s. 8d., of which all but a fraction is corporate 
 estate. In 1834 the revenue was about 1300/. a year. In 1892, it is 
 given as 4050/., of which 250/. only are held in trust. The Company 
 owns a variety of leasehold properties in the City of London, and rent- 
 charges on estates in London, Essex, and Suffolk, together with interest 
 amounting annually to 415/. 15J. loa'. on Consols and Reduced Three 
 Per Cents. During many years, the Company has liberally contributed
 
 THE PEWTERERS. 589 
 
 to the City and Gilds Institute and other bcne\olent and useful public 
 objects. 
 
 Among the charitable trusts enumerated by Stow and others are the 
 following : — 
 
 Alderman Catcher gave property in trust to Christ's Hospital ; 40j-. to be distributed 
 among five poor men of this Company. 
 
 Ralph Stray bequeathed, 2nd Nov., 1602, all his freehold lands, etc., in Suffolk and 
 elsewhere, to Edward Catcher and his wife for their lives and that of the survivor, 
 with remainder to their son, Ralph Catcher, and his heirs male, etc., provided they 
 paid yearly for ever \os. to this Company, 20s. to be g^iven to poor freemen. 
 
 " Le-.vis Randall, Pewterer, but a Brewer by his profession, of his owne free cost and 
 charge, paved (with faire free stone) the East He of Christ's Hospital Cloyster, and 
 renewed all the Armories of former liberall Benefactors to that house wherof him- 
 selfe was one of the Governours. 
 
 Hee gave beside 50 pound [in 1616] to the Treasurer, that the poore children there 
 maintained, might eate roste-meat, at dinner, on every Saint Mathias day, if it fall 
 out of Lent. But if it fall in Lent, then they are to eat good and well made Furnienty, 
 both at dinner and supper." 
 
 Thomas Scattergood devised, the 21st of August, 1776, 600/. in trust, to pay five 
 poor men and five poor women il. each yearly ; 18/. is divided under this trust. 
 
 Joht! Jones gave, in 17S0, 600/. Three per cent. Consols, the yearly interest to be 
 paid to nine poor men and nine poor widows of this Company ; 18/. is divided by the 
 Court of Assistants. 
 
 George Mullins bequeathed, 1874, 1000/ for the benefit of the poor freemen of the 
 Company. 
 
 John Robins gave, 28th of April, 1648, the rent of a house in Barbican, to pay 8/. a 
 year each to four poor freemen of the Company. Residue to the Company. This 
 charity realises 65/. a year. 
 
 Thomas Swanson, loth June, 1783, gave funds in Consols, by which 30/. is annually 
 divided between si.\ poor widows of pewterers. 
 
 Issiu Smith, 4th of Oct., 1855, gave 500/. Consols, by which 30^. each is given 
 annually to five poor freemen and five poor widows. 
 
 There are other bequests out of which donations are periodically paid 
 to objects connected with technical and other education, and in some 
 cases the Company augments the income arising from its old benefac- 
 tions out of its own funds, or rather transfers from one source of revenue 
 to another according to circumstances and requirements. 
 
 The old Hall in Lime Street was built on a piece of land given to the 
 Gild by Mr. W. Smalhvood in 1487, he being then Master ; it occupied 
 the site of six tenements, and it was destroyed in the fire of 1666. A 
 second Hall was subsequently erected ; but this, again, has been trans- 
 formed into a warehouse, and a modern structure substituted on a portion 
 of the ground. The Company has no objects of interest, beyond a few 
 early specimens of pewter and a representation of a sundial, with a 
 spider and a fly underneath it, let into one of the windows of the present 
 dining-room, and said to have been rescued from the original edifice. In 
 1882 the corporate plate was returned at 27S oz.
 
 590 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 We learn from some proceedings between the Corporation and the 
 Pevvterers in 1604 that it was then held customary for the Master to take 
 charge of the plate and other articles of value belonging to a Company, 
 and to give bond for the same. 
 
 The earliest record of a corporate dinner occurs in 1559 ; it included 
 the Court, Livery, Freemen, and their wives, and the Master and War- 
 dens were at liberty to invite guests. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Olde Lawes and Statutes of the Stannarie of Devon, as many as were in Force, 
 and heretofore imprinted. Whereimto are added certayne other newlie made 
 in the Yeare of the Reigne of our Sovereigne Ladie Queen Elizabeth the xvi. 
 4to, 1574- 
 
 A Declaration of Simdry Grievances concerning Tinne and Pewter, worthy the 
 serious consideration of the Honourable Houses of Parliament, in the behalfe of 
 the Pewterers and People of the three Kingdoms. By J. S. 1646. A broadside. 
 
 The Liberties and Cvstomes of the Lead-mines within the Wapentake of Wirksworth 
 in the County of Derby. Composed in meeter by Edward Manlove, Esq. ; here- 
 tofore Steward of the Burghmoot Court for the Lead-mines. 4to, 1653, 1708. 
 
 Aggravii Venetiani, &c. : Or the Venetian and other Grievances. Together, with 
 a Proposal for raising the Price of Tin in the Counties of Cornwall and Devon. 
 4to, 1697. 
 
 Laws and Customs of the Stannaries in the Counties of Cornwall and Devon, Re- 
 vis'd and Corrected according to the Ancient and Modem Practise. By Thomas 
 Pearce. Folio, 1725. 
 
 TLlK plaistcrcrs or pargettors 
 
 The most ancient document illustrating this Gild is a contract made 
 by Adam le Plastrer, citizen of London, for plaistering the Hall of Sir 
 John de Bretagne, Earl of Richmond, in 13 17. Herein the contractor 
 binds himself to find the plaster of Paris, and to complete the work with 
 the tewels or flues within eight weeks on the security of all his goods.
 
 OLD ARMS. 
 
 THE PLAISTERERS OR PARGETTORS. 59 1 
 
 Here the calling conferred the surname. Ikit we have to traverse 
 nearly two centuries, before we arrive at the period, when it assumed a 
 definite corporate form ; nor are the casual notices of its followers so 
 frequent as in the case of other trades. In the late Mr. Fairholt's 
 Dictionary of Terms in Arl, an excellent account of Pargetting, of which 
 we have cited probably the most ancient Knglish illustration extant 
 may be found. That accomplished writer and artist seems disposed to 
 trace the invention to Dutch influence. 
 
 The Plaisterers of London obtained their first charter 16 Henry VH 
 (March 10, 1501-2). It incorporated them as a Gild or Fraternity in 
 Honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Men of the 
 Mistery or Art of Pargettors in the City of London, 
 commonly called Plaisterers, with a common seal, 
 perpetual succession, and other customary privileges. 
 The right of search was conferred and was subse- 
 quently extended to a radius of two miles from the 
 City ; but the power of conviction and amercement 
 rested with the Mayor's Court ; the Company could 
 only present offenders. Search-days were appointed 
 as lately as 1832 ; but the practice has long wholly determined. 
 
 The Company received a grant of arms, January 15, 1546-7, and the 
 approval of its bye-laws about the same time. The charter of Henry 
 VII. was renewed 2 and 39 Elizabeth, 2 James I., and 19 Charles II. 
 Of these only the second and fourth are preserved. The Ordinances 
 were renewed in 1586 and 1765, of which the latter is the acting code. 
 
 The Executive consists of a Master, two Wardens (an Upper and a 
 Renter) and 27 Assistants. In 1699, the Livery was returned as 87 ; in 
 1724, as 70 ; in 1880, as 60 ; and in 1892, as 50. In 1880, it was sup- 
 posed that there were 25 freemen. 
 
 The references to the Plaisterers in official returns are very scanty, 
 and uniformly shew them to have been a body of very subordinate 
 weight and resources. 
 
 Perhaps the most signal prominence, which they ever obtained, was 
 in the course of the reigns of Elizabeth and her immediate successor, 
 when the fashion for ornamental and elaborate work of the description, 
 in which they engaged, was at its height, and when the temptations to 
 encroachment by other trades was proportionately strong. From 1585 
 to 161 3 the Court of Aldermen and the Privy Council had before them 
 intermittently a dispute between this Craft and the Tylers and Brick- 
 layers, arising out of an alleged trespass by the latter ; and regulations 
 of greater stringency were found requisite to prevent a collision. 
 
 But a very material point and principle of commercial usage transpire
 
 592 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 in another case, which occurred during the earlier portion of the reign 
 of Elizabeth. In or about IS74. the Plaisterers represented to the 
 Carpenters' Court that two freemen of the latter Craft had illegally 
 interfered with their rights by executing Plaisterers' work. One of the 
 offenders was convicted, and obliged to lodge security for trial in Court ; 
 but the other put in a plea, that he had been employed on Queen's zvork, 
 or, in other words, on a Crown contract or order, and was excused 
 accordingly. This may have been a purely isolated instance ; but if it 
 is anything more, it shews that the royal authority traversed that of the 
 Gilds even in such minor particulars. In the Coopers' Books under 
 1580 there is a reference to press-money for the Queen's work on Tower 
 Hill, which the Wardens had paid to certain foreigners ; but this was 
 outside the jurisdiction, and it is not stated what the service precisely 
 was. 
 
 On the other hand, the statute of i James I., cap. 20, restrained 
 Plaisterers, their apprentices and servants, from interfering in any 
 manner with the trade and occupation of a painter or painter-stainer. 
 - The three vocations just specified were naturally prone to overstep 
 the boundaries of each other. 
 
 The plaister employed in ancient buildings was composed of lime, 
 free from iron, gypsum, and hay or straw. Other ingredients at present 
 enter into it, as chaff, cow-hair, lias, and cement. The early practitioner 
 entirely relied on hand-moulding, and we can easily judge from extant 
 specimens, both in this country and abroad, that lie not unfrequently, 
 where cost was not regarded, attained consummate excellence in work- 
 manship and taste. 
 
 Apart from a moderate income produced by accumulated savings, a 
 small sub-share of the Fishmongers' Irish estate, and one or two bequests, 
 the Plaisterers own the freehold in Addle Street, occupied by premises 
 now let on lease, but during a period of nearly three centuries used as 
 a common Hall. The property devolved upon them under the will of 
 William Elder, May 14, 1545, "to hold to the Master, Wardens, and 
 Fraternity, and their successors, for ever, quietly and in peace." It is 
 subject to a quit-rent of eightpence a year payable to the Merchant- 
 Taylors. 
 
 The position thus acquired under Elder's will was doubtless applied 
 to the purpose intended and prescribed. But the Company followed 
 the common precedent of lending or letting a portion to other bodies. 
 The Pinners or Pinmakers hired it till 1598 or thereabout, when they re- 
 moved to St. Mary at Hill, owing, according to Stow, to a decline in their 
 trade. From 1693 to 1696 the Gold and Silver Wyer Drawers met here. 
 Maitland, writing in 1739, describes the Hall as a handsome one.
 
 THK I'LAVING-CARD MAKERS. 
 
 593 
 
 This body has been a liberal subscriber to the City ami Gilds Institute 
 and to the Science and Art Department, South Kensington, in con- 
 nexion with the award of prizes for the higher class of plaister-work. 
 
 Among the benefactors of Christ's Hospital and other institutions, 
 Stow enumerates Hugh Coppe, Plaisterer, who gave to the first charity 
 lOo/., and to St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's lo/. each. 
 
 XLbc IpIav^in(l=(Iar^ /IDalJcrs. 
 
 PRESKNT .■\KM5. 
 
 This is one of the Associations of comparatively late origin, which 
 has never possessed any substantial standing as a trading body, and has 
 within a measurable distance of time bidden for popularity and the 
 means of subsistence by opening its ranks to all comers. 
 
 The charter was obtained October 22, 1628, and was followed by 
 bye-laws or ordinances of February 19, 1630-1. The former, — which 
 recited in the preamble that the home-trade was injured by the importa- 
 tion of foreign playing-cards and by the abuses committed by those 
 engaged in the manufacture here, — vested in the Company the power of 
 making bye-laws and of search and supervision within a radius of ten 
 miles, and constituted a Master, two Wardens, and sixteen Assistants, 
 the governing body. There was a licence in mortmain, which has never 
 been exercised ; but there is no mention of a common seal and some 
 other points generally comprised in these grants. 
 
 The property is almost nominal, arising from fines and accumulations 
 of current income ; in 1834, the entire corporate estate was derived from 
 the interest of 700/. Consols. In 1880 there was only one freeman ; and 
 the Livery was returned as 23. In 1889 and 1892 the latter body 
 numbered 75. It is limited to 100 ; and the fine is 15/ 15^. od. 
 
 Although the Playing-Card Makers are wholly dissociated from the 
 calling, the Gild is one of the favourite objects of selection by gentle- 
 
 c.c. 75
 
 594 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 men desirous, on social and other grounds, of enjoying the advantages 
 of membership. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Certeu Poesies vpon the Playing Cards. Entered at Stationers' Hall in 1588. 
 The Play of Cards, an unpublished Drama of the Seventeenth Century, mentioned 
 
 in Harington's Apologic i]/ Poetrie, 1591. 
 Order by the Committee, Appointed by Parliament for the Navy and Customs, on 
 
 the Complaint by the Cardmakers of London, likely to perish by reason of divers 
 
 merchants bringing in Playing Cards into this Kingdome. 1643. A broadside. 
 The Koyall and Delightfull Game of Picquet. Written in French, and now 
 
 rendered into English. i2mo, 165 1. 
 The Eoyal Game of the Ombre. Written at the Request of divers Honourable 
 
 Personages. i2mo, 1660. 
 Geographical Cards. i2mo. 1676. 52 leaves and the title-page. 
 A Proclamation, prohibiting the Importation of Foreign Playing Cards, and for 
 
 seizing such as are or shall be imported. Whitehall, 7 November, 1684. 
 A New Pack of Cards, representing (in lively Figures) the two late Rebellions. 
 
 I 2mo, [16S5.] 
 
 Zbc ipiuinbcrs. 
 
 ARMS (from stow). 
 
 ARMS FROM MAITLAND). 
 
 This is another of those very numerous instances, in which a Brother- 
 hood had tangible and recognised existence, and even an organized 
 system of government, centuries prior to the grant of any incorporation. 
 Yet there is no reason to believe that the Plumbers of London at an 
 early period formed a very important or influential body, since to many 
 of the purposes, for which lead was subsequently used, it was not at 
 first applied. The most ancient regulations for the Craft, however, shew 
 that even in the fourteenth century it was beginning to grow more 
 common to roof with lead in the case of cathedrals, churches, and public 
 buildings generally, and that the quality of the material employed at 
 ■once rendered such work expensive, and necessitated exceptional safe- 
 guards against dishonesty.
 
 THE PLUMBERS. 595 
 
 The most flourishing period of the plumbing industry and of the 
 Fellowship connected with it was that, when London abounded with 
 palatial edifices, both religious and lay, and when nothing but true lead 
 was made on the casting benches. The value of this commodity, con- 
 taining an appreciable proportion of silver quartz, and weighing about 
 14 lbs. to the foot, is not to be estimated by a modern standard, when 
 our roofs and watersheds are supplied with a poor and fictitious 
 substitute. 
 
 I'"ven in the mcdiajval time, however, there was another side to the 
 question. As trades multiplied and grew, many of them demanded for 
 working or technical purposes vessels and utensils of this material. 
 One of the earliest inventories which has come down to us of a brewer's 
 plant (1335) enumerates several items made of lead, which had been 
 acquired for cisterns and other receptacles ; but the valuation of them 
 is sufficiently humble, leading me to infer that the calling was not one 
 likely to accumulate wealth in the hands of its followers. 
 
 At the Reformation, the ecclesiastical foundations demolished for the 
 clearance of the sites and the sale of the materials, where the existing 
 buildings could not be utilized, yielded an immense store of the finest 
 and purest lead, which was available for re-employment. Under the 
 beneficiary dispositions of John Haselwood in 1543 in favour of the 
 Leathersellers' Company, we see that the donor included in his gift a 
 Sine of lead, weighing no less than 1 1 cwt. and three quarters. This was 
 just at the juncture, when a large number of religious houses had been 
 dissolved within the metropolis ; and the rather unusual present was 
 doubtless the product of the dismantlement of one or more of these 
 establishments. Even when, about fifty years since, the roof of Canter- 
 bury Cathedral was removed, it was a saying (if nothing more), that 
 there was enough silver in the old one to pay for the new. 
 
 The Ordinances or bye-laws of the Plumbers were first framed in 1365, 
 and approved at their request by the Mayor and Aldermen. They 
 rehearse some of the customary conditions, but also deal with the use 
 of lawful weights, the price of labour, the restraint of engrossers, the 
 purchase of old lead, the stripping of lead from roofs, and the inveigle- 
 ment of a customer away from one of the calling by members of other 
 trades. Any plumber convicted of theft was liable to dismissal from 
 the Fraternity. It seems brotherly to excess, that no one was at liberty 
 to carry out a work alone, if any of his fellow-craftsmen desired to take 
 a share of the labour and profit. 
 
 A rather curious case occurred in 1371, in which certain plumbers, 
 who held on hire a vacant place in East Cheap for the purpose of a 
 melting-furnace, were summoned for a nuisance, but proved to the
 
 596 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 satisfaction of the Mayor and Aldermen, that it had been so used for 
 forty years passed, and was not so noxious as had been represented. 
 But they were required to carry their shaft higher. 
 
 The Ordinances of 1365 enumerate among the articles, which the 
 plumber of those days furnished, gutters, conduit-pipes, tap-troughs, 
 furnaces and belfries, but omits roofing and cisterns. The application 
 •of lead to the latter must have long preceded this date, however, while 
 tiles had not very long replaced, on the other hand, the primitive thatch. 
 
 The annals of the Plumbers are neither eventful nor interesting. It 
 is evident from casual glimpses, which we indirectly gain of their pro- 
 gress, that they always remained a body of secondary weight and rank. 
 In 1469 we find them undertaking to provide eight men-at-arms for the 
 City Watch against the maxiiimin of 210. In 1 501-2 a municipal return 
 makes them the thirty-second Gild, with a prescriptive Livery of twelve ; 
 and when the order of precedence was settled in 1515, they occur thirty- 
 second. During the reign of Henry VIII. from 1509 to 1532 they 
 maintained a respectable position ; ^ but at the commencement of the 
 Stuart government (1602-4) they had apparently somewhat receded in 
 wealth and estimation. In 1599 they lost the privilege of assize of 
 certain weights, because their fee was judged by an award delivered in 
 that year to be excessive, and the duty was assigned to the keeper 
 of Guildhall, assisted by two members of the Gild of Founders, who 
 engaged to perform it for a reasonable consideration. 
 
 Nevertheless, in 1611, the Plumbers, then, if we may judge from their 
 contributions to public objects, a Society of very limited pecuniary re- 
 sources, obtained the only charter ever granted to them, in which they 
 were declared to be one body corporate and politic, in deed, fact and 
 name, under the style of The Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of 
 the Freemen of the Mistery of Plumbing of the City of London, with 
 a common seal, a licence in mortmain, the power of electing officers, and 
 the obligation to secure for the Company a council-house within the 
 City or its liberties. 
 
 The proceeding, of which the cost was probably borne, as usual, by 
 a few prominent members of the Gild, purports to have been prompted 
 b)' a desire to reduce to a better rule and order the men of the Mistery, 
 and all those who then exercised, or might thereafter exercise, the art 
 of plumbing, or use the materials pertaining to it ; and it is energetically 
 described as a step taken " for the utility, advantage, and relief of the 
 
 ' Stow {Survey of London, 1633, p. 90S) prints the epitaph at St. Magdalen's, 
 Bermondsey, of John Borwet, Esquire, sometime Sergeant Plumber to Henry VII. 
 and his son. He died December 7, 1525.
 
 THE PLUMBERS. 597 
 
 good and honest, and for the terror and correction of the evil, deceitful, 
 and dishonest." 
 
 There is no reference to Assistants or to a Livery, although in 1 501-2 
 the Fellowship had already possessed the latter by right of custom ; 
 and the Executive to this day is composed of the Master, two Wardens, 
 and a certain number of the commonalty — in 1882, six. In 1699, the 
 prescriptive Livery amounted to 54 ; in 1724-5, to 65 ; in 1882, to 50 ; 
 and in 1892, to 40. Between 1871-80 there were no calls. In 1S82, 
 the number of freemen was estimated at 50. 
 
 The property of the Company consists of a freehold in Great St. 
 Helen's, a sub-share in the Vintners' Irish manor, and the interest of 
 10,000/. arising from the compulsory sale of the Hall in Chequer Yard, 
 Dowgate Hill, to the South-Eastern Railway. 
 
 Stows' Continuator (1633) does not specify Chequer Yard, but 
 mentions Chequer Lane or Alley ; nor does he refer to the Hall, which 
 is particularized as a desideratum in the charter. Maitland speaks of it 
 in 1739, and again in 1756, as a small one. 
 
 In recent years, the Plumbers have manifested considerable interest 
 in the cause of technical education and the sanitation of dwellings and 
 other buildings by improved principles of sewerage. As lately as 189 1, 
 the Master and Wardens entertained the Lord Mayor and a distin-: 
 guished circle at dinner, at the Cannon Street Hotel, in furtherance oT 
 this desirable object, and the following resolution was carried : — 
 
 " That this conference of representatives of educational authorities, master and 
 operative plumbers, of County Councils and others, is of opinion that the technical 
 education of plumbers is a question of national importance, the provision of which is 
 exceptionally difficult and costly, and that it is expedient that its special claims for 
 money help should be brought before the attention of the County Councils, and 
 Municipal Corporations, and Township Commissioners." ' 
 
 But whatever one or two individual members may accomplish, the 
 influence of the Company in the direction of public control has long 
 determined ; and the almost universal debasement of the material in 
 use, as well as the too frequent incompetence of the artificer, must be 
 reformed, before any substantial benefit can accrue to the community 
 from the movement directed by this ancient bodj'. The great draw- 
 back to progress is the dishonest District Surveyor, whose eyes are 
 furnished with golden shutters at the expense of the equally dishonest 
 builder. 
 
 ' See Revived Guild Action, by George Shaw, Past Master. 8vo, 1S78 ; second 
 edition enlarged, 8vo, 1890.
 
 598 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Zbc D>oulter3. 
 
 Of the ancient poultry market in the thoroughfare still bearing the 
 once significant name, Conyhope or Coneyhoop Lane, one of the original 
 abutments of Grocers' Hall, constituted part, and was probably the 
 place where the live rabbits were offered for sale, as at Leadenhall now, 
 in hutches. 
 
 The Poulterers had also a scalding-house close by the Stocks, but on 
 the opposite side of the street, and east of St. Mildred's Church, in a 
 narrow turning called Scalding Alley. 
 
 Stow's Continuator (1633) observes that Scaldiiig-]Vikc\ by the 
 Stocks Market, was so called, because the Poulters dressed and 
 scalded their poultry there. This was another appellation for the same 
 locality. 
 
 The same writer elsewhere apprises us that the followers of the trade 
 dwelled between the Stocks Market and the Great Conduit, but sub- 
 sequently removed to Gracechurch and Newgate Streets. 
 
 What is now still called the Poultry was formerly the scene of a some- 
 what complex trade in poultry, fish, and butcher's meat ; and at length 
 the thoroughfare became so congested, that arrangements were made, 
 whereby the poulterers were ordered to sell their goods in their shops, 
 and that, as to the two other crafts, the fishmongers should take turns 
 with the fleshers to hold their market in the enclosure called the Stocks 
 and in the contiguous pent-houses on fish-da}'s and flesh-days 
 respectively. 
 
 Cases arose in which these several trades suffered forfeiture of 
 their stocks by contumacy. So far as the Poulterers were concerned, 
 the difficulty may have been relieved by the poultry market at 
 
 ' See The Charter of the Worshipful Company of Poulters, London : Its Orders, 
 Ordinances, and Constitution. Also, Acts granted by the Corporation of London. 
 With a List of the Estates and Charities belonging to and under the directio?i of the 
 Court of Assistants of the said Company. 410, privately printed [1872].
 
 THE POULTERS. 599 
 
 Leadenhall. lint new regulations on this subject were published from 
 time to time to suit varying opinions or exigencies. 
 
 In 1357 the Poulters freemen of the City were forbidden to stand " at 
 the carfukes of the Ledcn-hallc with Rabbits, fowls, or other poultry ;" 
 and they were required to offer them for sale along the wall toward the 
 west of St. Michael's, Cornhill. 
 
 In 1375, the Court of Aldermen made an order that foreign poulterers, 
 who entered the City by Newgate or Aldcrsgate, should sell their goods 
 on the pavement in front of the Friars Minors near the Fountain, 
 and that freemen of the trade should stand before the Church of St. 
 Nicholas Flesh-Shambles in Newgate Street. The aim was to prevent 
 collision and discord between the two. 
 
 A case occurred, — one of many, — in 1381, where William Fot, a 
 poultereer, offered eighteen pigeons for sale on the Thursday next after 
 the Feast of St. Austin, in contempt of the City 
 and deceit of the people, for that the same were 
 putrid and an abomination to mankind ; and the 
 said William was put into the pillory on the aver- 
 ment of four cooks of Bread Street that the birds 
 were putrid when exposed for sale. 
 
 From a very remote period, — certainly from 1350, 
 — the Corporation reserved the right of fixing the 
 prices of victual sold within the City, and we possess 
 the printed tariiif established and advertised for this description of food 
 from 1572 onward. 
 
 An interesting point is, that the salesman was expected to establish 
 his authenticity by wearing a recognised garb, for one of the " Laws of 
 the Market" inserted by Stow in his Survey, but separately printed more 
 than once, prescribes " that no Poulters shall deceivably occupy the 
 market, to sell any stale victuall, or such as bee Poulters of this City 
 for to stand in strange cloathing so to doe under paine -of forty shillings 
 and the forfeiture of such victuall." 
 
 The Poulters claim an existence as a voluntary Association as far 
 back as 1345 ; and there is no reason, why they should not have sub- 
 sisted even earlier. But they were not incorporated till 19 Henrj- VII., 
 Feb. 23, 1504. This charter was renewed Feb. 22, 30 Elizabeth, and 
 13 June, 6 Charles II. ; but all these grants, with one of James II., are 
 stated to have perished in the Great Fire. The acting charter was 
 obtained from William and Mary, May 6, 1692.^ 
 
 ' In the years 1763 and 1820 the charter was supplemented by Acts of Common 
 Council. The power of search, conferred by the royal grant, has long ceased.
 
 600 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 The quota of ten men returned to the muster for the City Watch in 
 1469 bespeaks the poulters at that date a somewhat insignificant body in 
 point of numbers, if not of influence ; and the same estimate is deducible 
 from the periodical recurrence of their name in connection with various 
 public calls and events. They present themselves in i 501-2, on the eve 
 of the application for their first charter, as the 44th Gild with a 
 customary Livery of 10, and in 15 15 they are officially ranked as thirty- 
 fifth. 
 
 The epoch of highest prosperity was perhaps about 1724, in which 
 year the Livery was returned at 127. In 1882, it had receded to 57, 
 and in 1892 to 40, the entire Company at the later date counting scarcely 
 100. 
 
 The government is composed, agreeably to the charter of 1692, of a 
 Master, two Wardens (Upper and Renter), and Assistants, and manages 
 the corporate estate on behalf of the Company and the trust funds 
 subject to the approval of the Charity Commissioners. Election day 
 is Ash Wednesday. 
 
 The income of 600/. a year or thereabout appears to arise from 
 dividends, rents, and fines. The Company has a small interest in the 
 Vintners' Irish manor of Bellaghy. The greater part of the revenue 
 derived from dividends is in respect of 1 1,889/. "3-^- S*^- P^'<i ^Y the Great 
 Eastern and North London Railways for the compulsory purchase of 
 freeholds in Dunning's Alley, Bishopsgate Within, where the Hall may 
 have once been ; the receipts from this source are about 400/. a year. 
 
 The property seems to have come into the possession of the Company 
 under the will of Thomas Nepton, May 6, 1718, subject to certain trusts, 
 which upon the death of his relict, Anne Nepton, in 1728, were by her 
 varied and enlarged, the ultimate beneficiaries being charged with the 
 payment of 40/. a year to the poor of Barking, Essex, a like sum to the 
 poor of St. Botolph, Aldgate, and 20/. a year to Shoreditch School, and 
 the residue to be divisible between the poor of the Gild and the fees of 
 apprenticeship. 
 
 Robert Warden, by his will dated June 3, 1609, gave the Company a 
 house then known under the sign of the Pepper Queen, in the parish of 
 St. Peter on Cornhill, and situated at the junction of Cornhill and 
 Bishopsgate Street, on condition that they should pay 3/. I2i'. a year to 
 the parson and churchwardens for the benefit of the poor. The pay- 
 ment has been increased since that time ; in 1872, it was 8/. 2s. 6d. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 Certain prices set upon Fowl by the Lord Mayor in the year 1572. A broadside 
 printed in or about thai year by John Day.
 
 THE SADDLERS. 
 
 60 1 
 
 By the Mayor. Rates and prices of all sorts of Poultry, set down by the right 
 honourable Ralph Freeman, Lord Mayor. ... to be observed and kept by 
 all and every the Poulterers and other persons \vhatsoe%'er . . . 1633. A 
 broadside. 
 
 A Proclamation by the Lord Mayor on the same subject. [1633-4.] A broadside. 
 
 XTbc Sa&JMcrs. 
 
 The earliest traces of this community exhibit them as an Associa- 
 tion gathered together in very remote times under the eastern boundary- 
 wall of the conventual church of St. Martin le Grand, founded by one of 
 the kings of Kent in the eighth century, and endowed by the Normans 
 with new privileges and the right of sanctuarj-. 
 
 A more happily chosen spot for what was in course of time known as 
 the Saddlery nowhere existed ; for the immediate contiguity at once 
 carried with it a religious atmosphere and a practical safeguard. 
 
 The Saddlers may contest with the Weavers the palm of antiquity ; 
 but while the latter have no special claim to attention beyond their pre- 
 cedence of origin, we here hold in our hands the 
 interesting means of identifying the intimate link 
 quite as far back into the past between a collegiate 
 and a trading Brotherhood, the bond of amity which 
 the convent formed and maintained with the occupiers 
 of the neighbouring commercial quarter. Time has 
 played his too common part with both alike. In the 
 room of the monastery it has placed the General Post old arms. 
 
 Office ; of the Saddlery nothing survives but the modern Hall in Foster 
 Lane. 
 
 The great church and its adjuncts disappeared at the Reformation, the 
 
 c.c. 76
 
 ■602 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 older Hall of the Gild in i666. It is to one of the muniments removed 
 from the former that we derive our earliest clue to the genesis and home 
 of the Fellowship under notice. A mutilated document of the twelfth 
 century, which has long been more or less generally known by repute, 
 but of which a subsequent and complete transcript was more recently 
 brought to light, bears unique witness to a convention made in 1154 
 between two bodies so dissimilar, yet apparently so closely knit together 
 in charity and goodwill. 
 
 This compact testified to the then well-established relations of the 
 monks and gildesmen to each other, and is a sort of exemplification of 
 the mutual tie. The Saddlers are reminded of their acknowledged 
 right to participate in all the benefits arising from the services per- 
 formed in the church both by night and by day, and of the fact that two 
 masses are said every week, one for the living and the other for the 
 departed of their congregation, and that their members are entitled to 
 equal privileges and honours with the holy brethren themselves at their 
 obsequies and burial. In consideration whereof the Saddlers are en- 
 joined to conform to the usage in the days of their Alderman Ernaldus, 
 and to pay for each reception of a deceased brother in the churchyard 
 and the ringing of the bell the sum of eightpence. 
 
 A piece of parchment, such as this before us, is a remarkable title- 
 deed ; for it fixes the original settlement of the trading colony in the 
 vicinity of Cheapside or West Cheap as much prior to 1 1 54 as we may 
 be warranted in interpreting the language of the memorandum to 
 convey. That the Gild in the present stage of its existence was ruled 
 by an Alderman of proprietary rank, is not more than the prevailing 
 custom and principle of those days ; and when we recollect that, be- 
 fore other methods of conveyance came into vogue, riding was the sole 
 and universal medium of transit, nothing can be more natural and 
 secure than the conclusion that the saddle in some shape closely suc- 
 ceeded the utilization of the horse for both sexes and all classes. But 
 in this case we ought to be rather proud of owning the absolute voucher 
 for the institution of the trade in London, for a knowledge of the 
 locality, which constituted its primitive seat, and for the highly charac- 
 teristic alliance between its freemen and their nearest, most pacific, and 
 yet most powerful neighbours. 
 
 It proceeds from the dearth of such records that we are enabled to 
 learn so little of the remoter history of our institutions and our country. 
 With the solitary exception just mentioned the annals of the Saddlers 
 present almost a blank during two centuries ; they are not enumerated 
 in 1 1 80 among the eighteen adulterine bodies associating and assembling 
 without authority.
 
 THE SADDLERS. 603 
 
 A charter was granted to the followers of the industry in 1272 ; but it 
 was of a general scope, and applied, not to the City of London only, but 
 to the kingdom at large, prescribing and authorizing that in every 
 borough, city, or town, where saddlery was practised, two honest and 
 discreet men should be chosen to survey the Craft. This instrument was 
 repeatedly renewed, and, as we shall perceive, long ran parallel with the 
 special grant to the London body. 
 
 We discern in the step here taken, however, one or two important 
 considerations. The charter of course embraced London, and substi- 
 tuted there, as well as probably in the provinces, an Executive of two 
 elective Wardens for the archaic feudal Alderman, whose tenure was 
 at least for life, if it was not for a time hereditary ; but its language 
 seems to favour the supposition, on the other hand, that it was the first 
 formal embodiment of the trade under responsible control and royal 
 licence ; and we are tempted to speculate, whether the peculiar footing 
 on which the Saddlers stood with the monastery of St. Martin did not 
 shield them from cognizance in 11 So, as they present themselves to our 
 view only a few years before in a fraternal light, using a common place 
 of worship and a common place of interment. Beneath the stones of the 
 Post Office reposes the mingled dust of canon, monk, and saddler, more 
 closely united in death even than in life, and more inseparable. 
 
 In the-first year of Edward I., then, it may be fairly presumed that 
 the Saddlers were provided with a more modern and practical adminis- 
 trative system, although their friendship and intercourse with the monks 
 of St. Martin still continued unaltered. In that quarter it was easier to 
 preserve concord than in others, where commercial interests intervened. 
 In fact, as it has been in our accounts of many other Gilds, we are chiefly 
 indebted for our acquaintance with the progress and doings of this one 
 in ancient days to its differences with those trades, which by their nature 
 were more or less allied to it, more especially the Joiners, who claimed 
 the monopoly of making the timber-work or trees of saddles. Between 
 1309 and 1327' a considerable revelation incidentally occurs through the 
 exposure by the Wardens of the Saddlers of the frauds or enroachments 
 committed by dishonest members of their own Gild in concert with the 
 Joiners, Loriners, and Painters. In 1320 the Ordinances obtained by 
 the Loriners in 45 Henry III. were condemned, and committed to the 
 
 ' In the Book of Expenses of Thomas, Earl of Lajicaster, for 1313-14, we meet 
 with two entries exhibiting the charges at that time for this class of article in a 
 princely household : — 
 
 "//t7«. Saddles for the Lord's Liveries in summer, 52/. 6^. 8(/. 
 Item, for one Saddle for the Earle, of the Prince's Armes, 40.;." 
 Cardinal Wolsey maintained a saddler on his establishment.
 
 -604 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 flames in Cheapside. This was an unusually severe rebuke, as it in a 
 certain measure disfranchised the Gild by placing them out of the pale 
 of the law ; and it had its natural sequence in active hostilities. 
 
 In 1327 parties of Saddlers, Joiners, Painters, and Loriners assembled 
 in force with arms, both in Cheapside and in Cripplegate, on the 20th May, 
 by reason of some " rancour and dissension " among them, because the 
 Saddlers desired to restrain the others from selling to any but themselves 
 -and were, moreover, greatly Indebted to the Loriners and the rest for 
 work done. Considerable bloodshed ensued, and much difficulty oc- 
 curred in effecting a pacification, which was reduced to writing, and is 
 still extant. The Saddlers were adjudged by a committee of arbitrators 
 to be in the wrong ; and we must allow that committee to be more con- 
 versant with the facts than ourselves. 
 
 It comes to this, that the early life of all similarly organized com- 
 munities, when it emerged from the stage of obscurity, entered on that 
 -of jealous inquisition, turbulence, and deceit. We should be far more 
 ignorant of their career, had their proceedings been really on the lines 
 of brotherly and religious association, which their charters, ordinances, 
 ^nd professions specify. 
 
 We do not meet with any code of bye-laws for internal government 
 anterior to that of 1365 ; and the knowledge of these Articles is entirely 
 due to their ratification by the Court of Aldermen on the prayer of the 
 Wardens and their consequent enrolment in the Chamber of London. 
 They indicate, in the first place, the regulations, which had probably 
 long been in force in the trade, and secondly the feeling that, as the 
 volume of business increased, and details became more complex, the 
 official sanction and acceptance of these canons were imperative on a 
 variety of accounts. In soliciting their confirmation, the Wardens de- 
 clared them to be for the common profit of the realm and the honour 
 and preservation of their mistery. They bespeak the possession by the 
 freemen and even journeymen at this date of a more than customary 
 measure of weight, as several of the stipulations are calculated to pro- 
 tect the vadlct (valet) or servant equally with the master or employer. 
 
 Meanwhile, the geiiei-a! royal licence accorded to the trade in 1272 
 had been renewed (1364) by Edward III., and with the Ordinances or 
 bye-laws just cited placed the Craft on a tolerably secure footing. The 
 principal cause of anxiety and discontent about this period was due to 
 the arbitrary proceedings of a Mayor (Sir Nicholas Brember), who un- 
 happily acquired phenomenal ascendency for the time being, and during 
 his four years of office (1377-83-4-5) exercised a sort of despotism 
 over the City. His career was brought to a close by his attainder and 
 execution for high treason ; but the Saddlers distinguished themselves
 
 THE SADDLERS. 605 
 
 in this case very signally, by a special address to the Crown on behalf 
 of themselves and the rest of the municipality. 
 
 At length, when they had subsisted during the greater part of three 
 centuries as a Fellowship — if they did not make out their title to an even 
 Anglo-Saxon origin — the first charter of incorporation was obtained 
 from Richard II., March 20, 1394-5, ^t a cost of 60/., an amount which 
 may explain the delay in approaching the Crown. The grant was, 
 after all, not of a very elaborate character, and was confined to the 
 constitution of the men of the mistery as a perpetual commonalty, the 
 appointment of four Wardens, and a licence in mortmain to purchase 
 lands and hereditaments of 20/. yearly value, for the sustentation of the 
 poor, aged, and sick of the Company. The exordium of the concession 
 is couched in terms, which imply on the part of the beneficiaries an 
 almost pathetic appeal for the relief of their needs through the arrival 
 of many at venerable estate and the fall of others into great poverty, 
 insomuch that the pious Brotherhood was solicitous to have it in its 
 power to alleviate their condition. Yet in 1 364 this body had contri- 
 buted 100 shillings to Edward the Third's French wars, and in 1377 sent 
 four members to represent it on the Common Council. This instru- 
 inent was viewed, exemplified, and confirmed by Edward IV., May 5, 
 1463, by Henry VII., October 28, 1495, and by Henry VIII., June 11, 
 1540. 
 
 Elizabeth in her first year (November 9, 1558) reincorporated the 
 Company under the name of the Wardens or Keepers and Com- 
 monalty of the Mistery or Art of Saddlers of the City of London, 
 and named and appointed four Wardens to hold office till the 14th 
 of August, 1559, with power to summon and hold an as'sembly within 
 their common Hall of the Wardens and freemen of the mistery, and 
 eight of the same freemen to be Assistants. The Wardens and 
 eight Assistants formed a body qualified to consult and decide on all the 
 offices of the mistery; and a casting vote was given to the Senior Warden. 
 The grant conferred the right of search and of making bye-laws. 
 
 We distinctly perceive the survival in this Elizabethan grant of the 
 popular constitution of 1365 and 1395 ; and the Ordinances of 1 560-1 
 naturally followed the tenor and language of the charter. But we must 
 retrace our steps a long way, in order as clearly as possible to understand 
 how an organic change was impending. 
 
 In common with the Merchant Taylors and a few other bodies, 
 whose history in outline we have already given, the Saddlers, from a 
 remote date not capable of exact fixture, appear to have acquiesced in 
 the assumption and enjoyment by their Yeomanry of certain valued 
 prerogatives, including overseers with definite jurisdiction and the right
 
 6o6 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 to hold periodical religious observances akin to those celebrated by the 
 Livery and Court. Their Wardens assisted in the preparation of the 
 yearly Feast on St. Bartholomew's Day (August 14), when the journey- 
 men were " treated." 
 
 Immediately after the concession of the parent charter in 1395, we 
 are almost entitled to presume that a fresh issue took place of bye-laws 
 to meet the altered circumstances. The text, however, we do not seem 
 to possess ; and it was probably on the conditions laid down in them 
 that the question turned in 1396 as to certain privileges of the Yeomanry. 
 In that year, what is described as an unlawful combination among this 
 body occurred, and the alleged offenders, on being summoned to Guild- 
 hall, appeared by their Wardens, who pleaded that " time out of mind 
 the serving-men of the trade had had a certain Fraternity among them- 
 selves, and had been wont to array themselves all in like suit once in 
 the year, and, after meeting together at Stratford on the Feast of the 
 Assumption, to come thence to the church of St. Vedast in London, to 
 hear mass in honour of the Virgin." 
 
 But the Court disallowed the plea, and commanded the said yeomen- 
 saddlers henceforth to refer all questions among them to the Wardens 
 of the Company. 
 
 This was really the beginning of the end, although the end was yet 
 far off. In 1 606-7, March 20, an inspeximus of the charter was pro- 
 cured from James I., and this act was followed by the ratification under 
 the hand of the Lord Treasurer and the Judges of a new set of Ordin- 
 ances, dated April 17, 1608. The interval of a twelvemonth may well 
 have been employed in carefully and thoroughly considering the step, 
 which the Court proposed to take ; for in this code the whole electoral 
 power, and the entire authority, was constructively vested in the Wardens 
 and Assistants, since all mention of the summons and admittance of the 
 Livery and Yeomanry to the Hall before the election was suppressed. 
 
 The executive and sovereign oligarchy was of course too wary to 
 deprive the freemen of the mistery, on whose behalf the charters had 
 been solicited and conferred, of all show of jurisdiction and interest ; 
 but their part henceforth was purely ceremonial ; and their Wardens, 
 whom we still trace in 1632, limited themselves to attendance in Hall to 
 hear the result of the election and the arrangement of subordinate de- 
 tails, more especially in connection with the Yeomanry dinner or Steward's 
 Festival. In 1624 it was prescribed that the " bringing home " of the 
 Wardens of the Yeomanry, which had long grown out of use, should be 
 altogether abolished, by reason of disorderly proceedings, which were apt 
 to arise. This ceremony, admitted to be of lengthened continuance, was 
 perhaps the one which led to the disturbances in 1 396.
 
 THE SADDLERS. 607 
 
 On Election Day, 1646, the Livery attempted a coup de main, and 
 pressed for a share in the appointment of tlie new Wardens ; but their 
 demand was successfully resisted. 
 
 In i66g the bye-laws of 160S were approved by the Judges, and on 
 December 24, 1684, Charles II. gave a new charter, allowing — with the 
 customary political and religious disabilities — all the powers and benefits 
 contained in that of 1607. 
 
 Thus the constitution, which had at the outset, and more or less down 
 to 1560, been emphatically popular in its complexion, became in and 
 after 160S strictly and irrevocablj- aristocratic. The experience in this 
 and other cases, where the same revolution occurred at a later period of 
 time and with less signal completeness, was that the very essence of the 
 principle which called the Gilds into existence — the welfare of the free- 
 men and freewomen both in health and infirmity, and their support in 
 old age or indigence — was largely inimical to altered circumstances, 
 even while it must have been manifest that such alteration was solely 
 due to the incidence of origin and conditions of tenure. 
 
 The Saddlers may be regarded as a very striking type of the aristo- 
 cratically constituted Gild ; and in this respect it offers an instructive 
 contrast to one like the Coopers' or even the Cordwainers', where the 
 suffrage has not been so narrowed, but where, on the contrarj-, there is 
 an unusual measure of liberalism. The violent departure from the 
 primitive form of organization in the case of the other body is apt to 
 strike us as a reaction from the self-asserting and unrul)' policy of the 
 Yeomanry in early days, and such a radical change was perhaps facili- 
 tated by the gradual discouragement of applicants for the Freedom. In 
 more modern times, trade disputes, which still occasional!}' arose, were 
 arranged in a manner more consonant with advanced ideas. Not so 
 long ago, the Saddlers quarrelled with the Joiners, because the latter 
 claimed the right of making the trees of the high-peaked saddles then 
 in vogue. Down to 1822, the interposition under the power of search 
 was practically carried out in the case of a saddler in Holborn, who was 
 summoned by the Court on the ground that he had on sale sundry 
 saddles made of improper material ; and the goods were seized and 
 destroyed. 
 
 The introduction of the coach in various forms was entertained by the 
 Company with misgiving and dislike, as it foreshadowed in their view a 
 gradual decline in the call for saddle-horses. But the apprehension was 
 more or less chimerical, and in the Civil War, if the ta.xation proved 
 onerous, the supply of stores for the army partly counterbalanced the 
 claims upon their loyalty and funds. 
 
 We have observed that so long ago as 1356 the Gild exhibited great
 
 6o8 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 jealousy and intolerance of the slightest intrenchment on its rights ; and 
 as time went on, the category of articles in which the members claimed 
 an interest grew more and more extended, comprising pillions, stirrups, 
 straps, leathern cans, horsecloths, and even mails (the ancient portman- 
 teaux), and other travelling appliances. In fact, the saddler's shop gra- 
 dually acquired the aspect of a depot, where buyers might obtain not 
 only horse-furniture but a certain"section of necessaries for a journey by 
 road. 
 
 The Company was under the common necessity of compounding 
 with the assignees of the Crown in 1 547-8 for its property held to super- 
 stitious uses, and to effect this purpose had to part with other estate of 
 approximate value, owing to the insufficiency of corporate income. 
 
 But from this time forward, nevertheless, it appears as a contributor 
 to nearly every public solemnity and burden. There is an amusing 
 entry in the Books where some of the Yeomanry were deputed to attend 
 the Queen from Hyde Park Corner to St. James's Palace in 1584-5, of a 
 fine of 8s. Sd. levied by the auditors, because the torch-holders " prodi- 
 gally and lasciviously " wasted the lights by burning them the whole of 
 the way homeward. In 1609 a subscription to the enterprise for settling 
 Virginia was raised among the Livery, and subsequently reimbursed ; 
 this method of discharging engagements was not unfrequent. Some- 
 what later, 390/. were invested in a sub-share of the Salters' Irish Manor, 
 the other holders from the tenants in chief being the Dyers, Cutlers, 
 Joiners, and Woolmen. The interest has determined by sale to the 
 Salters. 
 
 In the Books from 1609 there are charges for attending the Lord 
 Mayor's Show. At first the Saddlers hired a barge ; but they afterward 
 acquired one ; and in 1671 Alderman Dashwood presented 100/. to 
 purchase bunting. Fart of the amount was spent in a canopy, however. 
 
 Of the etiquette observed at burials we have numerous illustrative 
 memoranda. The whole Fellowship attended the obsequies, first at St. 
 Martin's, and after the Reformation at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane. The 
 "funeral baked meats" were supplied at the expense of the departed, 
 unless his means were inadequate. In 1624 an order was made that the 
 distribution to the Livery " in the streets," that is, in the short distance 
 between the Hall and the Church, of comfits, bread and wine, should be 
 discontinued. 
 
 The Saddlers possess an ancient pall of crimson velvet with the 
 edges worked in gold, which used to be laid over the coffin of each 
 deceased member, when his brethren followed him to the grave. It is 
 still placed on the table, when a new comer is sworn, as a token of the 
 vacancy.
 
 THE SADDLERS. 609 
 
 The habit of wearing one suit of Livery is evidently of great antiquity. 
 In 1396 the Yeomen-Saddlers claimed their established right to an 
 uniform vesture on Assumption Day ; and in the Elizabethan Ordin- 
 ances ( 1 560-1) the clothing was directed to be such "as shall seem meet 
 and convenient for the worship of the City and the honesty of the 
 F'cllowship." At a call to the Liver}- in April, 1664, the clerk repaired 
 to the persons elected to deliver them the patterns of the cloth for their 
 gowns and hoods, which were to be provided against admission-day, 
 when the Senior Warden personally invested each of the new members 
 with his hood. But the colour of the Company is not stated. This 
 we know to have been elsewhere a point of infinite interest and 
 moment. 
 
 The Executive body has almost invariably followed the charter in 
 consisting of four Wardens and a Court of Assistants. From 1737 to 
 1751, Frederick Prince of Wales was Master of the Company ; but after 
 his death the Senior Warden was termed Prime Warden, and the other 
 three, Second or Key Warden, Third or Quarter Warden, and Fourth 
 or Renter Warden, with whom was associated at one time an Under- 
 Renter, ostensibly as an auxiliary to the Junior Warden. The name 
 does not appear after 1609 ; but in 1634 two Cup-fillers were no- 
 minated to take charge of the table-linen or napery and other similar 
 effects. 
 
 The bye-laws were made and renewed with variations and additions, 
 probably in or about 1397, and certainly in 1560-1, 1608, 1624, and 1669. 
 In estimating their character and tone we are always to recollect that 
 their legality depended on their freedom from any provisions deroga- 
 tory to the Crown, and that they passed the scrutiny of the Corporation, 
 before they could have effect Whatever we may think of them, they 
 reflected the mercantile and social genius of the period ; and this may 
 be taken to be a general criticism. 
 
 In 1 501-2 the Saddlers numbered n, and are placed nineteenth, 
 between the Butchers and the Carpenters. In 1509, they are the 
 twentieth company according to the list drawn up on the occasion of 
 the coronation of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon, and had 
 14 yards' space allotted to them in the line of procession, the maxi- 
 ininii being 26 yards. In 8 Henry VIII. the order of precedence 
 was officially regulated, and the Saddlers have the twenty-sixth 
 place, between the Carpenters and Cordwainers ; yet in the 23rd of 
 the same reign, in the arrangement at the Lord Mayor's feast in 
 Guildhall, the Company appears as twenty-first, between the Fullers 
 and the Brewers, although it was allowed to send only 4 members, 
 besides the Wardens, against the Fullers' 9 and the Brewers' 12. 
 C.C. 77
 
 6lO THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In 1537 the Saddlers numbered 60, including three freewomen. At 
 a late period their relative standing and wealth are gauged by their 
 assessment for corn in 1602-3, and for the ceremony of welcoming 
 James I. into London. In the former case they contributed 90 quar- 
 ters against the Carpenters,' Cordwainers' and Coopers' 70 ; and in the 
 latter 3/. 125-., a higher amount than the three others just named and 
 indeed than a majority of the Minor Gilds. 
 
 In 18S2 the liverymen were returned as 92, the freemen as 33, 
 and the free sisters as 6. Of late years the admissions have been 
 almost exclusively by patrimon)- or redemption, and those not at all 
 numerous. The Act of Common Council, passed in 1722, by which 
 all persons carrying on the business in London were required to 
 belong to the Company, was operative in 1882 to the extent of 22 
 members. But the tendency of all such protectionist regulations has 
 been to fall into practical disuse. 
 
 At the same time, owing to the abnormal increase in the value of 
 freeholds situate in prominent City thoroughfares, ' the financial 
 position in the ten years, 1870-79, is shown to have been steadily 
 progressive,^ and the Saddlers have borne some part in encouraging 
 technical and general education, if not on a scale commensurate with 
 their means and consequent responsibility. In 1873-4, two exhibi- 
 tions of Saddlery were held at the Hall, and prizes offered for the 
 best work. 
 
 There is this peculiar feature about the charity estate of the Saddlers, 
 derived from several benefactors, that the Company found itself unable 
 to apply the income in many cases to the intended objects, from the 
 absence of qualified recipients, and was obliged to seek the approval 
 of the Commissioners for new schemes. 
 
 As recently as 1859 the almshouses for poor Saddlers, designated 
 Honnor's Home, were erected at Spring Grove, Isleworth, from funds 
 arising out of the residuary estate of Young George Honnor, Citizen 
 and Saddler, left to the Company in 1769 for the relief of decayed 
 Masters, Wardens, or Assistants. No application having occurred, 
 
 ' The estates, according to the official returns of 1S34, are situated in Cheapside, 
 Wood Street, Aldersgate Street, Southwark, Milford Lane, Strand, Harrow, Maid- 
 stone, and Sti stead (Essex). The possessions in the City included several taverns : 
 the Dolphin and Mermaid in West Cheap or Cheapside, the Golden Bull, and the 
 White Lion and the Goat in East Cheap, the Talbot in Wood Street, the Crown at 
 Holborn Conduit, and the Adam and Eve without Temple Bar. 
 
 - In the first-named year the total income is returned at 7,561/. 7s. 8d. ; in 1879, at 
 10,243/. lO-f- ; and in 1892, at 11,200/., exclusive of 1000/. trust ; and there appears to 
 have usually been a considerable annual surplus.
 
 THE SADDLERS. 6 I I 
 
 the money accumulated, and in 1855 had reached nearly 18,000/. ;. 
 and under the authority of the Charity Commission the scheme 
 was varied. 
 
 The first vestige of a Hall is of an indirect kiml, being in the form 
 of a bequest by William de Lincoln, Citizen and Saddler, and one of 
 the Wardens for 1363, under his will proved in 1393. of the sum of 
 10 marks toward a common Hall, provided that the same be built 
 within three years. The position of the testator, and the natural 
 desire to give effect to his intentions, go some way in the direction of 
 convincing us that something was done accordingly ; and there is the 
 additional argument that the clause in the will was dictated by a 
 knowledge of the wishes of his brethren, and responded to conversa- 
 tions held in his lifetime on the subject, somewhat in the same 
 manner as with the Coopers the erection of a Hall resulted from the 
 initiative of one of the Wardens. A positive proof of such a posses- 
 sion must, however, be carried forward to 1545 ; and it first presents 
 itself under very inauspicious circumstances, as the theatre of the 
 disgraceful proceedings connected with Anne Askew, who was tried 
 here. In the charter of 1558, the "common Hall" is particularly 
 specified. But the Company appears to have no records tending to 
 elucidate its history, and it perished in the Fire. Such lead and iron 
 as could be obtained from the ruins were stored up in the vaults of 
 the Mermaid Tavern for use in a new building, which was eventually 
 entrusted to Air. Thomas Davis, Mr. Hodgkin, and Mr. Braithwaite. 
 But subsequently, when the full amount of the losses was ascertained, 
 all proceedings were adjourned ; the material, with most of the plate, 
 was sold ; the Wardens were instructed to endeavour to procure pur- 
 chasers for the Maidstone estate, and not merely was the staff reduced, 
 but some of the pensions were suspended. The Court temporarily 
 met at the house of one of the Assistants in Bishopsgate. 
 
 The plate realized consisted of 28 li ounces of gilt plate, which 
 fetched 5^. 6d. per ounce, and ■\-7\ of white or plain ; the whole pro- 
 duced 184/. \2s. ()d., which went to defray certain outstanding debts. 
 
 Steps were taken in 1668, however, to replace the Hall, which was 
 not ready for occupation till 1670 ; and the meetings were held in the 
 interval at Christ's Hospital and at the Cooks' Hall in Aldersgate 
 Street. But when the work had been finished, the Company was com- 
 pelled by its straitened position to offer a portion of the new premises 
 to other public bodies or to whomever would hire the accommodation, 
 except to conventicles, dancing-masters, and the like. This state of 
 things lasted till 1721, and from the ceremonies connected with inter- 
 ments of members taking place there, a rather odd practice arose of
 
 6l2 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 letting the apartment to others. The low financial plight necessitated 
 and excused such expedients. 
 
 The facts known about the second Hall are singularly few. Hatton, 
 writing in 1708, refers to it as adorned with fretwork and wainscot. 
 Under 1714 mention occurs of a cupola or lanthorn. It had no outlet 
 from Cheapside, but was approached by a small passage called Saddlers' 
 Hall Court, in which the Clerk had a house. In Maitland's time 
 (1739-72) it had been completed in all respects, except the wine-cellar, 
 which was formed below the front yard in 1805, and he says of it: 
 ■' Saddlers' Hall is situate near the end of Foster Lane in Cheapside, in 
 the upper end of an handsome alley, at the entrance of which is an 
 ornamental doorcase and an iron gate, and is a very compleat building 
 for the use of such a Company." He adds that the Company's Arms 
 were carved in stone over the gate next the street. 
 
 These descriptive notices are the more necessary, that in 18 15 the 
 edifice was partly, and in 1821, totally, destroyed by fire. The furniture, 
 wine, plate, and painted glass windows were saved, although the last 
 were seriously damaged, and the ruins were sold by auction as building 
 material. 
 
 The first stone of the third Hall was laid March 7, 1822. The 
 building, which has entrances both in Cheapside and Foster Lane, abuts 
 on the church of St. Vedast Foster and St. Michael-le-Ouern, near the 
 General Post Office, and the Members go thither in procession every 
 August, attended by their chaplain, to pay a thank-offering to God, and 
 to testify to the loyal discharge of their duty toward the poor of the 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 In casting our eyes down the list of former eminent members, honor- 
 ary or otherwise, of this Craft, we arrive at 1653 without meeting with 
 any one of special note. In that year. Alderman Dashwood, a bene- 
 factor of the Company, and ancestor of the Dashwood, De Spencer, 
 and Brooke families, was Master ; and the only other name is that of 
 Richard Earlom, the famous engraver, whose father, William Earlom, 
 appears under 1791. But we do not suggest that throughout the long 
 catalogue there are not many personages, whose memory ought to be 
 very dear to the Gild, as those who made it, and enabled it to become 
 and to remain what it is. 
 
 The Company possesses a few paintings, including a portrait of Pitt, 
 by Romney, one of Queen Anne by Clostermans, and a picture 
 attributed to Ostade. They also have a considerable collection of 
 plate, which, with the two exceptions retained in 1668, has accumu- 
 lated since that date. The Cocoanut Cup is probably the most ancient 
 and the most important piece ; but there are several others of 17th
 
 THE SCRIVENERS. 
 
 613 
 
 century fabric. Bcj-cmd the loss of the bulk of the original collection, 
 the common practice existed of selling from time to time the spoons 
 accumulated by the 
 usage of each freeman 
 presenting one on his 
 admission, only as 
 many being retained 
 as were judged re- 
 quisite. 
 
 There are also in 
 the Hall an ancient 
 treasure - chest of 
 Flemish workmanship, 
 with a most elaborate 
 lock, a ballot-bo.x or 
 cadet, which was once n,,, ,,,, n , ; , 
 
 used for elections, and 
 
 a MS. copy of the Gospels, on which the officers of the Company are 
 still sworn. ^ 
 
 TIbe Scriv>eners. ■ 
 
 Jfeing 
 
 This fellowship was originally known and described as The Frater- 
 nity or Mistery of the Scriveners or Writers of the Court Letter of the 
 
 ' An interesting account of this Gild, by Mr. J. W. Sherwell, the Clerk, 8vo, 1889, 
 has been lent to us by that gentleman. There appeared in 1861 a pamphlet by Mr. 
 1. B. Burton, "Twenty-five Years a Liveryman of the Company of Saddlers," en- 
 titled : The Saddlers^ Company, and the Rights of the Livery. Being An Address 
 to the Livery of London. It deals with the question of the absorption of executive 
 authority by the Court . 
 
 - There is no material for a history of this Company beyond the parliamentary 
 returns, the Ca.f6' printed in 1749, and casual or indirect references. All the ancient 
 papers, except the Minute Book, were lost in 1666.
 
 6 14 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 City of London, and is supposed at one time to have been associated 
 with the Limners, who constituted the germ of the Stationers' Com- 
 pany. As early as 1357 we find its members exempted, under their 
 original designation of Writers of Court-hand and text-letters, from 
 serving on juries or inquisitions, and only required to attend at Guild- 
 hall if summoned on special business. They were then plainly an 
 organized and respectable Union or Gild, with some system of internal 
 management. They obtained their bye-laws in 1373-4, and a rather 
 lengthy preamble recites the need and demand for great vigilance in 
 preventing any but skilled men from following the craft, or receiving 
 work. They expressly laid down the rule, that every Scrivener should 
 set his name to the deeds, which he copied. 
 
 Here we discover an unusually early notice of a Livery and of the rules 
 to be observed in purchasing it. Every sworn brother was bound to 
 provide a suit against Whitsuntide, to pay a noble of gold in advance 
 at the beginning of Lent, and the rest as soon after delivery of the 
 cloth as possible ; but the vesture seems to have been renewed only 
 every two years, and to have been principally worn on the Feast of 
 Pentecost. 
 
 Other Ordinances were passed by the Court of Aldermen in 1390 and 
 1440. They related to apprenticeship, the examination of all craftsmen 
 keeping shop, to ascertain their fitness for making evidences and muni- 
 ments, to the necessity of a licence from the Wardens, before any could 
 be enfranchised, and to the restriction of all freemen to a single shop. 
 The Craft put forth additional bye-laws in 1497 and 1557, by the former 
 of which apprentices were required to satisfy the Wardens as to their 
 " congruity of grammar " ; and there is the noticeable circumstance 
 that at this period the meetings were held at the mansion or dwelling- 
 house of one of the Wardens, and that the minutes were entered in a 
 book called the Common Paper. 
 
 The Scriveners of London enjoyed a large and growing share of 
 consideration from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, or in other 
 words, during the time when they represented a calling rendered lucra- 
 tive by the extensive demand and the special skill required, and devel- 
 oped by degrees into a machinery for conveyancing and finance. A 
 succession of able and enterprising men imparted to the pursuit in the 
 course of time an almost entirely new character. 
 
 The growth of the avocation naturally opened the way to occasional 
 cases of fraud and crime. In 1367, Robert de Edensore, Scrivener, was 
 put in the pillory for forging a deed of entail ; in 1376, William Grendon 
 called Crcdelle, Scrivener, was imprisoned for making false indentures of 
 apprenticeship ; and, once more, in 1391 a member of the Gild was
 
 THE SCRIVENERS. 615 
 
 pilloried for forging title-deeds. It was a very gross case, and the punish- 
 ment seems disproportionately light. The profession was even now 
 numerous, and held within its ranks various grades and types, of which 
 the lower were already prepared to lend themselves to any transaction 
 whatever. 
 
 In 1473, we come across Clifford the Scrivener as a person mixed up 
 with a law-case between the Goldsmiths and another party, and 6s. Sd. 
 was paid for the search of his books to inspect a deed relevant to the 
 case. This person figures in many transactions about the same period ; 
 and it was a time when his profession was beginning to acquire influence 
 and rank. Four years earlier (1469) the Gild, of which he was a 
 member, found twcntj- soldiers to bear a part in guarding the City 
 Gates. It was a fairl)- large proportion for an unincorporated body. 
 
 A curious Star Chamber case in 35 Elizabeth proves that this calling 
 was not always proof against the attractions of political notoriety. 
 Short, a Scrivener, was in that year sentenced to the pillory, imprison- 
 ment, and exile for having published a seditious libel, warning the Flem- 
 ings and Frenchmen resident in London to depart, lest the apprentices and 
 craftsmen should take their lives from jealousy of their interference w-ith 
 native labour. But it was under the Stuart n'j^iwc, that the highest point 
 of power and prominence was attained ; and on the 28th January, 161 7, 
 the charter was obtained, constituting the Craft one body corporate and 
 politic under the name of The Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the 
 Society of Scriveners of the City of London, with perpetual succession, 
 the right of survey and oversight within the Cities of London and West- 
 minster and suburbs thereof, the Borough of Southwark, the precinct of 
 St. Catherine by the Tower, and all other places within three miles' 
 radius, and the power and obligation to secure a Common Hall or 
 Council-house. 
 
 This is the only grant now in the hands of the Company, that of 
 James II. having been apparently lost or destroyed. But the latter was 
 revoked by the often-cited Act of William and Mary. 
 
 The government consists, in conformity with the charter of 16 17, of a 
 Master, two Wardens, and twenty-four Assistants. The Master and 
 Wardens are annually elected on the Tuesday next after the Feast of 
 St. James, or at any other more convenient time. The Company usually 
 dines together on Lord Mayor's Day. 
 
 The bye-laws of 1374 and 1440 were virtually repealed by others 
 successively made, and approved by the Judges in 1619 and 1635. In 
 those of 1635 persons chosen Assistants, and fined for renouncing, were 
 still liable to act as Stewards, under a penalty of 10/. ; but for the 
 stewardship the whole commonalty was eligible.
 
 6l6 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 In the reign of James I. the Scriveners appear to have been in a 
 fairly prosperous condition, as (in association with the Ironmongers; 
 they subscribed to the Irish project of James 570/., an amount ex- 
 ceeding that found by the Carpenters, Coopers, Cordwainers, Barbers, 
 and other bodies, which subsequently far eclipsed them in eminence 
 and wealth. 
 
 Under 1626, Stow notices the bequest by Nichlas Reive, Scrivener of 
 Cornhill, to the use of the poor of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, of a sum of 
 406/. Ss., the proceeds of which, invested in lands at Stratford-at-Bow, 
 were in 1633 25/. a year. 
 
 Three years later, out of corporate money, 21/. were applied to a 
 municipal assessment for defraying the expenses of the City on account 
 of the coronation of Charles I. 
 
 The business of the early Scrivener was not confined to writing and 
 conveyancing ; but the profession gradually included the duties of a 
 banker and an agent. Through their original 
 vocation, which brought them into necessary contact 
 with persons of property, they became the factors 
 for those, who had money to invest or estates to 
 deposit as security for pecuniary advances. 
 
 In achieving success, where great tact and discre- 
 tion were indispensable, comparatively few of course 
 rose beyond a moderate height. But in the time of 
 James I. one Abbot monopolized a large share of 
 this employment, so readily susceptible of becoming 
 lucrative under favourable conditions, and at his death left his fortune 
 and interest to his nephew, afterward the celebrated Sir Robert Clayton, 
 and one Morris, of whom the latter, having no issue, bequeathed his share 
 to his partner. 
 
 Clayton inhabited a noble brick mansion in Old Jewry, where Evelyn 
 was frequently his guest. The Diarist describes the cedar dining-room, 
 painted by Streeter with the History of the Giants' War, and alludes 
 more than once to the vast wealth and princely hospitality of Clayton, 
 who had among his clients and visitors all the leading personages in the 
 kingdom, from the royal family downward. He was Sheriff in 1672 and 
 Mayor in 1679, and served both offices with unsurpassed liberality and 
 magnificence ; he was at this period a member of the Drapers' Company, 
 to which he had translated himself on his accession to the mayoralty. 
 Evelyn notes going to his house, while he was Mayor, with the Countess 
 of Sunderland, and subsequently dining at his table with the Earl of 
 Ossory on a private day ; " but the feast and entertainment," he says, 
 " might have become a king." He purchased at Marden, near Godstone, 
 
 OLD ARMS.
 
 THE SCRIVENERS. 6lJ 
 
 of the Evelyns a tract of land, which he changed at cnorniDUs cost from 
 a barren warren into a splendid estate, whither some of the furniture 
 and decorations from the Old Jewry were subsequently removed by the 
 fa mil)'. 
 
 But the evolution of the normal Scrivener, though striking, from a 
 mere court-letter-writer into a conveyancer and financial agent, never 
 attained in a second instance the proportions which it fortuitously 
 assumed in the case of Clayton, who combined great capacity with un- 
 rivalled opportunities. 
 
 Clayton was in fact during the whole of his earlier life a Scrivener 
 by calling and freedom, but in reality a banker and financier on the 
 largest scale, and, as we have stated, a Draper by transfer. At Drapers'' 
 Hall there is a fine portrait of him by Kneller in his official robes, with 
 the mace lying on a table by him. 
 
 The provincial Scrivener, especially where he was established in a 
 prominent and bus}' centre, soon grew into lucrative practice, and be- 
 came a member, like his London contemporary, of a Livery Gild, or at 
 least of a religious and social Brotherhood. In the 15th century, the 
 Scriveners of York bore their part in the series of miracle pla}'s exhibited 
 in that city ; the subject selected by them was the Incredulity of St. 
 Thomas. 
 
 One employment of the Scrivener, though possibly confined to juniors, 
 was superseded by the progress of education ; it was that of making out 
 or certifying accounts, where the transaction involved matter of record ; 
 and it is also shown by an entry in the Vintners' Books under 1507, that 
 the members of this craft were the persons who translated into English, 
 for the information and use of those concerned, charters and other docu- 
 ments originally written in other languages. 
 
 The modern Scrivener has returned to the lines, which originalh' 
 limited his employment and competence. He does not fulfil any duties 
 outside those of a notary and writer ; and the law-stationers frequently 
 undertake the latter branch of the profession. The outlets, which a 
 wholly different distribution of commercial industry lent to the more 
 enterprising members of this calling, no longer e.Kist. 
 
 The decline in the affairs of the Company probably commenced 
 during the lifetime of Sir Robert Clayton, who had, as we know, 
 severed his connection with it some time before his death. In 1703 
 the Hall in Noble Street, acquired in 1631 (with Other property) 
 for 810/., was sold to the Coach and Coach Harness Makers under cir- 
 cumstances already explained. An unsuccessful attempt was made to 
 procure an Act of Parliament compelling all conveyancers to take up 
 the freedom. 
 
 C.C. 78
 
 6l8 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 From the rent of the remaining estate in Noble Street/ dividends 
 ■on savings, and internal income, combined with frugal expenditure, the 
 Scriveners succeed, however, in maintaining their ground, and increasing 
 their capital out of surplus income compatibly with occasional dona- 
 tions to charities ; and had it not been for their failure to sustain their 
 pretensions in regard to the Irish property, their financial position at 
 the present time would have been considerably stronger. 
 
 It appears from some evidence given in May, 1883, by the Clerk to 
 the Company before the Royal Commission, that so far back, as January 
 10, 1626, this Gild believed that in acquiring by purchase out of its own 
 funds an allotment from the Skinners of their Irish estate, they had be- 
 come the absolute owners of the fee, and formed the expectation that 
 from the accruing profits they would be enabled to erect a Hall and 
 carry out other works and repairs. A member of the Court of Assist- 
 ants at this time was the father of Milton, and his signature is among 
 those appended to a resolution to the said effect. 
 
 Thus the same misunderstanding, which arose between the Skinners 
 and their other partners in this business, existed equally here ; but the 
 present Company was in less capable hands, and did not act with the 
 same firmness. If the Scriveners had succeeded in their pretensions, 
 their claim against the tenant-in-chief would have amounted by analogy 
 to nearly 20,000/. On the other hand, they have profited by the excel- 
 lent management of the Skinners, and derive a very handsome yearly 
 return for their original outlay. 
 
 For the seven years, ending in August, 1830, the Company returned 
 its average annual income at 429/. to the Royal Commission of 1834 ; 
 but through investment from time to time of surplus internal income 
 and the rise in the value of the Irish estate, in which it is interested, the 
 receipts shew a considerable advance, although since 1874 there has 
 been a decline from the luaxiimtm. 
 
 The Livery, which affords a certain criterion of the standing of these 
 bodies, and which here was prescriptive and unlimited, has fluctuated at 
 •different periods. In 1699 't ^^'^s 45; in 1724, n\ in 1739, 53; in 1882, 
 22 ; and in 1892, 50. In the present case, the numbers are kept up by the 
 provision of the Act 41 George III. cap. 79, s. 13, requiring every notary 
 
 ' Nos. 12, 13, 14, and 15. The original deed of conveyance has not survived ; but 
 in a lease of 1864 the property is specified as " All those four messuages or tenements 
 situate and being in Noble Street in the parish of St. Mary Steyning, in the City of 
 London, fronting towards the west on the said street, two of which said messuages or 
 tenements are situate on the north side and two on the south side of the great gateway 
 or entry leading out of Noble Street aforesaid to Coachmakers' Hall, and one of which 
 said messuages or tenements extends over the said gateway."
 
 THE SHIPWRIGHTS. 
 
 619 
 
 public within the City and its Liberties to belong to the Company. 
 1739 the Livery fine was 5/. ; in 1882, 15/. 2s. ; in 1892, 15/. 15^. 
 
 In 
 
 LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Case of the Free Scriveners of London ; Set forth in A Report from a Com- 
 mittee of the Court of Assist.-ints of the Company of Scriveners, London : To 
 the Master, Wardens, and .Assistants of the Company. At their Court holden the 
 23rd Day of June, 1748. 4to, 1749. 
 
 Reprinted in Parli.'imentary Return of 1884, Scriveners' Company, Appendix A. 
 
 The Incredulity of St. Thomas : One of the series of miracle-plays, acted by the 
 Scriveners of York. Printed froin the original MS (fifteenth century) in Croft's 
 Exccrptii Antigua, 1797, by Collier, in the Camden Miscellany, vol. iv., and in 
 the collective edition of the Plays. 
 
 Ubc Sl.npwrujbts. 
 
 Our earliest information respecting this Company reaches us in the 
 shape of a reference to Ordinances devised for the government of the 
 Gild as an unchartered body in 1428, 1456, and 14S3. The Shipwrights 
 who. from the very nature of their Craft, bespeak themselves of great 
 antiquity, appear at the outset to have been a Brotherhood of SS. Simon 
 and Jude, established at the river side in Southwark or Bermondsey ; 
 and in 1661 it claimed an existence of four centuries. The Ordinances 
 rehearse that it is not unknown to all the brethren and sisters that 
 
 ' See A Short Account of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights. By Reginald 
 R. Sharpe, B.C.L. 410, 1S76.
 
 620 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 tlic Fraternity of SS. Simon and Jude hath been holden in London by 
 the Craft of Shipwrights time out of mind ; they chiefly deal with 
 apprenticeship and other points of internal government ; but they also 
 contain an injunction to members to view and search that the brethren 
 of that Fraternity do use in their said trades good and seasonable timber, 
 and do their work workmanlike as appertaineth. 
 
 In 142S we find that Robert Proufote and John James were sworn 
 Masters of the Mistery. At this time and long after, the religious side 
 was very prominent ; and in the Company's Repertory or Minute-Book, 
 commencing with 1456, the opening passage or entry is : " The yeare of 
 thincarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ One thousand fower hundred 
 fiftie and six, and the yere of Kinge Henrie the sixt after the conquest 
 the five and thirteth is founded and ordeyned by the artificers of Ship- 
 wrights in the Citie of London a fraternitie in the worshipp of Saint 
 Symon and Jude, and the feaste of the same yearelie to be solempnized 
 by the same artificers perpetuallie through the grace of God and helpe 
 of devotion of Christen people to be kept and augmented and there- 
 uppon diverse Articles appointed as followeth hereafter." 
 
 We only know, or at least infer, that bye-laws were framed in 35 Henry 
 VI. from an allusion to them in a petition from the Company in or about 
 1613 to the Corporation. There mention occurs of " certen ordynaunces 
 instituted for the good government of the said Guilde in the xxxvth 
 }-ere of the reigne of King Henry the sixt [extant in Guildhall] " ; but 
 nothing further is ascertainable of such a code. Like other muniments 
 of the Company, it may occur in some unexpected manner, or it may 
 have been lost in the Fire of 1666. 
 
 The Association obtained a charter,' 23 April, 1605, 3 James I. under 
 the title of the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Art or 
 Mistery of Shipwrights, London. The governing body seems to have 
 originally consisted of a Master, two Wardens, and sixteen Assistants, 
 without a Livery. The Court has comprised since 1777 a Master, four 
 Wardens, and about twenty-five Assistants. In 1S30 the Livery was 
 extended to 200 ; and in 1892, according to Whitaker, it numbered 
 245. The power of search, presumably conferred by the instrument of 
 1605, was exercised at least down to 1746. 
 
 A grant of arms was made to the Shipwrights by Camden Clarencieux 
 in 1605, almost concurrently with the charter, and is at present in the 
 Company's possession. It had been long mislaid, and was at last dis- 
 
 ' This is now in the Record Ofifice. In the Accounts for 1661 are charges paid for 
 searching for it in the Tower and at the Rolls ; but it was not recovered till 1782. 
 See Sharpe, pp. 7, 17.
 
 THE SHIPWRIGHTS. 621 
 
 covered (Colonel Sewell, Clerk to the Company, informs us) by accident 
 in the hands of children in a nursery. But they had luckily not had 
 time to exercise their ingenuit\- upon it ; and 
 it is in perfect preservation. 
 
 It happened, a few years after the incor- 
 poration that the King, with that remarkable 
 alacrit}' for acceding to any proposal involving 
 a pecuniary advantage, which he and his son 
 equally displayed, accorded a charter (May 6, 
 1612)' to the foreign shipwrights, who were 
 located in the same neighbourhood, and that 
 the latter attempted, by virtue of the power 
 
 ARMS, 1739. 
 
 alleged to vest in them thereb}% to levy dues 
 
 on the older Fraternity. The difficulty and friction lasted from 161 3 to 
 1683 in spite of decisions by the Court of Aldermen, the Lords of the 
 Council, and the Admiralty in favour of the present Company ; and 
 one result appears to have been, that the corporate funds were during 
 nearly the whole of this lengthened interval at a very low ebb 
 
 Nevertheless in 1660 the Gild found 10/. y. 6d. toward the cost of 
 celebrating the coronation of Charles II. by the civic authorities. 
 
 It appears that it was subsequently- to 1605, that the Shipwrights 
 migrated from the Surrey side,^ where they lay not very far from the 
 foreign settlement at Rotherhithe, to the Middlesex shore at a point 
 near Ratcliffe St. Mary ; for the report of the Select Committee ap- 
 pointed to inquire about 161 5 into the question in dispute between the 
 Free and Foreign bodies, explicitl)- states that the former had always 
 preserved their freedom of the City, even after they were compelled to 
 leave their yards adjoining the River Thames, and to cross the River, 
 without the City's Liberties, to Ratcliffe. 
 
 The practical conclusion of the attempt of the Foreign Shipwrights to 
 override the others was their failure, in 1683, to obtain a new charter 
 with enlarged powers. 
 
 The City did its part toward the support of the pretensions of the 
 Company in more than one way. In 1620, it passed a set of Ordinances 
 for the more effectual management of the affairs of the mistery. As early 
 as 163 1, it permitted it to admit twelve members by redemption, and in 
 1661 as man}' more. It gave it a Livery (1782), and enlarged it (1830) 
 from 100 to 200 with a fine of 21/. It passed (1808) an Act obliging all 
 
 ' Now in the Record Office. 
 
 - The Shipwrights may have removed farther away, as the population within the 
 Liberties increased, for the same reason that the Ironmongers, Founders, and other 
 noisy or troublesome businesses established themselves on the outslcirts of the City.
 
 62 2 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 persons engaged in the trade to become freemen. Yet the Shipwrights 
 can never be said to have possessed a substantial constitution ; and they 
 survive at the present moment mainly by the artificial scale of charges, 
 which they impose upon members, the fee for coming on the Court being 
 50/., and that for serving as Master or Warden, 36/. 155. The freedom 
 by redemption costs 9/. ^s. 
 
 In 1S82 the freedom was said to number 400 ; and a fair proportion of 
 the members of this division belonged to the trade, as those of the 
 Livery and Executive did to the naval profession or the Admiralty 
 Department. The Shipwrights' Company's Competitive Exhibition of 
 1877 was doubtless a judicious movement, and repaid the outlay by 
 bringing the promoters into more general public notice. 
 
 The funded property of the Company in 1834 was returned at 3,400/., 
 and in 18S3 at 4,384/.' The remainder of the income is derived from 
 internal sources ; nor is there any apparent clue to the proceeds of the 
 Hall, which used to be near Ratcliff Cross. There is no real estate ; nor 
 is there the usual licence in mortmain under the charter. During the 
 years 1876-8 the expenditure shewed a sudden inflation, but in 1879 
 began again to decline, leaving at the same time a very reduced amount 
 to carry over. 
 
 Stow does not specify the Hall, which Maitland (1739) apprises us 
 was once near Ratcliff ; but the former writer observes : " The first 
 building at Radcliffe in my youth (not to be forgotten) was a faire Free 
 Schoole, and Almes-houses. . . . But of late yeeres, Ship-wrights, 
 and (for the most part) other Marine men, have builded many large and 
 strong houses for themselves, and smaller for Saylers, . . ." 
 
 The Shipwrights appear at one period to have supplied barges to the 
 Companies on festive or ceremonial occasions. In the Carpenters' 
 Accounts under 1547 there is the item : " Paid to Moule the Shipwright 
 for a barge to Westminster . . . xiiijj-." 
 
 Among the members of the Company may be noted the celebrated 
 George Whitehead, who subscribed to the substance of the declaration 
 on admittance, i/ie oatli excepted, and Thomas Ward, Citizen and Ship- 
 wright, Sheriff in 1829. 
 
 The Shipwrights possess a chest for their muniments somewhat similar 
 to that belonging to the Founders, and figured at p. 501. It is described 
 in 1696 as in the hands of the Wardens, and in 1728 as having four 
 keys, of which two have been since lost. It is probably less ancient 
 than the Founders' chest ; but a receptacle of the same character existed 
 as far back as 1620, as it is named in the Ordinances of that date. 
 
 ' Whitaker for 1892 returns the income as S30/.
 
 THE SPECTACLE-MAKERS. 
 
 -.•> 
 
 Ubc Spcctaclc=mal?cr5. 
 
 ARMS, 1739. 
 
 PKESENT ARMS. 
 
 The antecedents of the present Company are admittedly obscure and 
 scanty. The charter dates from 1629, and gave as the governing body 
 a Master, two Wardens, and eight Assistants, a constitution which 
 betrays at that time an unimportant industry and union. By an Act of 
 Common Council, July i, 1658, all persons in the trade were required 
 to take up the freedom. A Livery was granted in 1809, and is at 
 present limited to 400. By a resolution of the Court, March 26, 1868, 
 a member of the Livery might be elected to the office of Renter 
 Warden, when it should happen that all the members of the Court had 
 already served. The qualification for belonging to the governing body 
 is that the candidate shall be a Liveryman. 
 
 The Spectacle-makers are one of the most numerous of the City 
 Companies. In 1882, there were 1,300 on the Freedom and 400 on the 
 Livery. In 1892 the latter was returned at 356, and the income at the 
 interest on 2,100/. corporate property, and 1166/. trust, estate. Of the 
 last, 40/. a year arise from 1,000/. 4 per cent, railway stock left by Sir 
 William Tite in 1863. The bulk of the means of expenditure is there- 
 fore current internal revenue. In 1834 the average annual receipts were 
 stated to be 364/. ; in 1870, the figures were 859/. 
 
 The Company is one of those which mainly depend on the modern 
 movement, on the part of persons wholly unconnected with the trade, 
 for joining a Society, which confers social and municipal advantages ; 
 and its financial welfare consequently hangs on the continuance of such 
 a taste or demand. 
 
 .Although those connected with the Gild do not appear to have any 
 information throwing light on its earlier history, and the registers prior 
 to 1666 are no longer in existence, it is obvious that from a very remote 
 period the calling was more or less extensivel)- pursued. In 1644, as
 
 624 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 we see from a notice annexed, some sort of magnifying lens was 
 introduced. 
 
 In Newbery's Dives Pragiiiatiais, 1563, we find the Spectacle-makers 
 recited among the other traders, who would be obliged to resort to a 
 supposed universal provider of wares : 
 
 " Al Spectacle makers, for dim sighted eyes." 
 And further on he speaks of " spectacles made of fine Burral [crystal] 
 glass." But in the biography of Carlo Zeno, an illustrious Venetian 
 statesman and hero, who died at the age of 84 in 141 8, we are expressK- 
 informed that he never wore artificial aids to his sight ; which is another 
 way of saying that such appliances were then in ordinary use in Italy. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE. 
 A New Invention ; Or A Paire of Cristall Spectacles, By helpe whereof may be read 
 so small a print that what twenty sheetes of paper will hardly contain shall be 
 discover'd in one. 4to, 1644. 
 With an engraving of a Multiplying glass or lens in the centre of which is an eye. 
 
 The Second Part of the Spectacles. 4to, 1644. 
 
 Ube Stationers. 
 
 The Fellowship of Text-Writers, which is traceable back to the 
 middle of the fourteenth century, and which originally confined its 
 duties to the preparation of deeds, indentures, and other legal documents, 
 is believed to have gradually formed itself into two branches, which for 
 some length of time continued under one government. Of these one 
 adhered to its primary calling and province, while the other engaged in 
 the writing, binding, and selling of books. The former acquired the 
 
 ' We have to acknowledge ourselves much indebted, in drawing up the present 
 account, to a pamphlet by Mr. C. R. Rivington, Clerk to the Company, entitled : 
 The Records of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, 8vo, 1883, for facts and sugges- 
 tions used in this account of one of the most interesting of the Gilds of London. Mr. 
 Rivington, at the same time, placed at our disposal several of the illustrations which 
 accompany the text.
 
 THE STATIONERS. 625 
 
 designation of Scriveners, the latter of Stationers. The Scrivener at the 
 outset probably depended on the Stationer, who had better opportunities 
 of procuring commissions, for his custom ; and the prima staiiivia of the 
 present interesting Association may be referred to their employment of 
 the Stations at the Crosses in Chcapside, whither they or their repre- 
 sentatives resorted, during certain hours of the day, from their quarters 
 thereabout. 
 
 These Stations soon became objects of commercial competition. So 
 early as 1379 a lease of them was granted to eleven women, therein 
 named, by the Mayor and Aldermen at a yearly rent of i y. 4d., and 
 one of those at the Broken Cross in St. Paul's Churchyard to seven 
 others, of whom some paid ioj. and others 6s. Sd. a year. These were 
 dealers in small wares. 
 
 It further appears that the Corporation gave the rents to their 
 Common Huntsman, John Charney, during pleasure, to an amount not 
 exceeding 10/. yearly. 
 
 The first clear manifestation of a branch of Text- Writers, who were 
 not Scriveners in the usually accepted sense, is discovered in 1403, when 
 the Corporation acceded to a certain Ordinance " of the Writers of Text- 
 Letter, Limners, and others, who bind and sell books," whereby two 
 Wardens were appointed to oversee t/ie said trades, one representing 
 the Limners, the other the Text- Writers ; whence we gather that the 
 entire industry in all its departments was so far under the same control. 
 From many indications, however, the Scriveners and Stationers must 
 be held to have severed their constitutional alliance long before they 
 became corporate bodies, and while, from the gradual multiplication of 
 legal forms, the Scrivener grew at first the more flourishing and affluent 
 craft, both in their turn acquired independent prominence and wealth.' 
 
 The term Limner itself may be thought to embrace, not elaborate 
 pictorial design, but those ornamental embellish- 
 ments which often accompany ancient records and 
 documents in the shape of initial letters and flori- 
 ated or other decorative borders. 
 
 Prior to its incorporation, the present Company 
 had existed during upward of a century and a half 
 as a Fraternity, whose functions and scope are in- 
 volved in acknowledged obscurity. At what pre- 
 cise period the Stationers, like the Apothecaries' 
 Society, developed into printers holding a common stock, or by what 
 
 ' Ultimately tlie Stationers gained and preserved an ascendency, because the most 
 lucrative features in the Scriveners' earlier business — conveyancing and financing — 
 passed away from them. 
 
 c.c. 79 
 
 (iLIi ARMS.
 
 626 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 successive stages that process was accomplished from a rudimentary 
 life, which limited itself to the sale of literary and other cognate wares 
 at stations (in Cheapside and the vicinity) answering to the cohimncB of 
 the Romans, we are equally ill-informed. The miscellaneous objects 
 which the primitive Stationer sold, were not much more perishable and 
 fugitive than the popular productions which were issued at one or two 
 pence, and cast away after persual. It is a comparatively recent dis- 
 covery, that even at Oxford as early as 1520 ballads and other trifles 
 were procurable at such marts as that of John Dome, the inventory of 
 whose stock survives. 
 
 We infer that the original usage, when the Stationer rose to a higher 
 grade, was for each member of the Brotherhood to subscribe to the 
 general fund, and for such work as was obtained to be apportioned 
 among them, the profit being divisible in proportion, save as much as 
 was deemed necessary to defray expenses of management and to support 
 a common box. 
 
 But, even after the organization of the Company in 1556, the old 
 system continued, and constituted a second collateral union, namely, the 
 Partners in the Stock, which is now, and has long been, an exclusively 
 English one. 
 
 "Formerly," observes Mr. Rivington in 1882, "there were several 
 stocks — there was a Latin stock, an Irish stock, a ballad stock, and a 
 Bible stock. About 1601 the Companj- obtained a grant from the 
 Crown giving them the exclusive right of printing certain publications, 
 and that was amalgamated with the English stock." In 1882, this had 
 a capital of between 41,000/. and 42,000/., which was held among 306 
 members of the Company. 
 
 " The capital," Mr. Rivington continues, " is divided into certain 
 shares, which are held just in the same way as the shares of ordinary 
 Companies, and the profits of the stock and property belonging to the 
 stock arc appropriated thus : — a certain amount is distributed among 
 the poor of the Company (it used to be 100/. a year, but now [1882] it 
 is 400/. a year), and after paying that the nett profit is divided . . . 
 each half year. The members of the Company under the bye-laws 
 have a power of disposing of the shares to their widows, but to no 
 other persons." 
 
 The antiquit}^ of the Stationers as a Gild or Brotherhood has been 
 referred back to 1403 ; Wynkyn de Worde is supposed to have been a 
 member at a later point in the same century ; and there is a tradition, 
 that the custom of registering copies commenced some time prior to the 
 incorporation in 1556. 
 
 But the Stationers do not present themselves in many of the official
 
 THE STATIONERS. 627 
 
 returns, which furnish in an indirect manner a clue to the progress and 
 standing of these bodies at various and successive periods. Already, 
 however, in 1469 they were sufficiently affluent to defray the cost of 
 equipping two-and-twenty guards for the City gates. In 1501-2 they 
 ranked as the . fifty-third Company or Association, but are noted as 
 having no Livery. In 15 15, when the precedence is arranged by the 
 City, they arc not mentioned. 
 
 The motive for viewing favourably the petition for a charter in this 
 case was the aim of the Government of Philip and Mary at the establish- 
 ment of a restraining power or censorship over the liberty of the press, 
 and the preamble of the grant ' runs thus :— " Know ye, that we, con- 
 sidering and manifestly perceiving that certain seditious and heretical 
 books, rhymes, and treatises are daily published and printed by divers 
 scandalous, malicious, schismatical, and heretical persons, not only 
 moving our subjects and lieges to sedition and disobedience against us, 
 our Crown and liberty, but also to renew and move very great and 
 detestable heresies against the faith and sound doctrine of Holy Mother 
 
 Church, and wishing to provide a suitable remedy in this behalf " 
 
 It was under these circumstances that the Gild was erected into a 
 corporation under the title of The Master and Keepers, or Wardens and 
 Commonalty of the Mistery or Art of a Stationer of the City of London. 
 Thomas Dockwray was the first Master, and John Cawood, royal printer, 
 and Henry Cooke the first Wardens. 
 
 As a matter of course, the power of search and seizure was a 
 prominent feature in this concession, of which the cost to the grantees 
 was somewhat over 20/., an item of 9.^. being incurred in consequence of 
 the first draft submitted being rejected or altered. 
 
 On the loth November, 1559, Queen Elizabeth confirmed the charter. 
 It was temporarily held in abeyance by Quo Warranto in 1663 and 1684,. 
 but ultiniately restored by the Act of 1690. The writ of 1663, however, 
 was not so much a measure of hostility in the ordinary sense and direc- 
 tion, as the result of a belief that the Company was not sufficiently vigi- 
 lant and strict in its capacity as a curb on the press, and connived at 
 the publication of inflammatory or scurrilous literature. 
 
 The Ordinances date from the epoch of incorporation, but exist only 
 at present in the form of printed pamphlets or books, of which there 
 were issues in 167S, 1682, and 1741. There were various decrees of the 
 Court of Star Chamber in support of the executive and penal jurisdic- 
 tion of the Stationers ; and many Acts of Parliament, besides that of 
 
 ' The original instrument was lost in the Fire of 1666 ; but the Company has a- 
 transcript.
 
 -628 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 2 William and Mary just-named, bear upon the matters, whereof they 
 took cognizance. 
 
 Perhaps one of the earliest distinct glimpses of the resources of the 
 newly-incorporated body is that due to a demand from the Lord Mayor 
 in 1563 for a return of the Company's lands, plate, jewels, and stock 
 of money, doubtless with a view to an assessment ; and the answer was 
 that they had nothing of the kind, only a house with effects for necessary 
 use, when they met together. 
 
 The Stationers were harassed and injured, in common with other 
 Associations, by the system of granting patents to persons who were not 
 freemen for a valuable consideration paid to the Crown or to some one 
 in power. About 1620 they found their existing privileges as regarded 
 the sole right to print certain matters invaded and challenged by the 
 monopoly created in favour of three individuals, of whom one was an 
 alien. This syndicate did not actually print, but assigned the work to 
 others at a price. From such evidence as is within reach, this particular 
 abuse does not seem to have been of long duration. 
 
 During the first half of the seventeenth century, the position of the 
 Company was well maintained in spite of all political disturbances and 
 requisitions. In returns of 1602-3, 1603-4, and 1629, it manifested 
 itself capable of subscribing liberally toward public objects, where the 
 party assessed had no option but to pay. The Civil War, however, 
 seems to have weakened the corporate resources, and in 1643 the stock 
 of plate was sold to meet liabilities amounting to about 1,500/. 
 
 The administrative system is conformable with the charters. But the 
 Renter Wardens used to be required, in addition to their normal func- 
 tions, to discharge the office of stewards, and to become responsible for 
 the cost of a dinner — an obligation which was often resisted. In the 
 old days it was customary to crown the Master and Wardens with 
 garlands in the same manner as the Grocers, Fishmongers, and Leather- 
 sellers ; and each Master, on the expiration of his term of office, pre- 
 sented a piece of plate of the weight of 14 ozs. at least. 
 
 The fines for the Livery and Court are 70/. and 80/. respectively. 
 Admission to the Freedom by patrimony costs 5/. ; by redemption, 30/. 
 But all freemen must belong to the Mistery. In 1882, 445 freemen 
 were on the books. In 1629 the Livery was returned as 226, in 1724-5 
 as 214, in 1882 as 312, and in 1892 as 282. The late Mr. W. H. 
 Smith, M.P., was an honorary liveryman. About lOO apprentices are 
 annually enrolled at the Hall. The choice of the Saturday after St. 
 Peter's Day for elections may have arisen from the early association of 
 the Gild with Peter College. 
 
 We have mentioned that in the municipal order of 15 15, prescribing
 
 629
 
 630 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 the sequence of the Gilds, the Stationers are absent ; but in 1561 they 
 were made the thirty-seventh in priority, and received a Livery for the 
 first time, the colours being scarlet and brown-blue. 
 
 Unusual punctilio used to be observed in regard to the use of the 
 livery on all Court days and other occasions of ceremony. In 15S2 the 
 Court of Common Council prohibited the embellishment of livery 
 gowns in general with embroidery and lace ; in 1635, the Assistants 
 and Livery having appeared in public at the Hall and elsewhere upon 
 solemn anniversaries or meeting-days in falling bands, slashed doublets, 
 and other indecent apparel not suitable to the habit of a citizen, the 
 Assistants were ordered in future to attend in ruff bands, and the Livery 
 were enjoined not to wear falling bands or other unseemly raiment, 
 on pain of forfeiting lu/., either when they presented themselves at the 
 Hall, or followed a brother to the grave. Nay, even so late as 18 19, the 
 Court of Aldermen prescribed, that livery gowns should be decently 
 faced with fur. 
 
 The contention as to precedence was not limited to ordinary proces- 
 sions and the distribution of the guests at banquets. It extended to the 
 stands erected in Cheapside and other thoroughfares to view or honour 
 the passage of royal personages to and from the City, and even to the 
 Companies' barges on the river. In 1738 the Court of Aldermen decided 
 that the barge of the Company to which the Senior Sheriff belonged 
 should precede that of the Company of the Junior one ; but in 1761 the 
 Stationers were permitted to take the lead on the river by virtue of being 
 the youngest possessor of a barge. They had had theirs since 1679 ; 
 and it used to be considered the handsomest of the whole series. ' 
 
 The income is derived from the following sources : — 
 
 1. Dividends on Government Annuities and Metropolitan Board of Works Consols. 
 
 2. Rents from freehold and leasehold property. 
 
 3. Gifts made to the Company under wills. 
 
 4. Quarterages, fines, and fees. 
 
 5. Voluntary contribution toward the expenses by the parners in the English stock. 
 
 In 1833 the receipts were officially given as 2,542/., and the 
 expenditure as 195 1/. In 1892 the revenue had increased to 4,700/., 
 1,600/. in trust inclusive. The advance therefore was inconsiderable, as 
 the figures for the earlier year applied only to the corporate estate. 
 About 1873 a house in Darkhouse Lane, Billingsgate, required for the 
 enlargement of the market, was bought by the Corporation for 3,655/. ; 
 it had been a bequest to the Stationers in 1575 by Jane Kevall, and 
 
 ' It has long been sold, and is now the club boat on the Isis at O.xford. The cost 
 of these vessels was very heavy. In 1663 the Coopers laid out 154/. 10s. on theirs.
 
 stationers' hall in 1670. 
 
 stationers' hall in 1842. 
 
 631
 
 aidiJH 
 
 632
 
 .w I 'III' I'll " 
 
 44^ 
 
 c.c. 
 
 633 
 
 80
 
 ■634 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 was subject to an annual payment of 5/. to the parish of St. Mary-at- 
 Hill. In the funded property is included the purchase-money by the 
 Skinners of the Stationers' sub-share in the Irish Plantation. 
 
 The Skinners, as one of the twelve Great Companies, had one of the 
 shares of the Irish property allotted to them at the proportionate cost 
 of 5,000/. But by way of lightening the burden, they allowed three of 
 the Minor Companies, the Stationers, Bakers, and Girdlers, to take sub- 
 shares from them again. The Stationers' portion appears to have cost 
 about 800/. When it happened that a long life-interest ran out, a dis- 
 pute arose as to the title to the fee, and the Skinners assumed that they 
 were the freeholders of the whole estate ; but in this view they were 
 successfully challenged, and eventually the Stationers, adroitly turning 
 to their own account a very favourable report by certain members of 
 the Skinners' Company, obtained a large sum to be quit of their venture. 
 
 The Company educates 180 boys at its school in Bolt Court, Fleet 
 Street, the yearly fee on the foundation being 24s. It subscribes 125/. 
 a year to Guy's Hospital, and distributes many charities of various 
 amounts without any charge to the funds concerned. It also supports 
 its own poor. 
 
 The present Hall appears to be the fifth seat of the Company since 
 its rise into notice in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The Sta- 
 tioners, at least, cannot be traced further back as a body in possession 
 of a place of meeting than certain quarters in Clement Court, Milk 
 Street, Cheapside, a spot convenient for their special purposes. Whether 
 this was the original establishment, is extremely doubtful ; the site still 
 belongs to the same owners, and produces a handsome rental as a 
 warehouse. Hence, about 1550, the Fraternity removed to Peter 
 College, at one time an institution connected with St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 and at the Dissolution converted by William Seres into a printing-office. 
 It stood at the south-west angle of the churchyard,' and adjoined the 
 Dean's Yard. In 1582-3 the accounts include payments for repairs, 
 among which is an item of 4(1 for cleaning the Yard. 
 
 If the Stationers were as constant to their former Hall as to the one 
 to which they thus succeeded, and which the}' probably adapted to 
 their own wants, rather than rebuilt, their tenure of the premises in Milk 
 Street might be thrown back to the middle of the preceding century. 
 For it was only after an experience of nearly sixt)- years, that the 
 •Company decided on another change, and in 1606 let, not probably 
 
 ' See Herbert's Typographical Antiqitities, 1785, p. 6S7. The writer supposes that 
 the exact position of Peter College was marked by that of PaiiVs College-, used, when 
 Strype's Stow was published iii 1720, to accommodate the choristers attached to the 
 cathedral.
 
 THE STATIONERS. 
 
 635 
 
 the whole house, but the frontage to Mr. Edward Kynaston, a vintner, 
 who converted it into the Feathers Tavern.' Five years later, Aberga- 
 venny House and certain appurtenances, at that time comprising in its 
 area the ground between Amen Corner and the Chapter House estate 
 to the north, St. Martin's, Ludgate, to the south, the City wall to the 
 west, and the garden of London House to the east, was acquired, with a 
 portion of the Bishop's garden '^ now occupied by the east side of Ave 
 Maria Lane. 
 
 Here thenceforward the Company made its home. We seem to have 
 no means of acquainting ourselves with their transactions from 161 1 to 
 1654, when the premises had fallen into such bad repair, that the Livery- 
 dinner on Lord Mayor's day was held elsewhere, and the interest or 
 copyright of Foxe's Booi of Martyrs ^ 
 was sold toward the expense of re- 
 construction. But in 1666 the Hall 
 was reduced to a wreck, with the 
 contents and even the common seal, 
 the registers excepted ; ^ and the loss 
 was not repaired till 1674, the meet- 
 ings and business being temporarily 
 transacted at the Cooks' Hall in 
 Aldersgate Street or at St. Bartho- 
 lomew's Hospital. The Company 
 agreed with the celebrated Stephen 
 College, the " Protestant Joiner," to 
 wainscot the new Hall for 300/. " with 
 well-seasoned and well-matched wain- 
 scot, according to a model delivered 
 in." 
 
 From 1667 to the present time the Hall has been occasionally let or 
 lent to various public bodies for sundry purposes. The Surgeons' Com- 
 pany were permitted to use it in 1745, provided that no dissecting oper- 
 
 ORIGIN.AL COMMON SE.\L, 
 LOST IN THE GRE.AT FIRE. 
 
 ' In 167 1 the Company sold the property to Sir William Turner for 420/. 
 
 ^ This part of the purchase was afterward resold. 
 
 ^ " The Book of Martyrs was frequently reprinted, and was so highly appreciated 
 that, when in 1631 it was out of print, some persons of quality, being desirous that it 
 might be reprinted for the general good of the kingdom, threatened to print it 
 themselves, if the Company did not immediately issue a fresh edition. A copy of 
 the best paper, ruled, bound in Turkey leather gilt, with the King's arms stamped 
 on it, was presented to His Most Excellent JNIajesty Charles the Second in 1660, 
 as a token of the Company's duty and submission to his royal person and govern- 
 ment." — Rivington. 
 
 ■* Mr. Rivington presumes that they were in the custody of the Clerk at his house 
 on Clerkenwell Green.
 
 636 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 ations were conducted there. It has been at intervals the scene of 
 ■concerts, lotteries, Freemasons' meetings, and comph'mentary dinners. 
 
 The long obsolete usage, by which each retiring Master gave the 
 Fellowship a piece of plate of fourteen ounces weight at the least, may 
 be taken to have been one dating at all events from the foundation of 
 the Company, as the collection is shown by the extant inventory to 
 have included a silver-gilt spoon presented by Thomas Dockwray, first 
 Master. It is not pleasant to have to add that all these treasures, 
 consisting of spoons (one dated September 11, 1560), salt-cellars, 
 bowls, and cups, were sold to meet financial exigencies in 1643, to Mr. 
 Nowell, a goldsmith, in Foster Lane, except Mr. Hulet's standing 
 cup. 
 
 Owing to the fortunate escape of the registers in 1666, the Company 
 possesses not only the entries of publications which have been printed 
 from 1557 down to 1640 by Professor x\rber, but its account-books from 
 the commencement. • The earliest of the series was presented by a 
 member of the Court ; and each side of the leather binding, v/hich is well 
 preserved, is embellished with the figures of animals. The volume opens 
 with the receipts and disbursements of the Master and Wardens from 
 1554 to 1557. Thomas Berthelet, the eminent printer, was Master in 
 the former year, but died within the twelvemonth ; and his wife Margery 
 gave the Company i^s. ^d., "for a rewarde for comynge to the sayde 
 Barthelet his buryall." 
 
 Not the least curious feature in the Court Records is the account of 
 suppressed works, and of incidents connected with the trade. ' In 1595 
 various little French books and other printed matter were burned by 
 order of the Primate. In 1602 Stow was awarded 3/. and forty copies 
 for his pains in the Survey of Loudon,^ and 20s. and fifty copies for his 
 pains in the Brief Chronicle. Under 1614 his Grace of Canterbury 
 directs the suppression of Raleigh's History of the World. The same 
 fate befalls Lithgow's Travels in 1616. In 1634 Prynne's Histrioniastix 
 is erased from the books. In 1646 The Wonieiis Parliament'^ is sup- 
 pressed, " being very lewdly written, and tending to corrupt youth." 
 The original MS. and whole impression of Buchanan's History of Scot- 
 land are seized. 
 
 An enumeration of the more distinguished members of the Gild al- 
 most amounts to a rehearsal of the already familiar names of our cele- 
 
 ' Compare Merchant Taylors' Company, supra, p. 271. 
 
 - If this refers to the Ladies' Parliament by Henry Nevile [1647], the proceeding 
 ■was not unwarranted, as the tract is extremely coarse. A copy is among the King's 
 Pamphlets in the British Museum. But the piece entitled The Parliament of Women, 
 1640, 1646, 1656, etc., is not specially exceptionable.
 
 THE STATIONERS. 
 
 637 
 
 MARK Ol' KICHAKD TOTTKl.I.. 
 
 MARK OF JOHN DAY (1548-71 
 
 brated printers and publishers from the closing years of the fifteenth 
 century. It is highh' probable, though there appears to be no distinct 
 evidence of the fact, that both Richard Pynson and Wj-nkvn de W'orde 
 were among the associates of the unincorpo- 
 rated Fellowship. But we know that Thomas 
 Berthelet, Reginald Wolfe (four times Master), 
 John Cawood, Richard Jugge, Richard Tottell, 
 and other equally famous men belonged to the 
 Compan)- ; and at a later date the roll of 
 worthies embraced the Harrisons, the Days, 
 the Nortons, the Barkens, the Rivingtons, the 
 Nicholses, and many more. It was John Nor- 
 ton who left 1,000/. in 1 612, to be lent to poor 
 young men of the Company, which amount 
 was invested in houses in Wood Street, and 
 now forms part of the endowment of the 
 Stationers' School. We must not overlook 
 Richard Field, son of Henry Field, of Strat- 
 ford-upon-Avon, tanner, Shakespear's fellow- 
 townsman, and the publisher of his youthful productions. Field married 
 the daughter of Thomas Vautrollier, and the poet is supposed to have 
 profited by some of the classical or historical books which proceeded from 
 both presses. Several of these presented during their masterships pieces 
 of plate or sums of mone}' for charitable and general purposes. Sir 
 Thomas Davies, Master in 1668-9, became Lord Mayor in 1677, and on 
 his translation to the Drapers gave his old associates two silver cups. 
 His cop}- of Stow's Survey of London, 1633, contains an extra leaf with 
 his arms emblazoned in their proper colours, and is in the possession 
 of the writer. Thomas Parkhurst, Master in 1703, by a gift of ^jl. to 
 purchase twenty-five Bibles and Psalms for annual distribution, founded 
 the custom of making a donation of a copy of the Scriptures to each 
 apprentice bound at the Hall. 
 
 The catalogue might be greatly extended ; but we must content our- 
 selves with mentioning Samuel Richardson the novelist. Master in 1754 
 and Jacob Tonson, great nephew of Dryden's Tonson, and High Sheriff 
 of Surrey in 1750, and Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer of the Letters 
 of Junius. The last was Master in 1797. 
 
 Besides Sir Thomas Davies, Mayor in 1677, the chief magistracy has 
 been held by other Stationers, in the persons of Sir Stephen Theodore 
 Jansen (1749-50), Thomas Wright (1777), William Gill (1780), John 
 Boydell (1783), William Domville (1803), Christopher Magnay (18 16), 
 William Venables(i824), John Crowder (1829), John Key (1830), William
 
 U^fb^textue of 2 maille, 
 3 
 
 TITLK-PAGE OK LYDGATE's \',r!!iC:'fth:. Mane. 
 
 Printed by Wynkyn de Worde. 
 
 638
 
 iV^^^O^y~^^:x^^ 1^ -^ 
 
 W 
 
 )P^^P9'T. 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS OF EMINENT STATIONERS OF THE i6tH CENTURY. 
 
 639
 
 640 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Magnay (1847), Francis Graham Moon (i855_), Sydney Hedley Water- 
 low (1872), and Francis Wyatt Truscott (1879). 
 
 Several who did not attain the Mayoralty were members of the Court 
 of Aldermen, and served as Sheriff. Since 1800 three generations of 
 Rivington have held the Clerkship, which involves not merely the ordin- 
 ary business of the Company, but that arising from the English Stock. ' 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE.S. 
 
 The Orders, Rules, and Ordinances, Ordained, Devised, and made by the Master 
 and Keepers or Wardens and Comminalty of the Mystery or Art of Stationers of 
 the City of London, for the well Governing of that Society. 4to, 1678, 16S2. 
 
 Charters and Grants of the Company of Stationers of the City of London ; contain- 
 ing an .Account of the Freemen's Rights and Privileges ; with an Appendix. 8vo, 
 1741. 
 
 A Proclamation of the Queen against the printing of books, ballads, rhymes, and 
 interludes. 18 August, 1553. A broadside. RWmgton's SUit/oiifrs' Records, p. S- 
 
 A Proclamation of the King and the Queen against Diuers Books. Given at Our 
 .Manor of .Saint James, the si.\th day of June, 1558. 
 
 Ordinances decreed for reformation of diuers disorders in printing and vttering of 
 Bookes. 29 June, 1566. A broadside. 
 
 »*» This is a reprint, perhaps about 1620, of the original sheet. 
 
 A Patent to Rafte liowes and Thomas Beddingfield to import Playing Cards into this 
 Kingdom for twelve years, and dispose of them in large or sinall quantities, any 
 Act formerly made notwithstanding. 13 June, 13 Elizabeth [1571]. 
 
 The Whole Rate of mouldes belonging to the olde forume [? font or form] of 
 plaienge cardes, commonlie called the Frenche Carde, by warrant from Mr. Warden 
 Coldocke. Entered with the Jew Cisian [? douze sixieme] dozen and all other things 
 thereunto belonginge. Entered at Stationers' Hall, to Ralph Bowes, Esquire, Oct. 
 28, 1588. 
 
 The Case of the Booksellers Trading beyond the Sea. A broadside. [James L] 
 
 A Generall Note of the prises for binding all sorts of bookes, 1619. A broadside. 
 
 The same. . . . 1646. A broadside. 
 
 An Abstract of his Maiesties Letters Patent granted unto Roger Wood and Thomas 
 Symcocke, for the sole printing of paper and parchment on the one side. 4to, 
 1620. 
 
 To the Most Honourahle Assembly of the Commons House of Parliament. The 
 Binders of Bookes in London doe most humblie shew complaining of the Com- 
 pany of Goldbeaters, and of their monopoly of the importation and sale of 
 Gold Foliat. [1621.] A broadside. 
 
 To the Right Reverend and Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, 
 assembled in Parliament, An abstract of the general grievances of the poore Free- 
 men and Journeymen Printers, oppressed and kept in seruile bondage all their 
 lives by the VnlawfuU Ordinances of the Master and Wardens of the Company, 
 which they fortifie only by a Warrant dormant. A broadside. [About 1630.] 
 
 ' The background in Hogarth's print of the Industrious Apprentice, represents 
 the members of the Stationers' Company marching down Paternoster Row, on theii 
 return from the Lord Mayor's Show.
 
 THE TALLOW CHANDLERS. 64 I 
 
 A Proclamation to inhibito the sale of Latine Hookes reprinted beyond the Seas, 
 haiiitig been Ur>\. printed at Oxford or Cambridge. 1625. A broadside. 
 
 A Decree of the Star-Chamber, concerning Printing. 11 July, 1637. A broadside. 
 
 The Humble Petition of the Stationers, Printers, and Booksellers of the Citie of 
 London, on the introduction of a Bill for reducing the Printers to a certain 
 number, and for the avoiding of unskilfuU printers. 1641. A broadside. 
 
 Scintilla, Or, A Light Broken into darke Warehouses. With Observations upon the 
 .Monopolists of Seaven several! Patents, and Two Charters. Practised and per- 
 formed by a Mistery of some Printers, Sleeping Stationers and Combining Book- 
 sellers. [By Michael S|)arke.] 4to, 1641. 
 
 To the Honourable House of Commons in this present Parliament assembled. The 
 humble Petition of the Company of Stationers of the City of London. [January,. 
 1643.] .A broadside. 
 
 To all Printers, Eooke-sellers, Booke-bindevs, Freemen of the Company of Stationers. 
 13 June, 1645. .\ broadside. 
 
 *,* It may be remarked that there are numerous other publications relative to the press and to 
 printers, but not sufficiently relevant to the Stationers' Company to necessitate or warrant their in- 
 sertion here. 
 
 Z\K XTallow CbanMers. 
 
 We do not receive any intelligence of this body before 1426, when it 
 was associated under the style of The Master and Wardens of the Mistery 
 or Craft of Tallow Chandlers, in letters patent of Henry VI. for the 
 .search and destruction of all bad or adulterated oils. 
 
 Here we consequently meet with another instance, where, in the ab- 
 sence of any licence or charter, a connmercial Fellowship established 
 itself with a regular organization, and was evidently recognised as such. 
 The acknowledged standing of the Tallow Chandlers is still further con- 
 firmed by a grant of arms' from John Smert, Garter King of Arms, in 
 1456 to John Priour, John Thurlow, William Blackman, and Richard 
 Grenecroft, Guardians, and several other notable men of the trade, and 
 
 ' Supporters were added in 1602, upon an application to William Camden, Clarencieux 
 King of Arms. 
 
 CO. 8 1
 
 642 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 01.11 ARMS.. 
 
 of the Company of Tallow Chandlers, or Chandeliers de Suif of the 
 City of London, on behalf of and in the name of their whole confra- 
 ternity, one of the members of the City of London, having sworn War- 
 dens or keepers, and other officers authorized to make, constitute, and 
 put in force among themselves rules and good ordinances for the sepa- 
 rate conduct of their own trade. 
 
 The Tallow Chandlers, having thus already clothed themselves with 
 many of the attributes of a corporation, thought fit, 
 for the better security of the vocation which they 
 followed, and for the more ample and complete 
 exercise and enjoyment of their powers and position, 
 to proceed in 1462, 2 Edward IV., to the crowning 
 step of procuring a charter from the King. The 
 instrument is dated March 8, and is directed "To 
 our beloved and faithful subjects, the Freemen of 
 the Mistery or Art of Talough Chaundelers of our City of London." 
 It confirms, rather than confers, certain rights and privileges in relation 
 to the choice of officers, the power of holding realty, a common seal, 
 the title to sue and be sued in courts, a licence in mortmain to ten marks 
 a year,' and the liberty of search and correction. 
 
 Of all these matters the grant was a recognition ; as the Gild had 
 manifestly assumed authority and jurisdiction to the full extent of the 
 royal concession, save the licence in mortmain and the common seal. 
 There is no mention of a Livery even in [462, yet this, again, existed 
 at that time almost beyond doubt ; and in i 501-2 is returned as thirty- 
 six. It was possibly considered as falling under the general sanction of 
 •established forms and practices. In 1469, within a very short space after 
 the incorporation, the Company was able to supply to the City Watch 
 the large quota of sixty men, and in 1 5 1 5 it was officially ranked as 
 twenty-first in order.' 
 
 The charter was renewed by succeeding sovereigns (November 15, 
 1517, 8 Henry VIII. ; February 18, 1549, 2 Edward VI. ; June 7, 1557, 
 4 and 5 Philip and Mary; March 3, 1561, 3 Elizabeth; and March 6, 
 1606, 3 James I.). Letters patent of James I. March 6, 1620, confirmed 
 the Tallow Chandlers in all their lands and hereditaments theretofore 
 
 ' This was enlarged in 1831, 1856, and 1865, to enable the Gild to hold more recent 
 accessions of property in trust, including that accruing under the will of Mr. Roger 
 Monk in 1831. 
 
 '' In the grant by Camden of supporters to the Arms in 1602, it is laid down "that 
 the Company are to take their place after their ancientry at all feasts and other solemn 
 processions as the seventeenth Company of the City, which he found, according to the 
 date of their patent, to be anciently recorded. '
 
 THE TALLOW CHANDLERS. 643 
 
 acquired, and finally settled all controversy as to the possessions in 
 Dowgate Ward, the Hall doubtless included.' 
 
 The power of search, which was successively fixed at two and three 
 miles' compass from the City, formed the subject-matter of two or three 
 public acts, beginning with an indenture of 1559, in which existing 
 letters patent of Elizabeth are cited. The latter are no longer known ; 
 but they probably corresponded with others of April 15, 1577, where 
 the Company is empowered to search for, weigh, and measure all soap, 
 vinegar, barrelled butter, salt, oils, and hops within the City and suburbs, 
 and mark all good vessels with the Rose and Crown Imperial. By Act 
 of Parliament the Wardens were further entitled to seize and destroy all 
 adulterated and spurious oils ; but the legislation is said to have proved 
 inoperative, because no reward was offered on conviction to the informers. 
 From the Drapers' accounts of 15 16 it is inferable that the Tallow 
 Chandler of those days, in addition to his own special wares, dealt in 
 a multifarious assortment of domestic necessaries, such as mustard, red 
 and white vinegar, verjuice, oatmeal, fine salt, packthread, lathes, gally- 
 pots and pans, and brooms. We here recognise the parentage of the 
 modern chandler's shop and its almost inexhaustible resources. 
 
 During the former half of the seventeenth century, the Company 
 appears to have maintained an excellent ground among the bodies of 
 secondary rank. It joined the Drapers as a sub-sharer in the Ulster 
 project, and so far occupied the exceptional position of being not merely 
 the only coparcener, but of offering the sole instance in which one of the 
 great Companies associated itself thus exclusively with one of the minor. 
 
 In 1629, to a municipal assessment the Tallow Chandlers exhibited a 
 gauge of their comparative prosperity by a contribution of 12/. 18s. 
 It is more difficult to divine the source of the commercial intimacy be- 
 tween the present Fraternity and the Drapers than that between its 
 members or Executive and the Salters, where salt is continually specified 
 as one of the articles over which the Tallow Chandlers exercised control, 
 and in which they dealt ; and, in fact, the most ancient ordinances of the 
 latter, while they still remained unincorporated, were drawn up in conjunc- 
 tion with the other Gild, being described as " Ordinances of the Salters 
 and Tallow Chandlers."" The two Societies were evidently at one epoch 
 in rather close relations ; and we shall see that their head-quarters and 
 Halls were adjacent. 
 
 ' Not, we apprehend, the property held to superstitious uses, within the meaning 
 of the Act of Edward VI., for of such there is no trace, the trust-estate being of 
 purely modern origin. 
 
 ■ Compare p. 295, supra. These ordinances were most probably the reduction to 
 form of a compact between the two Fellowships.
 
 644 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Beyond the Ordinances above-mentioned, the Tallow Chandlers 
 possess one set of bye-iaws, framed and approved in 1639, and extending 
 to no fewer than sixty-six articles. They deal with points of internal 
 government, as elections, which are appointed to be held on the day 
 of the feast of St. John the Baptist, or within twenty days thereof, the 
 Master, in cases of an equality of votes, having a casting voice or prick 
 ■on the paper : fines, Livery, oaths, election-dinners : the duties and 
 powers of the two Wardens of the Yeomanry, who were to provide at 
 their own cost four quarter-suppers in the common Hall : the choice of 
 Whifflers, or associates from among the junior members, to attend and 
 wait upon the rest : the appointment of a Beadle : the provision of a 
 common chest : the conditions under which search could be conducted 
 and the payment of search-money by persons of other Companies, who 
 pursued the trade of a maker or seller of candles : and the ordinary 
 stipulations as to apprenticeship. 
 
 The Yeomanry clearly constituted a very important and influential 
 element, and possessed their own parlour with two locks and keys kept 
 by their Wardens, and an independent store of plate, pewter, linen, and 
 other effects, which, by one of the clauses, were to be surrendered in the 
 contingency of the dissolution or suspension of the separate Executive 
 at any time. 
 
 The voluminous character of the bye-laws of 1639 may be construed 
 into an evidence of the substantial standing of the body, whose members 
 they affected and governed ; and probably we have now reached the 
 period when the Company was at the zenith of its power. The Civil 
 War and the Great Fire combined to weaken it ; and perhaps the more 
 general employment of wax for candles formed an additional cause of 
 decline. The charter of 28 Charles II., July 29, 1677, expressly dwells 
 on the increase of buildings in London and on the number of hands 
 engaged in the candle manufacture, but at the same time speaks of the 
 diminution of the Company. It recognised and allowed all its rights 
 and privileges, and made it obligatory on all members of the trade 
 within a three miles' radius to take up the Freedom. 
 
 Tliis, with the exception of the general Quo Warranto episode 
 and its normal consequences, concludes the transactions with the 
 Crown. The right of search has not been put in force since 1 709, 
 and it has become optional on the part of freemen to come upon the 
 Livery. 
 
 The government consists of the Master, Deputy Master, four Wardens, 
 and fifteen Assistants ; but the number of the Court is not defined by 
 the charters and bye-laws. In 1699 the Livery was returned as 113, 
 in 1724 as 178, in 1882 as about [20, and in 1892 as 102. The Livery
 
 Tin-: TALLOW CHANDLERS. 645 
 
 fine, which in 1639 was 3/. 6s. 8d., is at present 27/ 5^. od., and that for 
 the Court 200/. 
 
 The trust income is about 220/ a year ; but of the corporate receipts 
 there are no particulars. They are probabl)- not much larger than they 
 were in 1882. But they enable the Company to pay about 400/. in 
 salaries, besides taxes and other incidental outlays ; and while in 1620 
 it was thought desirable to quiet the title to certain London properties 
 — probably the Hall and other messuages destroyed in the Fire — by 
 incurring the charges attendant on special letters patent for that pur- 
 pose, the new licences in mortmain obtained in 1856 and 1865 appear 
 to have been connected with fresh corporate acquisitions. 
 
 The Tallow Chandlers gave 31 5/. by three instalments to the City and 
 Gilds' Institute. 
 
 Tallow Chandlers' Hall on Dowgate Hill, to which there is repeated 
 reference in the bye-laws of 1639, but of the antecedents and origin 
 of which we learn next to nothing, was destroyed in the Fire with 
 the other freeholds named in the Patent of 1620, rebuilt in 1672, and 
 thoroughly restored on the I7th-centur)- model in 1871. A portion 
 of the ancient quadrangle has been let for building, and doubtless 
 constitutes, with a few rents and the fines and fees, the actual private 
 revenue. 
 
 There is no room to question that this neighbourhood was the seat 
 of the industry from very remote times, and that Candlewick Street ' 
 derived its name from this source, as Scaldingwike in the Poultry did 
 from an analogous circumstance. The Hall was at once situated in 
 convenient proximity to the works where the manufacture was carried 
 on and to the water-way, which equally brought the raw material, and 
 helped to distribute the produce. 
 
 ' Stow (edit., 1633) says that in old records he had seen it spelled Candlewright 
 Street, and adds that it was the place where candles, both of wa.K and tallow, were 
 made. Vet the two productions seem to have been always kept distinct.
 
 646 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 XLbc Ii;in=platc Morl^ers. 
 
 Evidences of the great antiquity of this craft and art, which were 
 known to the Romans, and possibly introduced by them to us, have 
 been found in excavations of Anglo-Saxon remains, belonging to the 
 sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. The material was employed for 
 a variety of purposes, including the metallic fittings of wooden utensils 
 and implements of war or appliances for the protection of the person, 
 as for example in the bosses of shields, as well as for the coating of 
 coins and other small objects. 
 
 The Tin-plate Workers are supposed to have originally been an 
 offshoot from the Girdlers, when the centralizing movement, which had 
 at first operated so powerfully in combining branches of the same trade 
 in one body and government, experienced a reaction, and a series of 
 minor industries, such as this before us and several others, subdivided 
 themselves into independent unions and Companies. 
 
 But the first intimation of the present Fraternity occurs in the reign 
 
 of Edward IV., where, under the appellation 
 of Wire Workers, it associated itself with the 
 Pinners, and kept its accounts in the same 
 books or ledgers. In 1569 this bipartite body 
 took- advantage of the incorporation of the 
 Girdlers to seek shelter beneath their charter. 
 There is considerable difficulty in ascertain- 
 ing whether or how far the Tin-plate Workers 
 are to be regarded as the representatives of 
 the Wire Sellers and Wire Drawers, as well 
 as of the Wire Workers. At various periods 
 we find mention of communities bearing these several names ; and it 
 is not easy to avoid surmising that the allusions are to one and the 
 same industry. In 1469, for instance, the Wire Drawers are said to
 
 THE TIN-PLATF. WORKERS. 647 
 
 furnish two men to the City Watch; while in 1501-2 a municipal 
 return gives the Wire Sellers a prescriptive Livery of twelve. 
 
 Again, although the Wire Workers and Pinners were so intimately 
 connected in the fifteenth century, and apparently employed one place 
 of business, they never present themselves together in returns or other- 
 wise ; nor were the former, on the amalgamation with the Girdlers, 
 10 Elizabeth, specified in the charter by name. Later in the same 
 reign, the Pinners were evidently independent, and then or soon after 
 owned their own Hall ; and in 1636 they secured a separate charter. 
 But of the Wire Workers we gain no tidings, until in 1670, 22 Charles 
 II., it is on record that they, too, were incorporated, and in 1678 
 possessed bye-laws. 
 
 The affairs are managed by a Master, two Wardens, and eight Assist- 
 ants. The trust income consists of the interest on 1,145/., derived under 
 the wills of Mr. John Miers and Mr. John White ; the proceeds of the 
 former bequest, which are applied in pensions, are augmented by grants 
 out of the Company's own funds from quarter to quarter ; and with the 
 latter (1,000/.) it has been proposed to erect almshouses. Of the corpor- 
 ate estate no particulars are forthcoming. A fine of 31/ 10s. is payable 
 by each liveryman on his election to the Court ; but no charges are 
 made, as in other cases, on promotion to the higher offices. In 1882 
 the Livery was returned as about //, in 1892, as 71. 
 
 The Company has organized two Exhibitions of Tin and Wire Work 
 at its own expense since 1S78.
 
 648 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Ube XTurners. 
 
 The few scattered notices relative to this Company almost exclusively 
 belong to the epoch anterior to incorporation. 
 
 In 1 3 10 several Turners at different addresses in the City were sworn 
 to make no other measures than gallons, pottles, and quarts, and no 
 false measures, as chopyns and gills, either in the form of boxes or 
 otherwise. It may be worth while to add that these persons were Henry 
 the Turner, dwelling in Wood Street ; Richard the Turner, John the 
 Turner in St. Swithin's Lane, Candlewick Street ; William the Turner, 
 without the Gate of Bishopsgate, and Richard le Corveiser, dwelling in 
 Wood Street. They were perhaps the leading or even only members of 
 the calling in London at that date, and with one exception they derived 
 their surname from their busines.s. 
 
 In 1347, it was found requisite to place some 
 further restrictions on the Turners of London in 
 regard to the material of which they made their 
 liquid measures, which were often of unseasoned 
 wood, and also to regulate the marks upon them, 
 which were to be placed on the bottom of each 
 vessel outside. The measures were at the same time 
 to agree with the standard of the Ward, in which it 
 was proposed to sell and use them. 
 Some false utensils of this kind were burned in Cheapside in 1370 
 near the Stone Cross. 
 
 OLD CREST OR 
 COGNIZ.\NCE.
 
 THE TURNERS. 649 
 
 An order of the Court of Aldermen, prescribing the prices to be paid 
 to various persons or trades for supplies to be presented to the King in 
 1418 in aid of the operations against Rouen, mentions 2,500 wooden 
 cups or mugs, for which the Turners were to receive 4s. per hundred, or 
 100^. altogether. They were for the use of the troops forming the 
 siege. 
 
 These drinking-vessels of wood, turned on the lathe, also entered into 
 the regular stock of the early innholder, and before they were more 
 generally made of silver, passed through the intermediate stage of being 
 simply bound or mounted with that metal. The call for such articles 
 on the part of the retailers of wine and beer, as well as presumably for 
 military and other public purposes, cannot have failed to constitute a 
 very valuable element in the turners' business, before pewter and earthen- 
 ware were brought into general use. 
 
 The first and only known charter of the Company was granted June 
 12, 1604, and conferred a licence in mortmain to the value of 20/. a year 
 beyond all charges and reprises, which has never been exercised ; the 
 right of search in London and within five miles radius, which has long 
 fallen into disuse, since the City divested the Turners of the power of 
 marking vessels ; and other usual privileges. 
 
 No bye-laws appear to have been drawn up till 1823. 
 
 The Executive is composed of a Master, an Upper and Renter Warden, 
 and twenty-four Assistants. The Livery is unlimited. In 1699, it stood 
 at 1 12 ; in 1724, at 127 ; in 1882, at 239 ; and in 1892, at 193. 
 
 There is no trust property, and the corporate estate, which was re- 
 turned in 1882 as 718/., and in 1892 as 700/., arises from fees, fines, and 
 interest on 1,787/. Scinde Railway Stock, the last-named source being 
 probably the product of the sale of the Hall, which formerly existed on 
 College Hill. There is source for the apprehension that the financial 
 position of the Company will not improve. 
 
 Since 1870 there have been annual Exhibitions of Turners' Work at 
 the Mansion House, the outlay involved in the first year being entirely 
 defrayed by Mr. Secondary Potter, then Master, and since that time by 
 voluntary subscriptions from Lady Burdett Coutt^, Mr. Samuel Morley, 
 M.P., and many others. 
 
 The prizes awarded, and usually distributed by the Lord Mayor, are 
 for the best specimens of work under the following categories : — 
 
 1. Beauty of design, symmetry of shape, and utility and general excellence of work- 
 manship. 
 
 2. E.xact copying, so that two objects produced (such as two cups, vases, boxes, or 
 other articles) may be facsimiles in every part, as well as in measure of capacity. 
 
 3. Fitness of the work and design for the purpose proposed, as, for instance, turned 
 work for portions of domestic or church furniture. 
 
 C.C. 82
 
 650 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 4. Ability to turn, whether circular or oval, both in hard and soft wood. 
 
 5. Novelty in application or in design. 
 
 »*, Carving and polishing are admissible, and, if sl<ilfully done, any additional effect produced 
 vill be considered ; but it must be subsidiary to the turning. 
 
 TLbc Hvlcvs anC< Bricklayers. 
 
 The substitution of tiles for thatch in City houses necessarily tended 
 to develop the Tylers' industry. After the Fire of 12 12, the roofs of 
 reed or rush, which were then general, were declared unlawful, and were 
 to be replaced with tiles and other material. But of course the system 
 was not altered either with promptitude or with uniformity. In 1245, a 
 further order was published by the Mayor, that all houses in the prin- 
 cipal thoroughfares should be covered in future with slates or tiles. In 
 1 302, we find Thomas Bat indemnifying the City from peril in respect 
 of his property in St. Laurence Parish, Cannon Street, and agreeing to 
 tile the roofs of the premises by the ensuing Pentecost. 
 
 The early English bricklayer, who belonged to the Gild of Tylers and 
 Bricklayers, was not an operative, but an employer of operatives, often 
 ■on a very large scale. He was the contractor for the entire brickwork 
 of a structure, as we see in the negotiations and estimates for rebuilding 
 or restoring some of the Halls after the Fire. For instance, it is easy to 
 see in the account of the arrangements for making good the portions of 
 Goldsmiths' Hall in 1666, that Mr. Burridge the bricklayer plays a 
 prominent and responsible part, and had all that share of the contract 
 to carry out under the supervision of Jarman the architect. Luck the 
 bricklayer and Bell the carpenter seem to have similarly treated for the 
 principal portion of the work of restoration at Painter-Stainers' Hall 
 after the Fire, when the designs had been approved. 
 
 Doubtless, the colleague of Jack Straw in the rebellion or riot in 1381, 
 consequent on the enforcement of a poll-tax, was a member of this 
 Brotherhood at a period prior to its incorporation with the Bricklayers 
 in 1568. He was not a peasant or a labourer, but a master-tyler ; and 
 much in the same way Stow and Speed the historians were rather
 
 THE TYLERS AND BRICKLAYERS. 6^1 
 
 members of the Merchant- Taylors' Gild than tailors in our modern con- 
 ventional sense. 
 
 It is usually represented by the biographers of Benjamin Jon.son that 
 his stepfather was a working bricklayer, and obliged the future poet to 
 follow the trade for a brief time. But, from all the known associations 
 of Jonson, this statement and notion seem to be eminently improbable ; 
 and the far more likely case is, that the mother's second husband was a 
 member of the Company, and that the poet became free by patrimony. 
 It may have been through this channel that Jonson became acquainted 
 with Inigo Jones, who, as a professional architect, might have come into 
 contact with the elder Jonson in the ordinary way of business, as he 
 would take the entire contract for brickwork in new buildings. The 
 Tylers and Bricklayers were in fact specially excluded from the pro- 
 visions of the scheme prepared in 1636 for establishing a Gild of Re- 
 tailers of London and Suburbs. The followers of these vocations were, 
 in fact, regarded as contractors rather than shopkeepers. 
 
 We have to traverse centuries without meeting 
 more than the most occasional and fortuitous in- 
 formation respecting the body whose name stands 
 at the head of the present article. In 1 501-2, an 
 official list assigns it a customary Livery of 22, and 
 in 151 5 it is ranked as the 38th Company, though 
 unincorporated. Again, at the Mayor's Feast in 
 Ki;i-2 it was represented by one member, besides 
 
 ■'^ ^ •' ' OLD ARMS. 
 
 the Wardens, and was allotted a single mess. 
 
 These statistics establish the possession during the fifteenth and first 
 moiety of the following century of substantial rank and resources ; yet, 
 like many other Associations, the Tjders and Bricklayers do not seem 
 to have been an.xious to consolidate themselves to any further extent 
 by the agency of a charter; and when at last, in 156S, they obtained 
 one, it conferred, so far as we can judge, very little beyond existing pre- 
 scriptive rights and executive powers. 
 
 It was succeeded b)^ the publication of Ordinances in 1570 and in 
 1 571, curiously enough, by a second charter from Elizabeth, authorizing 
 the search for defective bricks, tiles, and other cognate material, the 
 appointment of a Beadle and a Clerk, the administration of oaths, regu- 
 lations for apprentices, and other points. Both here and in the ante- 
 cedent grant the customary title to frame and impose rules for the 
 government of the Fraternity is said to have been vested in the Wardens 
 or Custodes time out of mind. The charters of 1568 and 1571, with a 
 third of James I., dated from Gorhambury, April 20, 1604, constitute 
 the entire recognised series, as that of James II. w-as involved in the
 
 652 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 common operation of the Act of 1690. The grant of 1604 specifies a 
 common seal, a licence in mortmain, the faculty of suing and being 
 sued, the election of officers (a Master and two Wardens), the levy of 
 fines, and the correction of bad work in London and over a radius of 
 fifteen miles. 
 
 Besides the bye-laws of 1570-86, which have been lately printed, it 
 is augurable from a printed document of 1614, cited below, that others 
 were framed on the lines of the charter of 1604 ; and the Company was 
 affected by an order of the Court of Common Council, July i, 1658, 
 and a royal one of January 25, 1723. 
 
 The government, following the acting charter of 1604, consists of 
 a Master, an Upper Warden, a Renter Warden, and twenty Assist- 
 ants. The Renter is elected from the Livery, the others from the 
 Court. 
 
 We have noticed that in 1302 there was a prescriptive Livery of 22. 
 In 1699 the numbers were officially returned as 73 ; in 1724, as 99; in 
 1882, as 78 ; and in 1892, as 73. In 1882 there were about 90 on the 
 Freedom. 
 
 In 1834 the income was stated to be about 600/. a year ; and at that 
 time the Company included many members of the trade. In 1882 and 
 1892 the receipts amounted to about 670/., not reckoning 170/. trust 
 •estate. During the ten years 1870-79 there does not seem to have been 
 much fluctuation ; but it was anticipated in 1882, that when certain 
 leases of the property in the City and suburbs fell in, the figures would 
 improve ; and the good intentions of the Executive may, under such 
 circumstances, be more fully exercised in the direction of educational 
 grants. An important factor in the returns is the house No. 22, Throg- 
 morton Street, of which the term will expire about 1895, and which was 
 let in 1881 at 125/. reserved rent, and 2,200/. fine. 
 
 One item in the yearly revenue is a sum of about 4/., derived from a 
 sub-share in the Vintners' Irish manor. The payment represents little 
 more than four per cent, on the outlay of 80/. in 161 5, and must there- 
 fore be said to have been a rather poor investment, looking at the 
 returns of the Salters and Skinners. The character of the contribution, 
 at the same time, imports at that juncture comparative prosperity, and 
 in 1629 the quota found for the civic arrangements for celebrating the 
 coronation of Charles I. — 4/. 6^'. — argues a fair medium standing. 
 
 Comprised in the Leadenhall estate is the former Hall of the Com- 
 pany, now occupied by the City of London College. The building lay 
 at the western extremity of Aldgate ward, not far from Fletchers' and 
 Ironmongers' Halls. It is mentioned by Stow and Maitland ; but of its 
 early history nothing is recorded. It escaped the fire in 1666, and the
 
 THK Ul'IlOLUKRS OR Ul'HOLSTERS. 
 
 653 
 
 Coopers met here for some time, while their own seat of business was 
 unavailable. 
 
 The property at Wapping is believed to have been received from some 
 member of the Gild connected with Chipping Norton, to the church- 
 wardens of which place 4/. a year are payable in respect of that portion 
 taken by the St. Katharine's Docks Company and now represented by 
 799/. 1 2s. Consols. 
 
 Finally, the Tylers and Bricklayers hold in trust certain houses at 
 Islington, where their Almshouses are situated, and a rent-charge at 
 Whitechapel, acquired under the will of Francis Field in 1669. The 
 rents are applied to the support of poor freemen and their widows, and 
 are occasionally supplemented by votes from the corporate funds. 
 
 The date of the grant of arms and supporters is not known to us. 
 The bearings are given by Wallis in Londoiis Armoury, 1677, as those 
 of the Bricklayers alone. 
 
 LITER.A.RY NOTICES. 
 
 The Petition of the Tylers and Bricklayers of London, praying that it may be 
 enacted that the Assize of Bricke and Tyle and the measure of Lyme and Sand, 
 may be observed in London and in all places within fifteene miles compasse 
 thereof, according to the Ordinances established by the Master and Wardens of 
 the Company of Tylers and Bricklayers of London. [1614.] A broadside. 
 
 The Idol of the Clowns ; or, the Insurrection of Wat the Tyler. By Francis White, 
 of Gray's Inn. i2mo, 1654. 
 
 »*» In Harl. M.S. 6466 occur the statutes of the Tylers of I'oventry, made in the 14th century. 
 
 xrbc XflpbolCters or Llpbolstcrs.' 
 
 -.mm, 
 
 .\R.MS (FRO.M STOW, 1633). .\KMS, 1739. 
 
 The Upholders were originally dealers in second-hand clothes, and 
 were otherwise called Fripperers. They are particularly noticed as 
 having occupied the shops in and about Cornhill, when these were 
 vacated, toward the close of the fourteenth century, by the Drapers. 
 
 Stow {Suniey, 1633) adopts the latter form of the name.
 
 654 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 An official document of 1532 denominates them the Clothing Up- 
 holders. 
 
 But it would seem from the ancient and intimate relationship between 
 the Upholders and the Skinners, that the former applied themselves at 
 the beginning, at least, more particularly to some branch of the trade 
 in peltry, perhaps to the purchase and resale of second-hand skins and 
 furs. 
 
 It is obvious from an inventory, which exists among the City Records, 
 of the stock of Stephen le Northerne in 1356, that he was not an iron- 
 monger, as Riley names him, but a store-dealer, since the contents 
 indicate a commerce in cushions, portable cupboards, curtains, weighing 
 machines, wooden bedsteads and testers, feather beds, sheets, carpets, 
 chequer-boards, doublets (paltoks), armour, planks, combs, shoe-horns, 
 jordans, and other miscellaneous utensils or commodities. On the 
 other hand, there is a large assortment of ironmongery for domestic, 
 industrial, and farming or gardening purposes : trivets, sledge-hammers, 
 puncheons, augers, pitchforks, ship-hinges, latches and bolts, goldsmiths' 
 anvils, andirons, hatchets, pickaxes, and a variety of such items, some 
 under archaic designations, which are not readily identifiable ; one of 
 the articles is said to be " worn out." This was our modern broker's 
 shop. It was situated in the parish of St. Michael, Cornhill, where at 
 one period the upholders or fripperers, as Stow tells us, concentrated 
 themselves. 
 
 The trade had begun to settle in Cornhill before the time of Lydgate 
 probably, as in his London Lickpenny, written about 1425, he refers to 
 the loss of his hood in the crowd at Westminster and its exposure for 
 sale shortly after at a dealer's in the more easterly quarter. He in ^ct 
 charges the mistery with being habitual receivers of stolen goods. 
 
 Riley appears to consider that the original upholder was also an 
 undertaker ; and it may be that, from being at first a fripperer, as 
 Stow terms him, or dealer in second-hand clothes and other goods, he 
 in some cases rose to the dignity of a furniture-warehouseman, who still 
 combines with that business the function of attendance upon funerals. 
 The furniture-dealer suffered a further evolution, and became a cabinet- 
 maker, or at least a cabinet-maker's salesman. 
 
 The members of this fraternity, by a natural drift toward the exten- 
 sion of a not very definite class of commerce, gradually became pawn- 
 brokers, costumiers, and wardrobe-men. They purchased cast-off 
 clothing, took goods in pledge,^ as the Goldsmiths did on a different 
 
 ' Cases are recorded of the officers of one or two of the minor Gilds, under 
 pecuniary stress or otherwise, hypothecating the corporate effects.
 
 THE UPHOLDERS OR UPHOLSTERS. 655 
 
 scale, and lent apparel on hire. The Companies which were deficient 
 in Livery-gowns, procured them here, and the Wardens occasionally 
 sold, in satisfaction of quarterages, the gowns of defaulting members at 
 these rather incongruous and not too inquisitive establishments. 
 
 Yet, whatever may have been the incidence of their vocation, the 
 present bod)' undoubtedly rose at an early date to high consideration, 
 and acquired a substantial standing among the minor Gilds of the City. 
 In 1465 they obtained a grant of arms. Four years later, they con- 
 tributed to the City Watch four-and-twenty guards ; and in 1479, Sir 
 Bartholomew James, son of Edward James, Citizen and Upholder was 
 Lord Mayor. 
 
 There had evident!)- been a lapse of more than a century and a half, 
 during which the Upholder steadily maintained his ground as a mer- 
 chant and as the component part of a Fellowship, when from an entry 
 in the Skinners' books (Februar)'-March, 1605-6), it appears that in 
 4 Henr)' VII. an indenture tripartite was made between the Master and 
 Wardens of the Skinners of the first part, the Upholders of the second 
 part, and the Chamberlain of London of the third part, v.hereby the 
 Upholders were admitted into the Skinners' Fraternity. This was a 
 compact on the lines of the old commercial alliance between the two 
 Associations as touching a certain branch of the peltr)' industry ; and 
 although we have not seen the text of the treaty or agreement, it was 
 doubtless either temporary or special, and did not extinguish the inde- 
 pendent existence of the less ancient community; for in 1502 the 
 Upholders appear in one of the municipal lists as fifty-second in order, 
 but without a Livery. They had been amalgamated with the Skinners 
 merel)- for specific purposes — perhaps for municipal protection and con- 
 venience. 
 
 But when we reach the second )-ear of Charles I., and find the 
 Upholders at length in possession of a charter, it is somewhat remarkable 
 that by some of Its terms a right of supervision is granted over work 
 executed by the Craft, whence it may or must be deduced that in 1626 
 the new Company counted among its constituency some, at least, who 
 were manufacturers — possibl)' of furniture and coffins. At this date the 
 position and resources are indicated by the subscription of the rather 
 moderate sum of 2/. -js. l\d. toward the outlay incurred by the City in 
 connection with the coronation of Charles I. in 1629. 
 
 The governing body is composed of a Master, Wardens, and Court of 
 Assistants. The Court calls up members from the Liver)-, which is 
 unlimited, at its discretion. 
 
 In 1699 the Livery was returned at 121, in 1724 at 144, in 1739 at 
 131, in 1882 at 38, and in 1892 at 33. In 1739 the fine was 4/. \os.
 
 656 
 
 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 But all fines and fees have long been abolished, and the income arises 
 from the interest on 8,350/. (320/.), realized by the sale of the land on 
 which the Hall and other houses formerly stood, exclusively of Jackson's 
 Charity, which distributes 20/. a year among poor members. 
 
 Ube Mar CbanMers. 
 
 O'-*^ 
 
 The occupation of the Wax-chandler was divided between ordinary 
 customers and the supply of his wares to churches and chapels, public 
 schools, and other establishments. The latter branch of the business 
 must have long remained by far the most extensive and profitable. The 
 terms of almost every ancient will mention the employment of tapers 
 of all kinds of this material for use in the offices of the dead. The 
 produce of the hive was naturally viewed as the fittest medium for the 
 twofold purpose of light and purification ; and even in the statutes of 
 St. Paul's, Dean Colet laid down a rule, followed elsewhere, that the boys 
 were to provide in the winter time a wax candle.' 
 
 Swarms of bees were sometimes left to churches for the purpose of 
 supporting lights ; and these institutions during the mediaeval period 
 grew very numerous, so that the present resort to the practice even in 
 the Papal Church must be considerably more sparing than formerly, 
 when we hear of the summer-game light, the young men's light, the 
 bachelors' light, the married men's light, the maidens' light, the young 
 men's light, the children's light, the wives' light, the plough light, the 
 hoglers' light, the tuckers' light. It seems not improbable that, where 
 the means of obtaining the material existed on the spot, religious bodies 
 manufactured their own tapers and candles, and perhaps maintained on 
 the staff some one versed in the mistery. 
 
 The very derivation of our term ceremony {cera, wax) at once power- 
 fully indicates the universal prevalence of the material in all religious 
 
 ' At Merchant Taylors' School, as recently as 1850, each boy was expected to bring 
 a candle with him on Probation Day ; but tallow was permitted.
 
 TIIK WAX CHANDLERS. 657 
 
 formalities, and the consequently enormous custom for it at the hands 
 of the clergy, independently of its consumption in civil life and for legal 
 or constitutional purposes. 
 
 Again, where acts of penance or expiation were enjoined, a normal 
 feature was a waxen taper in the hands of the offender. Here the 
 notion of purity and light was equally present. 
 
 The torches so largely and habitually required for processions and 
 pageants, and in the precincts of theatres, in the almost total ab.sence 
 of other provision for lighting the streets, formed a further source of 
 demand ; in these cases, with the wax was mixed a certain proportion 
 of resin, in order to prolong the supply of flame. And there seems to 
 have been a usage, by which the chandler sometimes let the torches on 
 hire, and charged only for as much as was consumed. 
 
 The Companies, as bodies extensively concerned in religious celebra- 
 tions, were at all times large and constant customers to the wax 
 chandler, through whom they supplied the altars of the churches and 
 chapels with lights, and from whom they also hired torches on festive 
 and other occasions. A species of wax — saffron wax — was employed 
 b_\- the Broderer in his work, as we learn from the account of the 
 material and ingredients purchased for the hearse-cloths of some of the 
 Companies. 
 
 At a very remote period the high price of wax rendered it barely 
 available for common use or for purposes where tallow or oil would 
 sufiRce. But the tariff gradually declined from the middle of the 
 thirteenth century, when the price was is. per lb., to 1490, when it had 
 fallen to a fourth of that amount. 
 
 The relative costliness and importance of wax and tallow are illus- 
 trated by two entries in a book of accounts of the Cofferer of Thomas 
 Earl of Lancaster, 7 Edward II. (1313-14) ; — 
 
 "For 1714 pound VVaxe, with A'ermilion and Turpentine to make red Wax 
 
 ^314 7 43- 
 "For 1319 pound of Tallow candles for the houshold, and 1870 of light for 
 Paris-candles, called Perchers, /31 14 3." 
 
 Here we gain a glimpse at an early date of the large consumption of 
 both sorts, calculated on the demand for one baronial establishment 
 for a twelvemonth ; and it also appears that coloured wax had been 
 introduced. 
 
 The early prices of wa.x candles, torches, and tapers may be judged 
 from innumerable entries in household and other accounts. Among the 
 expenses for the funeral of Sir John Finkell, Draper, in 15 19, occur : — 
 " To Stephen Ward, wax chandler, for 24 torches, of 24 lbs. a-piece ; 
 4 tapers of 14 lbs. a-piece ; and two branches of white wax, goodly 
 
 c.c. 83
 
 658 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 made, together with four mighty high standard candlesticks, clean gilt, 
 S4S. 4d." 
 
 The Gild of Wax Chandlers has bye-laws extending back to 1358, 
 when, as is expressly recited in the preamble of 
 the earliest Articles, certain abuses in the trade 
 demanded correction. The code describes the 
 h'raternity as "all the Wax-chandlers who are 
 dwelling within London and in the suburb, as well 
 freemen as foreigners, who shall make torches, 
 cierges, prikets, great candles, or any other man- 
 ner of wax-chandlery for sale." It provides for 
 OLD ARM.s. ^Yie appointment of supervisors, who are to be two 
 
 •or four of the most lawful folks of the trade. 
 
 This code was renewed and enlarged in 1371, and the later issue enters 
 into some instructive particulars as to the prices charged for articles, as 
 well as into the rather extensive practice of letting out torches for 
 funerals and other occasions. Chandlers made torches for parties bring- 
 ing their own wax and wick, or paying extra for the wick. It was 
 likewise provided that every chandler should have his own mark to set 
 upon his work. 
 
 There seems to be no trace of any approach to the municipal authori- 
 ties before 1358 or between that date and 1371. On the former occasion 
 the Gild was left at liberty to fix its governing body at two or four 
 Wardens ; and from the circumstance that in 1371 two, Walter Rede 
 and John Pope, were appointed, it ma)- be presumed that the lower 
 number was preferred, as it has been retained to the present day. 
 
 The Wax Chandlers, who had scarcely become, at the close of the 
 fifteenth century, so important and conspicuous a body as the nature of 
 their industry might have prepared us to expect, owing in part, it may 
 be, to an appreciable share of the custom of the Church being diverted 
 by the agency above-mentioned, obtained from Richard III. in 1483 
 their parent charter, in which their humble standing is argued by the 
 extent of their licence in mortmain — five marks, or 3/. 1 35. 4rt'. a year, 
 and in the succeeding year a grant of arms.' The charter was renewed 
 several times - by inspexiiuus down to 15 Charles II., which is the acting 
 one ; and bye-laws, the earliest after those of 1371, were approved by 
 the Judges, June 28, 1664. By the charter of 1663 the power to hold 
 real property was considerably extended. 
 
 Some years prior to the first charter the Company undertook (1469) 
 
 ' A further grant was made in 1536, 28 Henry VIII. 
 
 * June 7, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary, 2 Elizabeth, and 2 James I. There was the 
 ordinary incident of the Quo Warranto and its reversal by the Act of 1690.
 
 THE WAX CHANDLERS. 659 
 
 to supply 21 men to the City Watch. In 1502 it is .stated to have a 
 Livery (by prescription) of 17; and in 15 15 the twentieth place was 
 appropriated to it b)- the Corporation in all public acts and ceremonies, 
 the Tallow Chandlers following immediately after. 
 
 The first acquisition of property was apparently the land on which 
 the Hall has always stood, and which can be traced back as far as 1493. 
 In 1543 tenements in Coleman Street came into the hands of the 
 Company under the will of Robert Brocket ; and it possesses other 
 estates in Upper Thames Street, Sugar-Loaf Court, Old Change,' and 
 Aldersgate Street, partly obtained by gift and partly by purchase. In 
 1892 the total income was returned as 1,600/., of which 230/. repre- 
 sented trusts.- 
 
 The Company is governed by a Master, two Wardens (Upper and 
 Renter), and twenty Assistants. The Master and Wardens hold office 
 for two years. 
 
 The Livery is unlimited. We have noted that as early as 1502 it 
 existed by custom. In 1699 it amounted to 79 ; in 1724, to loi ; in 
 1882, to 41 ; and in 1892, to 27. In 1882 twenty-five persons were said 
 to be on the Freedom, to which women are admissible. 
 
 The connection with the trade has long determined. 
 
 The Hall, to which we have already adverted as being situate in what 
 is at present known as Gresham Street, originally lay in Ingane Lane, 
 subsequently called Maiden Lane, and while the licence in mortmain 
 was only 3/. 13^. ^d. a year, namely in 1493, was already in the hands of 
 the Company, held in feoffment, we may infer, as in other instances, 
 until enlarged powers were conferred. It was there, of course, in the 
 days of Stow, who says nothing about it, and disappeared in 1666. The 
 present structure, which immediately faces Haberdashers' Hall, is per- 
 fectly modern and of limited area.' It must be at least the fourth 
 building which has occupied the ground. Of the exterior of the one 
 which was erected after the Great Fire, we have before us a beautiful 
 water-colour drawing by Shepherd, made in 181 1. 
 
 ' A warehouse and premises, purchased as recently as 1790. 
 
 - The corporate funds were, it is officially stated, considerably reduced by the 
 Chancer)- proceedings of 1878 in relation to Kendal's Charity. Yet in 1834 the pro- 
 ceeds of the London property were given as only 668/. a year, and internal sources 
 are almost wholly unproductive. 
 
 ^ In 1882 its rateable value was returned as 417/.
 
 •66o THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Ube Meavers. 
 
 As the Founders lay claim to descent from Tubalcain, the son of 
 Lamech and Zillah, so the Weavers are entitled to trace their origin so 
 far back as Naamah, daughter of that pair, and sister of the first artificer 
 in brass and iron. 
 
 The priority of the existence of Craft and other mercantile associations 
 to any existing record of them seems to be a warrantable inference from 
 the universal tendency of such bodies to knit themselves together at an 
 early stage for purposes of protection and government, and from the 
 testimony which they have supplied to us, in the notable case of the 
 Pipe Rolls entries of 1180, of continuing to grow, and to assume, by 
 virtue of a sort of lax prescription, rights and privileges requiring the 
 sanction of the Crown, and involving them by default in amercements. 
 
 It is of course impossible to determine how long the eighteen 
 " Adulterine " Gilds had been exercising usurped authority, when they 
 were detected and fined in 11 80, although the political circumstances 
 might have favoured their escape from observation. When we look at 
 the obscure and humble beginnings of even the Greater Companies, it is 
 perfectly likely that they did not, as a rule, care to seek formal re- 
 cognition until they had something to gain by the step, and something 
 to lose by neglecting it ; and the light manner in which the offenders 
 were treated in 11 80 shews perhaps at once, that they were not judged 
 very guilty or very important. Their significance as political factors 
 and as financial resorts was yet to come. 
 
 This view may be further substantiated in the present case by the 
 logical conclusion, that the art of weaving, with which were associated 
 the subsidiary processes of spinning and carding, preceded that of dye- 
 ing the product, and that the most ancient woollen manufactures were 
 plain, while in a more or less rude form they probably rank among the
 
 THK WEAVERS. 66 I 
 
 features of the most primitive English life when our distant forefathers 
 liad renounced the use of skins. 
 
 At the same time, if the traditional legend of Sweyn of Orkney, nar- 
 rated under the account of the Dners, be entitled to credit, the art of 
 communicating attractive tinctures to articles of apparel or use did not 
 follow far behind the introduction of the textiles themselves, and in fact 
 it transferred to the garments the bright and striking hues with whicli 
 at the outset the Britons decorated their persons. 
 
 In the reign of Henry VI. tlic Court of Aldermen certified to the 
 Crown on the back of a writ in Chancery, that " from time beyond the 
 memory of man there were used and approved in the City three 
 Misteries, distinct and separate each from other, to wit, the native 
 Telarii of woollen cloths of and for Tapestry, the native Telarii of 
 woollen cloths of and for Drapery, and the native Telarii of and for 
 Napery." It is added that the second of these had had a Gild of their 
 own long before the statute of 1 1 Edward III. (1337-8). 
 
 Maitland says : " The Company originally consisted of the Cloth and 
 Tapestry Weavers, who, by Act of Parliament of the seventh of Henry 
 IV. were put under the government and correction of the Lord Mayor 
 and Aldermen of this City." 
 
 HE Telarii, or Weavers, are perhaps to be considered the 
 most ancient of the Anglo-Norman Gilds, and in point 
 of fact to have been substantially in existence before 
 the Conquest. But the earliest tangible reference to 
 them is a recitation of a charter of Henry I. (1100-35) 
 in one of his grandson Henry II. (1154-S9), wherein 
 the King makes known to all concerned,' that he has granted to the 
 Weavers of London to have their Gild there, with all liberties and cus- 
 toms, which they had in the time of Henr}^ his grandfather, and in such 
 
 ' Stow {Survey of London, by Howes, 1633, p. 297) gives as follows the text of the 
 licence of Henry II. : — 
 
 " Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy and of Guian, Earle of Anjou, to the 
 Bishop, Justices, Sheriffs, Barons, Ministers, and all his true Lieges of London, 
 sendeth greeting ; Knowe ye, that we have granted to the Weavers in London their 
 Guild, with all the Fredomes and Customs that they had in the time of King Henry my 
 Grandfather : so that none but they intermit within the City their Craft, but he be of 
 their Guild ; neither in Southwarke, or other places pertaining to London, otherwise 
 than it was done in the time of King Henry my Grandfather. Wherefore I will and 
 straightly command, that over all lawfully they may treat, and have all aforesaid, as 
 well in peace, free, worshipfuU, and wholly as they had it ; freer, better, worshipfuUier, 
 and whoUier, than in the time of King Henry my Grandfather. So that they yeeld 
 yeerly to mee two Markes of Gold, at the Feast of Saint Michael. And I forbid that 
 any man to them doe any unright, or disease, upon paine of ten pound."
 
 662 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 sort that none, unless by their leave, or that it be done by one of them- 
 selves, shall intermeddle with their ministers [government] within the 
 City or in Southwark, or in the places adjoining, as was ordered in the 
 reign of his grandfather. A penalty of ten pounds was incurred by any 
 offender against this regulation ; and the Gild on its part engaged to 
 pay to the Crown two marks of gold every year at Michaelmas.' 
 
 This concession of Henry II., which was given at Winchester, exhibits 
 the Weavers in the light of a body of long and generally recognised 
 standing; and Stow affirms that in the 31st year of the same reign 
 (1184-5) there was a second instrument executed in favour of the same 
 Association. " Also I reade," he says, " that the same Henry the second, 
 in the 31 of his reigne, made a Confirmation to the Weavers, . . . 
 wherein it appeareth, that the said Weavers made woollen cloth, and 
 that they had the correction thereof. But amongst other Articles in that 
 Patent it was decreed, That if any man made cloth of Spanish wooll, 
 mixed with English wooll, the Portgraveor principal Magistrate of Lon- 
 don ought to burn it ..." ; and the historian proceeds to give an 
 account of the Statute passed in 1197 for the further regulation of the 
 woollen trade. 
 
 The two patents of Henry II. were followed by an inspexiiniis dated 
 from London, April 8, 27 Edward I. But in 14 Edward II. (1320-1) a 
 Scire facias issued, requiring the Fraternity to shew by what authority 
 it exercised its rights and privileges, including the election of bailiffs 
 and ministers (subject to the approval of the Court of Aldermen), the 
 holding of weekly Courts for the transaction of current business, the 
 immunity from interference in the conduct of their Craft and from the 
 jurisdiction of the Courts in matters relevant to the Gild, the view of 
 tools and implements, and the distraint on them for arrears of quarter- 
 wages or other dues payable by members, the exclusion of strangers, 
 
 ' In the time of Henry I. according to Maitland, this Gild paid si.xteen pounds a 
 year to the Crown by way of tribute or fee. 
 
 The tribute or fine imposed on the Weavers for payment at Michaelmas is not 
 readily convertible into our modern currency ; and it will be more prudent to satisfy 
 ourselves by the light of collateral evidence, that it was a heavy amount and possibly 
 beyond the resources of those who engaged to discharge it. A charter of John re- 
 voked that of Henry II. in favour of the Corporation, which seems to have undertaken 
 to give twenty marks (of silver) in lieu of eighteen, renderable at the same period 
 (Michaelmas) in order to determine the contract between the Crown and the Weavers.* 
 The fact seems to be, however, that the municipal authorities found themselves 
 equally unable or unwilling to fulfil the agreement, as in 4 John (1202-3) they owed 
 the King 60 marks, or three years' arrears ; and the practical result was, doubtless, that 
 the Gild continued to flourish, and to constitute a source of jealousy and soreness to 
 the City at large. So far as we are now concerned, this mainly serves to establish its 
 importance. 
 
 * Pro Gildd Tclaria delenda, ita ut de ccsteyo non iuscitttur.
 
 THE WEAVERS. 663 
 
 the dismissal of defaulters or delinquents, with the forfeiture of his tools, 
 at the discretion of twenty-four of the Gild, the power claimed of super- 
 vising all cloth of Candlewick [Cannon] Street, whether it was suspected, 
 or not, of being bad, or of being of mixed Spanish and English wool, 
 the suspension of work between Christmas and the Purification, as well 
 as after dark. 
 
 This rehearsal of inquiries, or inquisition, admits us by inference to 
 a fuller knowledge of the position of the Weavers than we should gain 
 by any direct testimony ; and the answers of the jury of twelve cm- 
 panelled to give their verdict form a supplementarj- fund of informa- 
 tion in the same wa}-. The jurors found that it was in 1320-1 the 
 established usage of the Fratcrnit)' to hold their Court, not weeklj-, but 
 at three-weekly intervals, and that there was no right of external inter- 
 ference with them and their proceedings ; that thirty years since there 
 were 280 Burrillers or Astilamenta, but that at present there were only 
 80, whereof the majority were emplo\^ed by the Weavers on terms disad- 
 vantageous to the community ; and that the Ordinances of the Weavers 
 in regard to the control and punishment of members of the Gild by a 
 verdict of 24 of the governing body were ultra vires. 
 
 How this matter was ultimately adjusted, does not appear ; but the 
 recognition of the Crown was not withheld very long ; and in fact, as 
 we see from the list of charters and royal licences given below, the Gild 
 took advantage of the opening of a new reign in 1327 to secure a regular 
 constitution. 
 
 The Ordinances of the Weavers, attributed to the time of Edward I., 
 present internal testimony of the existence of prior codes ; they are of 
 unusual interest as the probable germ of those of the Clothworkers, who, 
 through the Shearmen and Fullers, trace their pedigree from this more 
 ancient Brotherhood. 
 
 At this time, the governing body consisted of Bailiffs, a Clerk, and a 
 Serjeant, the last-mentioned having to conduct searches. Courts, com- 
 posed of the Lord Mayor or four deputies, were to be held each week, 
 and a general meeting of the Gild once a year. Of course, much of the 
 space is devoted to technical details as to the composition and mix- 
 ture of cloths, their weight and breadth, the processes of fulling, dyeing, 
 and so forth ; but some of the articles relate to the obligations of widows 
 of freemen, who on re-marriage to a non-freeman, must quit their late hus- 
 bands' premises ; to the legal privileges of the Craft in exemption from 
 the jurisdiction of the ordinary Courts in matters touching the trade, 
 and to the stoppage of goods at the Citj' gates, unlawfully sent to be 
 fulled or dyed outside the bounds. 
 
 But Edward III., whose foreign wars were far from being unmitigated
 
 664 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 misfortunes, was the first who gave a decided stimulus to the English 
 Weavers by relaxing certain archaic restrictions in regard to the work- 
 ing of the material employed, and by inviting (1330) foreigners to settle 
 in London for the purpose of instructing his subjects in a more ample 
 and thorough knowledge of the mistery, while, on the other hand, 
 agreeably to the commercial theories, nay, demands of the period, he 
 interdicted the importation of foreign cloth and the export of native 
 wool. 
 
 Cognizance is taken on a former page ' of the Flemisli Weavers and 
 the Alien Weavers, two Societies, which co-existed in London with each 
 other and with the English Fraternity. No moral doubt can be en- 
 tertained that the art and industry, which they pursued in common, and 
 with which the Fullers and Shearmen, and eventually the Clothworkers, 
 were connected, was of foreign origin, and was introduced into London 
 and even into some parts of the provinces, as Oxford, Beverley, New- 
 castle-on-Tyne, at an epoch beyond any existing record, seeing that the 
 English associated Weavers themselves were of more or less lengthened 
 standing, when (by allowable presumption) the charter of Henry I. was 
 conferred. 
 
 A further step in the direction of improving and regulating the woollen 
 trade was the removal of the Staple from Calais in 1361 to Westminster 
 and eight other places in England, each district being governed by a 
 Mayor and two Constables, and being exactly defined. That of West- 
 minster extended from Temple Bar to Tuthill Fields ; in 1378, it was 
 removed to Holborn, where the name is still preserved ; its proceedings 
 were conformable to the law merchant ; and it took cognizance not 
 only of wool, but of the four other staples, woolfells, leather, lead, and 
 tin. Occasionally the Lord Mayor coupled with his own office that of 
 Mayor of the Staple, as we note in the case of Sir John Allot, Fish- 
 monger, so late as 1590. 
 
 As early as 1367, at least, the Hosier, or salesman of certain of the 
 goods made by the Weaver, occurs not only as a separate trade, which it 
 has since remained in name rather than in fact, but as one which counted 
 among its members men of substance and standing ; and, from a case 
 which came in the year specified before the Mayor's Court, we might 
 be further entitled to conclude that Hosier Lane was at the outset a 
 seat of the business, if Stow had not stated such to be the case. John 
 Flaundene was at this period, it appears, in possession of various 
 
 ' It is not surprising that the foreign element, composed of settlers who constantly 
 quarrelled among themselves, came into collision with its English pupils ; and in the 
 second year of Richard II. articles of agreement were drawn up with a view to the 
 promotion of a modus vtvendi.
 
 THK WEAVERS. 665 
 
 tenements in Cordwainers' Street, Holborn, and Hosier Lane. The 
 property was evidently important and e.xtensive. 
 
 It is difficult and hazardous to form any deductions from the official 
 records of the City and of the Weavers themselves as to the position and 
 fortunes of the Gild, when we arrive at a later period. The first formal 
 charter was received in 1327, when the Fraternity had been " time out 
 of mind " an organized body with a government by Bailiffs ; and down 
 to 1469, when they furnished the heavy quota of 60 to the City Watch, 
 or even down to 1502, when we find them in possession of a customary 
 Livery of 30, there seems to have been some survival of the old pros- 
 perity and prestige. But in the municipal order of 15 15 they appear 
 as the forty-fourth of 48 Companies, and at the Mayor's Feast in 1532 
 they occupied a very humble position. 
 
 On the other hand, they found lOo/. in 161 5 as partners in the 
 Vintners' Irish manor of Bellaghy, and in 1629 they were assessed at 
 5/. 7J. 6d. toward the arrangements of the City for doing honour to the 
 coronation of Charles I. 
 
 But there is no question that a variety of influences had operated 
 before this date to weaken their resources and impair their practical 
 authority, although the casual or collateral traces of their movements are 
 exceptionally scanty. A system or school of manufacture, more con- 
 temporary in its spirit and more commensurate with the public require- 
 ments, had grown up outside the ranks of the Weavers, and had pushed 
 them into the background,^ independently of the formidable competition 
 of the East India trade with the native silk-looms. 
 
 The charters or licences granted to the Weavers form a remarkably 
 long series, beginning with those of Henry II., in one of which a licence 
 or other patent of Henry I. is recited, and comprising renewals by 
 inspexiimis of 31 Henry II. (1184-5), 28 Edward I. (April 8, 1300), i 
 and 39 Edward III. (1327 and 1366), i Henry VI. (Oct. 15, 1422), 31 
 Henry VIII. (Nov. 7, 1540), 2 and 3 Philip and Mary (Feb. 18, 1555), 
 I Elizabeth (15 Nov. 1558-9), 2 James I. (May 23, 1604), and 2 Charles 
 I. (Nov. 20, 1626). New grants were received in 14 Charles I. (July 4, 
 1638), I James II. (Oct. 24, 1685), and 6 Anne (Nov. 17, 1708). 
 
 The code of bye-laws, by which the Company is governed, bears date 
 March 15, 1737, and was approved by the Judges in the usual manner on 
 the 24th March ensuing. 
 
 In the Ordinances of the Gild, made and approved in the reign of 
 
 ' The Weavers, with the Tylers and Bricklayers, were e.xcepted from the proposed 
 charter of 1636 in favour of the Retail Trades of London and the Suburbs, for the 
 prob.ible reason that they worked for the trade only, and were not salesmen. 
 
 C.C. 84
 
 666 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Edward I., the Weavers are described as consisting of Bailiffs and a 
 Commonalty; and in 1502 there was a Livery of 30. In 1699, the 
 Livery was returned as 180; in 1724, as 263; in 1882, as loi ; and in 
 1892, as TJ. But the figures of 1724, if not the rest, seem to suggest that 
 ■we have there the inclusive aggregate of the Company ; and the same 
 remark applies to 1739, when the numbers were given as 279. At the 
 last-mentioned date, there were two Bailiffs, two Wardens, and sixteen 
 Assistants. The Livery fine was then 6/. 
 
 In 1882 the Executive corresponded to that existing at the earlier 
 period, except that the number of Assistants was 18. The staff is com- 
 posed of the Upper and Renter Bailiff, the Upper and Renter Warden, 
 the Clerk, the Surveyor, and the Beadle. 
 
 Of the corporate property no particulars have been divulged ; but in 
 1892 the trust-estate amounted to 360/. 
 
 Of the Hall in Basinghall Street, which has been long since relinquished. 
 Stow (1633) affords no more than a cursory mention. Maitland (1739) 
 describes it as a handsome one. It appears to have stood between 
 Masons' and Girdlers' Halls. 
 
 The former frequenters of Spitalfields have left a record of their im- 
 pressions, when they strolled through this once primi- 
 tive and characteristic locality, and listened to the 
 weavers singing at their looms. Brayley speaks of 
 this as a practice, which they had introduced from 
 their original homes in the Netherlands and other 
 parts. As ordinary conversation was more or less 
 apt to interfere with their work, it is easy to under- 
 stand how they acquired a habit of chanting or recit- 
 i^M"-. 1033. ji^g ditties and rhymes of a popular cast to relieve 
 
 the monotony of their labour. 
 
 Some of the members, on the establishment in 1741 by John Immyns, 
 an attorney, at the Twelve Bells in Bride Lane, of the Madrigal Society, 
 joined the institution, and it also counted several artisan clothworkers 
 from the same musical predilection. In the First Part of Henry IV., 
 Falstaff is made to exclaim, " I would I were a weaver, I could sing all 
 manner of songs ! " and in the Silent IVoman, by Ben Jonson, one of the 
 characters accounts for a cold contracted by the minister, by saying that 
 he got it by sitting up late and singing catches with clothworkers. 
 
 LITERARY NOTICE.S. 
 The Weaver's Song in the Praise of Love and Friendship. [About 1600. J A ballad. 
 A Breviate of the Weavers' Business before the Honourable Committee of the House 
 of Commons in the Star-Chamber. [July 28, 164S.] 410, 1648.
 
 THE WHEELWRIOIITS. 
 
 667 
 
 Minerva, Or, the Art of Weaving. Containing the Antiquity, Utility, and Excellency 
 
 of Weaving. By R. C. 8vo, 1677. Inverse. 
 Strange and Fearful Newes from Plasto, neare Bow, in the House of one Paul Fo.\-, 
 
 :i .Silk-wc.iver, where is dayly to be scene throwing of Stones . . . Cutting his 
 
 Work in Pieces. 4to, n.d. [About j(')So.] 
 The Weavers' and Clothiers' Complaint against the East India trade. 1699. A 
 
 broadside. 
 
 XTFje XClbcchvriobts. 
 
 In 1669-70, a petition was addressed to the Crown by the Wheelwrights 
 of London, setting forth that certain foreigners undertake the profession 
 and trade of a wheelwright, notwithstanding they are ignorant and un- 
 skilful therein, and altogether incapable of making the works used in and 
 about the said City, whereby much mischief happeneth to persons in the 
 streets, by falling of carts and coaches, and great damage to merchants 
 and others in their goods, as also loss and danger to gentlemen, occasioned 
 by the ignorance and ill-work of the said foreigners, that never served 
 to the said profession ; and that other great inconveniences and mis- 
 demeanours are used and practised in the said art and trade ; and ac- 
 cordingly praying that the petitioners might be formed into one body 
 politic for the prevention thereof 
 
 A charter, dated February 3, 1670, was the fruit of this representation. 
 It constituted all persons employed as wheelwrights within the City and 
 five miles' compass one body corporate and public under the style of The 
 Master, Wardens, Assistants, and Commonalty of the Art and Mistery 
 of Wheelwrights of the City of London, with a common seal, the right 
 to sue and be sued, a licence in mortmain to 40/. a year,' the power 
 of search in conjunction with an officer of the City,'^ and authority to 
 appoint a Clerk and Beadle. 
 
 The instrument nominated the Master, two Wardens, and eighteen 
 
 ' This faculty has never been exercised. 
 
 - All justices of the peace and others were enjoined to be assisting to the Company 
 in carrying out these letters patent.
 
 668 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Assistants, and provided that they should thereafter be elected an- 
 nually on the Thursday following Michaelmas Day. It concluded 
 with the stipulation that, in case the present concessions, or any of 
 them, should prove to be contrary to public good and benefit, the 
 Crown might, under writ of Privy Seal, determine it or them wholly or 
 in part. 
 
 The bye-laws, interpreting the charter and governing the internal 
 arrangements, are dated October 12 immediately ensuing. They are 
 of the normal tenor, except one, which inflicts a penalty of 5/. on any 
 member refusing to serve, if the Company is required to furnish his 
 Majesty's train of waggons or artillery. There is also a peculiar inhi- 
 bition against making wheels in any brewer's or coachmaker's shop — 
 that is, on their premises. In a renewal of these Ordinances, April 3, 
 1 7 14, the two special provisions do not occur. 
 
 Under the power of search, which was first carried into effect in 1671, 
 the area under jurisdiction was divided into the North and South sides, 
 and two searches were usually made every year. The principle has 
 been abandoned since 1750. For the north side a warrant was obtained 
 from the Recorder. 
 
 The payment of quarterwages and fines appears to have long remained 
 optional and precarious, and the financial position of the Company was 
 of course correspondingly weak. There being no Livery, the fines 
 amounted to a very inconsiderable sum, and there was no corporate 
 estate. The control over the journeymen was also very imperfect, and 
 about 1720 a movement, which continued with intermissions till the end 
 of the century, began for shortening hours of labour and advancing the 
 rate of wages. The Court had the support of the Justices, as well as 
 counsel's opinion on their side, and even went so far as to indict some of 
 the agitators. But no practical remedy was obtained, and the contro- 
 versy dropped. It is easy to discern throughout a want of consolidation 
 and central authority. At first, no steps seem to have been taken to 
 secure discipline or enforce rules ; and then arrived the period within 
 the experience of all these Societies, when the operative element began 
 to think and act for itself A Jacobinical spirit animated even the lower 
 section of the City Companies, as the second moiety of the eighteenth 
 century was reached. 
 
 In 1882, of 1 50 members of the Wheelwrights' Gild only four belonged 
 to the trade ; and the tie has now become purely nominal. 
 
 The Company is governed agreeably to the only charter. A Livery, 
 which formed no part of the original constitution, was mooted in 1734 ; 
 but the application to the Court of Aldermen was not made till 1773. 
 It was limited to 100, and twice enlarged — in 1792, to 150, and in 1817,
 
 THE WHEELWRIGHTS. 669 
 
 to 250. It has never reached, however, the lowest maximum. In 1882 
 it numbered 105, and in 1892, 120, the Court (21) inclusive. 
 
 There were in 1882 about 45 on the Freedom. Freewomen were 
 formerly admitted by apprenticeship ; but a freewoman transmitted no 
 right to her children, and conferred none upon her husband. It was 
 necessary that she should be bound to a man-milliner, or, in other 
 words, to a trade which she could follow : her master, though free of the 
 Company, probably not belonging to the Craft. 
 
 The income was returned in 1 892 as 300/., partly arising from invested 
 surplus,' and partlj^ from internal sources.^ There are no actual trusts ; 
 but the Wheelwrights treat as such the sum of 155/. paid by two members 
 many years ago — 105/. by Sir William Leighton, on translation to the 
 Fishmongers, and 50/. by Mr. William Leedham, on excusing himself 
 from serving as Master. 
 
 Although the resources are so limited, a yearly amount is disbursed in 
 payments to the poor ; and the Compan)- made donations of lOO/. to the 
 Indian Famine Fund and of 210/. to the City and Gilds Institute. 
 
 In the year succeeding the charter, "for the preservation of amity and 
 brotherly love in this Society," four stewards were chosen to provide an 
 annual dinner at their own expense for the Court and their wives. The 
 number was subsequently reduced to three. This rule, in spite of great 
 opposition and difficulty, was enforced down to 1693, and heavy fines 
 levied on those who refused or failed to comply with it ; but the practice 
 has been since varied b)- calling upon the Master and Wardens to enter- 
 tain the Court on or after each yearly election, a subscription being raised 
 for the purpose, while a Livery dinner is given out of the general funds.-' 
 
 In the accounts for 1873, an item of 65/. i \s. appears for a " badge of 
 the Company's arms." This is presumably the Master's badge specified 
 in the returns among the corporate possessions, which also comprise a 
 few pieces of plate. Three Livery gowns are particularized in the in- 
 ventory ; these were for the investiture of new members ; but on occa- 
 sions when the whole body might be required to assume the distinctive 
 garb, a supply in this, as in all other similar cases, would be necessarily 
 hired. To keep a stock in hand for such contingencies, once more 
 frequent and habitual, was the ro/e of the early Upholder. 
 
 ' In 1882 this had reached 3,400/. in Dominion of Canada 4 per cents. 
 
 ^ Chiefly Assistants' and Liverj'men's fines. The former is 15/., the latter 21/. 
 
 ^ In 1870 the Master's dinner cost 25/., and the Livery dinner the same. But the 
 outlay on both accounts from that date to 1879 shewed a chronic tendency to increase. 
 In 1879, the aggregate amount collected was 225/. 3J. S,d.
 
 6/0 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 Ube Moolmen. 
 
 !!i^^*>. 
 
 The Woolmen are doubtless entitled to claim as belonging to their 
 Gild the Wool-staplers, who may be traced back to the time of the 
 earlier Plantagenets, and who acquired eminence and wealth in the 
 reign of Edward I. One of the most distinguished persons of that 
 period, who engaged in the traffic both for home-trade and for export, 
 was Gregory de Rokesley, eight times Mayor, and a man of honourable 
 and courageous disposition. He united with his business as a gold- 
 smith and his office as general Assay-master of the King and Keeper ot 
 his Exchange, to say nothing of his municipal functions, large trans- 
 actions in wool ; and in 2 Edward I. his name stands at the head of a 
 list of fifty-seven Staplers, who were licensed to export the commodity 
 beyond sea. 
 
 The Woolmen are, at the same time, almost unquestionably identical 
 with the IVoolpackers^ and IVookviiideys ; and the body occurs under all 
 these designations. By a proclamation dated in the reign of Charles II. 
 the Wool-combers were placed under their jurisdiction. 
 
 In the recent account of the Weavers, as well as in the annals of 
 other Associations connected with the wool trade, we have collected 
 rather copious particulars of the periodical ordinances and statutes made 
 on their behalf from the reign of Henry I. 
 
 In 1291-2, Edward I. founded the fair and market at Sandwich, 
 "where," says A Chronicle of London (1089-1483), " alle the wolles of 
 Engelond schal be brought, and there sold ; " and according to the same 
 authority, in the 24th year of the same reign (1295-6), "the kyng lete 
 areste alle the wolles of Engelond, wolle felles and hydes." 
 
 The Statute of 27 Edward III. cap. 23 vested in this body the right 
 of appointing licensed persons to wind wools ; and in the 25th of the 
 same reign, while the influence of the Livery Gilds or voluntary associa- 
 tions temporarily drew into their hands a preponderance of the electoral 
 power in the City, the Woolners or Woolmen were among thirteen 
 bodies who received a precept from the Mayor to delegate representa- 
 tives to Guildhall to confer with him on current affairs, or, in other 
 
 ■ Compare p. 153, suprA. The arms of the Wool-packers, as given by Stow, 1633. 
 correspond.
 
 TlIK WOOLMEN. 6/1 
 
 words, to attend the Common Council ; there is no apparent order of 
 precedence ; and the Woolncrs are the sixth in the h'st. A similar 
 summons was received by the Gilds in 1376. 
 
 In 1386 the cargoes of wool seem to have been usually discharged at 
 what was then already known as Wool Wharf, on the riverside in 
 Tower Ward, and in the year named a weighing house, with accommo- 
 dation for comptrollers and clerks, was built there by John Churchman. 
 
 As the Pepperers and Corders had the nomination of the custodian 
 of the Great Beam or Balance for weighing avoirdupois, the Woolners 
 or Woolmen, at least at one time, were entitled to submit to the Court 
 of Aldermen the name of the keeper of the Small one for Troy or gold- 
 smiths' weight, of 12 ounces to the pound. 
 
 We hear very little indeed of this industry, when the earlier period of 
 its existence and duration has passed ; and it evidently shared the fate 
 of the weaving trade, and through similar agencies, having equally, 
 before it rose to the rank of a corporate institution, outlived its import- 
 ance and prosperity. 
 
 Even in 1469, in a return where near!)- all the then existing Gilds 
 are mentioned and, assessed, it does not occur ; in 1502, it ranked forty- 
 fifth (out of 74) with a prescriptive Livery of eight ; and in 15 15 it was 
 officially declared the forty-fifth in order among forty-eight associations 
 enumerated. 
 
 Sir John Crosby is described by Stow as a Woolman. "Then have 
 ye," says he, " one great house, called Crosbie Place, because the same 
 was builded by Sir lohn Crosbie, Grocer and Woollman, in place of 
 certaine Tenements, with their appurtenances, letten to him by Alice 
 Ashfield, Prioresse of S. Helens, and the Covent, for ninety nine 
 yeeres, from the yeere 1466. unto the yeere 1565. for the annuall rent 
 of eleven pounds six shillings eightpence." 
 
 This passage and reference are so far serviceable, that they shew how- 
 some combined transactions in wool and the fellowship of the Gild with 
 another and more lucrative calling. But we may likewise conclude that 
 the Woolmen gradually absorbed the Staplers, the Packers, and the 
 Winders,' as well as the Combers, and in fact acquired for what it was 
 worth a general control over the wholesale market. 
 
 In a petition, which it had occasion to present to the Court of Alder- 
 men in 1825, the Woolmen represented themselves as an ancient 
 Company by prescription, which at various times had been acknow- 
 ledged as such, and had been called upon in conjunction with others to 
 perform suits and services for the protection and honour of the City. 
 
 Down to 1779 every Woohvinder required a licence from the Company.
 
 672 THE MINOR COMPANIES. 
 
 We have to rely, however, on these and other indirect evidences in 
 forming a narrative and estimate in the present instance, as the papers 
 of the Gild appear to have almost without exception perished in 1666, 
 when the Hall was burned down. 
 
 The charter is said to have fallen a prey to the flames ; but the 
 Ordinances, by which, agreeably to analogy, it was perhaps closely 
 followed, have been preserved ; and they bear date in 1587. These 
 regulations deiine the constitution of the governing body, the duties of 
 the Clerk and Beadle, and are of the usual character. 
 
 The Executive consists of a Master, two Wardens, and eleven 
 Assistants. The Master and Wardens hold office for two years, and are 
 unpaid. It is a curious survival, that Assistants, on refusing to serve as 
 Warden, are fined five marks. Votes are taken in the ordinary way or 
 by pricks upon paper. 
 
 In 1825 the Court of Aldermen granted a Livery of 40. The fine is 
 21/.' In 1883 the number returned was 31 ; in 1892, 24.- The gross 
 annual revenue seems to fluctuate between 300/. and 400/, In 1871 it 
 was 303/. ; in 1880, 444/. ; in 1892, 334/. 
 
 The Master has the right to nominate year by year two poor members 
 of the Company as pensioners under Vernon's Charity, administered by 
 the Merchant Taylors. The alms to the Woolmen's pensioners are 
 distributed on the i6th January by the Master and Wardens, and each 
 recipient has half a guinea in lieu of a dinner. 
 
 The accounts are not published; but as in the ten years 1 87 1-80 
 internal sources only realized an average of about 32/. a year, it follows 
 that the difference arises from corporate estate, probably in the shape of 
 periodically invested surplus and of the proceeds of the sale in 1827 
 of tenements in Mark Lane required for the Corn Exchange. 
 
 The convenient proximity of that spot to Wool Wharf or Quay, and 
 the admitted fact that the Company lost a Hall in the Fire, suggests 
 the speculation whether the place of assembly did not stand on the site 
 of the premises demolished in 1827, and whether the circumstances of 
 the Woolmen did not preclude them from rebuilding it. Under April 
 3, 1672, there is a memorandum in the Founders' Books, "that the 
 Company of Woolwinders have liberty to meet at Founders' Hall two 
 days in the year, and to sett a chest or trunk in some convenient place 
 to putt their papers in, for which they shall pay forty shillings. The 
 
 ' In 1882, 34 were said to be on the Freedom. 
 
 ' But in 1882 of the 31 hverymen four had not presented themselves within twenty 
 years. In 1892, the number was returned as 24. The fine on coming on the Court 
 is 10/. ioj-., for refusing to serve as Master, 5/. Assistants receive 21^. for each 
 attendance ; but the higher posts, as we have said, are honorary.
 
 GENERAL LITERARY NOTICE 
 
 Eg. 
 
 (>7Z 
 
 nature of the arrangement indicates that the practice then was, as at 
 
 present, to hold two general Courts in the year ; and the Founders' 
 tenants have been ever since dependent on the same kind of accommo- 
 dation. 
 
 A FEW GENERAL LITERARY NOTICES. 
 
 The Ordynal or Statute, concernyngo Artyficers, Senianntes, and Labourers. 8vo- 
 
 (about 1535.) 
 
 There is more than one edition. 
 
 An Acte touching dyvers orders for Artiticers, Laborers, Servantcs of Husbandrye 
 
 and Apprentices. 5 Elizabeth, Cap. 4. 
 
 Repealed and nialnly re-enacted by Ac\. i James I, c. 22. 
 
 A Briefe Description of Ireland: made in this year, 1589, by Robert Payne, vnto 
 
 XXV. of his partners for whom he is vndertaker there. Svo, 15S9, 1590. 
 
 Reprinted by the Irish Archaeological Society. Payne was a surveyor and land-agent. He is also- 
 llie author of the P'ali'-mciii's Table, 1583. 
 
 A Collection of Svch Orders and Conditions, as are to be obserued by the Vnder- 
 
 takers, Vpon the Distribution and Plantation of the Escheated Lands in Vlster. 
 
 4to, 1608, 1609, i6ro. 
 
 The three points with which these Orders deal are : i. What the British Vndertaker shall have of 
 his Maiesties gift ; 2. What the said Vndertakers shall for their part performe ; 3. In what nianer 
 the same performance shall be. 
 
 The Speech of a Warden to the Fellowes of his Companie. Touching the great 
 
 affairs of the Kingdome. Published by Antibrownistus Puritanomastix. 410, 
 
 1642. 
 Midsnmmer-Moon : or, the Livery-man's Complaint. By Tho. Thompson. 4to, 
 
 16S0. 
 The True Friends to Corporations Vindicated. In .Answer to a Letter concerning 
 
 the Disabling Clauses lately offered to the House of Commons for Regulating. 
 
 Corporations. 4to, 1690. 
 
 C.C. 
 
 85
 
 I/ND EX. 
 
 Abbot, John, Scholarship founded by 516. 
 
 Ackey Trade 161. 
 
 Addis, Thomas, Gunmaker 529. 
 
 Admission to Companies, Ceremony of 
 75-6. 
 
 Adrian, John, Lord Mayor 328. 
 
 Adryan, Walter 129 ; Sale of Jewels 129. 
 
 Adulterine Gilds 396. 
 
 Adventurers, The Merchant — see Mer- 
 chant Adventurers. 
 
 .•\frican Company, The 160- 1. 
 
 .Aldenham Grammar School 93, 384, 38S ; 
 Brewers' Almshouses at 388. 
 
 Alexander, William, Cooper, Bequests of 
 
 447- 
 
 Alien Weavers 664. 
 
 Allen, Sir Thomas, Grocer 244. 
 
 Allen, William, Leatherseller 552. 
 
 Allot, John, Lord Mayor 227, 664. 
 
 Almaines, The 157. 
 
 Almshouses 79, 91-2. See also the 
 various Companies, passim. 
 
 '• Alnager," Office of 335-6. 
 
 Alum, Manufacturers of 384. 
 
 Animals, Regulations concerning slaugh- 
 ter of 398. 
 
 Apothecaries' Compan\-. The 347-54 ; 
 Bibliography 353-4 : Charter 348 ; 
 Constitution 350 ; Continuation of 
 Practical Duties by 349 ; Eminent 
 Members 352 ; Exclusiveness 350 ; 
 Frugality 350 ; Grocers' Enmity to- 
 wards 34S-9 ; Hall 350, 352 ; James L 
 supports 349 ; Opposition of Court of 
 Aldermen 350 ; Origin 347-8 ; Powers 
 70. 348. 
 
 Apparel 24-5. 
 
 Apprenticeship, System of 75. 
 
 Armourers' and Braziers' Company 355-7 ; 
 Charters 356 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 356 ; Constitution of Court 357 ; 
 Contributions towards Education 357 ; 
 Hall 357 ; Numerical Strength 81, 
 3i6 ; Ordinances 355-6 ; Wealth 81. 
 
 Articles of the Armourers 267. 
 
 „ oftlie Taylors 267. 
 Ashfield, Alice, Prioress 671. 
 Assay House, The New 244-6. 
 
 Office of 234, 238. 
 " .Assisa Panis " 52, 53. 
 "Assistants" t9. 
 Associations, Voluntary, Extinct 103-66 ; 
 
 Surviving 154. 
 Attemerke, Richard, Ironmonger 304. 
 Aubery, Andrew, Pepperer 194. 
 " Aulnage.^' The 335. 7,l(^- 
 
 " Bachelors " 301. 
 
 Backers, The 155. 
 
 Bacon, Nicholas, Painter 573. 
 
 Badby, John 136, (Baddeby) 151. 
 
 Baker, John, Brewer 385. 
 
 Baker, John, Cooper 441, 444. 
 
 Baker, Richard, Painter-Stainer 310,. 
 
 577- 
 
 Bakers' Company, The 358-60 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 360 ; Brown Bakers, separate 
 incorporation 358 ; Coat of Arms 360 ; 
 Code 359 ; Connection with Irish Es- 
 tate 359 ; Constitution of Court 359 ; 
 Fees 359 ; Hall 358, 359, 360 ; Numeri- 
 cal Strength 359. See also White and 
 Brown Bakers. 
 
 Barbers' Company, The 361-8 ; Anti<[uity 
 361 ; Art Treasures 366-7 ; Charters 
 363, 364, 365 ; Code, Earliest 361 ; 
 Connection with Irish Estate 366 ; 
 Constitution of Court 361-2, 365 ; Ex- 
 emptions 361 ; Hall 366-7 ; Numerical 
 Strength 365-6: Writ of Richard II. 
 361. 
 
 „ and Surgeons, Union between 363-4 ; 
 Act of Parliament 363 ; Exemptions 
 
 364. 
 „ Surgery and Physic. 
 Barbour, Nicholas Ic 361. 
 Barentyn, Sir Drue, Goldsmith 243. 
 
 675
 
 -6/6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bargemaster, Duties of 475. 
 
 Barnard's Inn, Division of Property of 73. 
 
 Bartlet, John, Bookseller 241. 
 
 Basing Hall 439. 
 
 Basket-makers' Company, The 369-70 ; 
 Connection with Irish Estate 370; Con- 
 stitution of Court 369-70 ; Final Estab- 
 lishment 369 ; Peculiar Constitution of 
 the Society 369. 
 
 Bat, Thomas 650. 
 
 Batman, Stephen, Preacher 389. 
 
 Beam, Great, The King's 165. 
 „ Small 165. 
 
 Beamond, Thomas, Salter, Bequests of 
 293, 296. 
 
 Beaufieur, James, Vintner 317. 
 
 Becket, Gilbert, Mercer 178. 
 
 Beckford, Wm., Author of Vuthek, Lord 
 Mayor 303. 
 
 Beer, Flemish 379 ; in Gaul 378 ; Teutonic 
 parentage 377, 379. 
 
 15ees, Swarms of 656. 
 
 Beeston, William, Brewer, 389. 
 
 Bell, Mr., Carpenter 650. 
 
 Bellow, Roger, Brewer, bequest of 388. 
 
 Bermudas Company, The 160. 
 
 Berthelet, Thomas, Printer 636, 637. 
 
 Beston, Mr. John, Gift of 580. 
 
 Betton's Estate 301. 
 
 Hettoyne, Richard de. Lord Mayor 235. 
 
 Bettoyne, William de 235. 
 
 Bill, Glazier's 518. 
 „ of Mortality 123-5. 
 
 Blackman, William, Tallow Chandler 641. 
 
 lilacksmiths' Company, The 370-4 ; Al- 
 teration in Social Position 370-1, 373 ; 
 Bibliography 374 ; Charters 372 ; Con- 
 nection with Clockmakers 371, with 
 Dentists 371, with Irish Estate 372, 
 with Spurriers 372 ; Constitution of 
 Court, 373 ; Controversy with Clock- 
 makers 372, with Gunmakers 373 ; Cup 
 374 ; Hall 373-4 ; Numerical Strength 
 373 ; Powers 372. 
 
 'Bladers' Company, The 105-6. 
 
 Bladesmiths' Company, The ro5-6. 
 
 Bledelow, John 104. 
 
 Block-makers, The 106. 
 
 Board of Green Cloth, Troubles with 
 Brewers 384. 
 
 Bokerel, Andrew, Lord Ma\or 128. 
 
 Bokerel, Isabella 128. 
 
 Bokerel, Thomas 128. 
 
 Bokerell, Matthew, Sheritt' 128. 
 
 Bockerell, Stephen, Sheriff 128. 
 
 Bone-Setters, The 362. 
 
 Book in Metre of the Rich Merchant Man 
 called Dii'es Pragmaticus 566. 
 
 Boonen, William, Coachm.an 427. 
 
 Booth, Sir Felix 448. 
 
 Borrow, Baptist, Milliner 116. 
 
 Boteler, William, Leatherseller 550. 
 
 Bottle-makers, The 316. See also Horners. 
 
 Bottle-makei^s Delight 535. 
 
 Bowes, Sir Martin 122, 246. 
 
 Bowin, Humphrey, Founder 500. 
 
 Bows, Prices of 375. 
 
 Bowyers' Company, The 374-6 ; Charities 
 376 ; Charters 375 ; Constitution of 
 Court 375 ; Contract with Fletchers 
 374 ; Contributions towards Education 
 376 ; Efforts to reconcile with Fletchers 
 486-7 ; Hall 376 ; Ordinances 375. 
 
 Bo.x-makers, The 155. 
 
 Boydell, John, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Brace-makers, The 106. 
 
 Bradshaw, Jeffery, of Bradford 322. 
 
 Braelers, The 106. 
 
 Braithwaite, Mr., Saddler 611. 
 
 Brassfaber, Humphrey, Sheriff 355. 
 
 Braziers and Armourers 355-7. 
 
 Brember, Sir Nicholas, Lord Mayor 604. 
 
 Bret, Robert le. Goldsmith 319. 
 
 Brewer, Stock-in-trade of a, in 1335 380. 
 
 Brewers, as retailers 384-5. 
 
 Brewers' Company, The 312, 377-90; 
 .Almshouses 388 ; Bibliography 389- 
 90 ; and Board of Green Cloth, Trouble 
 between 384 ; Bribery 380 ; Charities 
 386 ; Charters 382, 383 ; Committal 
 383 ; Complaints against Manufac- 
 turers of Alum 384 ; Constitution of 
 Court 382, 383 ; Contributions to Learn- 
 ing 386 ; Dispute between Court and 
 Court of Aldermen 381 ; Fees 385 ; 
 Grant of Arms 383 ; Hall 385-6 ; In- 
 terdict against 380 ; Limitations in 
 Membership 3S3-4 ; Measures 381-2 ; 
 Numerical Strength 81, 382 ; Order of 
 Precedence 380, 382 ; Ordinances of 
 383 ; Ordinances relating to 380, 385 ; 
 Origin 382 ; Prices charged by 384 ; 
 Public Benefactors amongst 386-8 ; 
 Revenue 81, 384; Rights 383; Sir 
 Richard Whittington 381. 
 
 Bricket, John, Toothdrawer, Bequest of, 
 
 363. 
 Bricklayers, Dispute with Carpenters 416,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 677 
 
 with Plaisterers and Tylers 591. See 
 also Tylers. 
 
 Britte, John, Fuller 112. 
 
 Brocket. Robert, Wax-Chandler 659. 
 
 Broderers' Company, The 391-6 ; An- 
 tiquity 391 ; Articles of Work 394-6 ; 
 Bibliography 396 ; Charge of Fraud 
 against 393 ; Charter 392 ; Connection 
 with Irish Estate 392 ; Contributions 
 to Education 393 ; Constitution of 
 Court 392 ; Decay of Trade 392, 393 ; 
 Expenditure 393 ; Hall 393 ; Incor- 
 poration 391 ; Numerical Strength 
 392 ; Ordinances 392 ; Palls worked by 
 394, ditto their cost 394 ; Plate 393 ; 
 Rights 392 ; Value of Embroidery 393. 
 
 Brown Bakers — sec White and Brown 
 Bakers. 
 
 Browne, Edward, Pamphleteer and Poet 
 
 303- 
 
 Browne, Sir John, Sergeant-Painter 578, 
 581. 
 
 Bruce, Sir George 294. 
 
 Bran, Walter le. Farrier 4S1. 
 
 Brydges, The, Dukes of Chandos 210. 
 
 Bucke Legacy, The 465. 
 
 Bury, Abbot of, Assemblies at House of 
 129. 
 
 Buckil, Mr., Painter 580. 
 
 Bucklersbury, Origin of Name 128. 
 
 BuUen, Sir Godfrey, Mercer 181. 
 
 Bullock, Thomas, Painter 577. 
 
 Buns, Hot Cross 104. 
 
 Burdet, Thomas 505. 
 
 Burillers' Company, The 107 ; Special 
 Function 107-8. 
 
 Burle, Nicholas, Dealer in Hides 534. 
 
 Burridge, Mr., Bricklayer, 650. 
 
 Busby, Thos., Cooper, Bequests of, 
 447-8. 
 
 Butchers' Company, The 396-404 ; Act 
 of Parliament to Control 396-7 ; 
 Antiquity 396 ; Bibliography 404 ; 
 Charter 401 ; Complaints against 397, 
 398 ; Constitution of Court 401 ; Ex- 
 penses at Processions 404 ; Fines paid 
 to Crown 400 ; Hall 400, 402, 403 ; 
 Numerical Strength 401 ; Opposition 
 to Foreigners 398 ; Ordinances of 
 400-2 ; Ordinances relating to 399-400 ; 
 Prosperity 400, 401. 
 
 Byard, Thomas, Clothw-orker 333. 
 
 Byfield, Robert, Ironmonger 303. 
 
 Bj-gge, Thomas, Leatherseller 550. 
 
 Cademan, Dr. Thos., Address from 468. 
 Cage, John, Salter 295. 
 Camden, Sampson, Painter 581. 
 Campbell, Sir James, Lord Mayor 303. 
 Campbell, Sir Thomas, Lord Mayor 303. 
 Campion, Abraham, Brewer 389. 
 Campion, Henry, Brewer 3S9. 
 Candish, John, Haberdasher 310 
 Capels, The, Earls of Essex 210. 
 Cappers, The 108. 
 Carleton, Thos., Broderer, Bequest of 
 
 391- 
 
 Carmen, Company of. The, 108-9, '5^ ; 
 Bibliography 109 ; Incorporation with 
 Woodmongers 109. 
 
 Carpenter, John, Founder of City of 
 London School 52. 
 
 Carpenters' Company, The 312, 405-17 ; 
 Almhouses4l I, 415 ; Bibliography 416 ; 
 Bowling Alley 41 1 ; Charitable Institu- 
 tion, Transformation into a 410 ; Char- 
 ter 408, 409 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 410 ; Constitution of Court 408, 
 409 ; Contributions to Civic Expenses 
 415, to Civil Wars 415: Dispute 
 with liricklayers 416, with Joiners 416, 
 547, with Sawyers 416, with Wood- 
 mongers 416 ; Emigration Scheme to 
 X'irginia 415 ; Funds 409 ; Garden 
 411,415 ; Grant of Arms 40S ; HaIl4oS, 
 410-5 ; Hall, Paintings in 414 ; Income 
 409-10 ; Incorporation 407-8 ; Numeri- 
 cal Strength 81, 409; Order of Pre- 
 cedence, 407, 409 ; Ordinances 409 ; 
 Original Position 405 ; Paintings in 
 Hall 414; Pall 394 ; Rights 416. 
 
 Carter, Agnes 465. 
 
 Cartwrights, The 155. 
 
 Casketmakers, The 112. 
 
 Catcher, Alderman, Pewterer, Bequest of 
 589. 
 
 Catton, Charles, Painter 581. 
 
 Cawood, John, Stationer 637. 
 
 Caxton, William, Printer and Mercer 182. 
 
 Chamberlain, Richard, Ironmonger 303. 
 
 Chaplin, Mr., Minister of Agriculture 509. 
 
 Charities, Administration of 96. See also 
 names of the various Companies, passim. 
 
 Charlton Fair 530, 
 
 Charney, John, Common Huntsman 625. 
 
 Charrington, Harry, Brewer 385. 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, Poet, Mention of Car- 
 penters' Co. 408 ; Connection with 
 Cloth and Leather Trades 341.
 
 678 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Chavasse, N. C, Queen's Loriner 563. 
 Chawcer, Richard, Vintner, Bequest of 
 
 326. 
 Cheesemongers, The no. 
 Cheesewright, Origin of Name no. 
 Chester, Alice, and Stephen Morgan, 
 
 Indenture between 406. 
 Chichele, Robert, Lord Mayor 3S2. 
 Chicheley, Sir Robert, Pepperer 194. 
 Chicheley, Thomas, Pepperer 194. 
 Chichley, John, Chamberlain of London 
 
 359- 
 
 Chichley, William, Alderman 359. 
 
 Child, Sir Francis 246. 
 
 Chopines 5S3. 
 
 Churchman, John, Merchant Taylor 272. 
 _ Cibber, Caius Gabriel, Leatherseller 559. 
 
 Civic Bodies, their value 6 ; an element 
 of London Life 8. 
 
 Civil War, Contributions of Carpenters' 
 Co. 415. 
 
 Clarencieu.x, Robert Cooke 295. 
 
 Clarencieu.x, Thomas Benoist 295. 
 
 Clarges, Nan, Duchess of Albemarle 
 367- 
 
 Clarke, George, Vintner, Bequests of 
 327- 
 
 Clayton, Sir Robert, builder of part of 
 Christ's Hospital 2n, 616-7. 
 
 Clement's Inn, Division of Property 73. 
 
 Clifford, Scrivener 409, 615. 
 
 Clockmakers' Company, The 417-26; 
 Bibliography 426 ; Bye-laws 420 ; 
 Charters 419, 420 ; Constitution of Court 
 419-24 ; Eminent Members 425 ; Hall 
 42 1 ; Income 425 ; Library 426 ; Livery 
 420 ; Numerical Strength 425 ; Objects 
 419; Origin 418, 419; Relations with 
 Woodmongers 152. 
 
 Clocks, Primitive 417-8. 
 ,, Coffin- 41S. 
 
 „ Manufacture of Water-clocks 417, 
 4 1 8. 
 
 Cloker, Henry, Cooper 446. 
 
 Cloth, Laws for Prevention of False Deal- 
 ings in 335. 
 
 Cloth Trade, Seat of 336 ; Tendency to ' 
 rebel against Imports 336-7. 
 
 Clothworkers' Company, The 134,331-44; 
 Administrators of 64 ; Almshouses 79, 
 339 ; Amalgamation with Shearers and 
 Fullers 332 ; Bibliography 342-3 ; 
 Charters 332, 333 ; College at Leeds 
 341-2 ; Connection with Irish Estate 
 
 335 ; Court, Encroachments of 334, 
 Disagreements between, and Yeomanry 
 334, Practical Duties of 349 ; Eminent 
 Members 339 ; Hall 337-9 ; Import- 
 ance of the Co. 332, 341 ; Numerical 
 Strength 335 ; Ordinances 333-4 ; 
 Origin 331 ; Privileges 332-3, 334. 
 
 enlighten Gild, The 61. 
 
 Coach and Coach-Harness Makers' Co., 
 The 426-30 ; Bibliography 429-30 ; 
 Charter 427 ; Constitution of Court 
 427 ; E.xhibitions 428-9 ; Hall 428 ; 
 Income 427-S ; Library 428 ; Numerical 
 Strength 427 ; Prizes offered 429 ; 
 Technical Education 428. 
 
 Coaches, Introduction of 427. 
 
 Cobblers, The 450, 45 1. 
 
 Coffin-clocks 418. 
 
 Coke, Humphrey, Master Carpenter 406-7. 
 
 Cole, Mr. John, Founder 502-3. 
 
 Colet, Dean 172, 181. 
 
 Colet, Sir Henry 181. 
 
 College of Physicians 350, 352. 
 
 College, Stephen, "Protestant Joiner" 
 
 547. 
 
 Collegia Opificum, The 62. 
 
 Comb-makers, The 1 1 1. 
 
 Commission, Municipal (1833) 50-1 ; 
 Royal (1882), Report 4, 55, 57-60. 
 
 Common Hall, The 3, So, Si. 
 
 Companies, City of London Livery : .Ac- 
 quisition of Property 34 ; Admission 
 of Strangers 33 ; Amalgamation among 
 26-7 ; Ancient Trading 17 ; Benefits 
 conferred by 15; Causes of Revival 
 38 ; Ceremony of Admission 75-6 ; 
 Conditions of Membership 65 ; Con- 
 stitution 13, 19 ; Corporate Estate, Ac 
 quisition of 98-100 ; Decay 65-6 ; 
 Departure from Original Objects 34 ; 
 Differences with Trades Unions 32 ; 
 Drawbacks to 15-6 ; Effect of Fire of 
 London 37-8, 83 ; Effect of Foreign 
 Wars on 18 ; Effect of Plantation of 
 Ulster Estate S3, 87-8 ; Effect of the 
 Reformation 83 ; Encouragement of 
 Trade 74 ; E.xceptional Success of 
 some 34-5 : Existing accounts 40 ; 
 Extinct 81-2 ; Foreign .Sources 16 ; 
 Forerunners of Poorhouses and Hos- 
 pitals 3J ; History 68 ; Incorporation 
 69 ; In England 90, Ireland 91, Wales 
 91 ; Landed Property 64 ; Metropolitan 
 Estate 89-90 ; Number 66 ; Number
 
 INDEX. 
 
 679 
 
 of Members Si ; Objects in Koimdiii!,' 
 4 ; Order of Precedence 43 ; Powers 
 69, 70 ; Present Work 39 ; Privileges 
 78-9 ; Property-division 73 ; Protec- 
 tionist Spirit 13 ; Provincial 72-5 ; 
 Public Benefactions 88 ; Real Estate, 
 Situation of 89 ; Report of Commission 
 57-60 ; Resuscitated 82 ; Returns 39, 
 41 ; Riverside Trading 157 ; Schools 
 93-5 ; Social State in 14th cent. 66 ; 
 Sources of Wealth 37 ; Staff 43-5 ; 
 Statistics 40-1 ; Technical Education 
 88-9 ; Trust Estates, Date of 69 ; 
 Trust Incomes 86-7 ; Great, The 
 Si, 169-342 ; Incomes 84 ; Minor, The 
 347-673; Incomes S5-6 ; Number 81. 
 
 Conduit, Reginald atte, Lord Mayor 328. 
 
 Cooks' Company, The 430-3 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 433 ; Charter 431 ; Connection 
 with Irish Estate 432 ; Constitution of 
 Court 431 ; Endowment 432 ; Expendi- 
 ture 432 ; Hall 432 ; History 431,432 ; 
 Lotteries 432 ; Numerical Strength 
 431-2 ; Order of Precedence 431 ; 
 Prohibitions concerning 430 ; Suspen- 
 sion of Charter 431. 
 
 Coopers' Company, The 3 1 2, 433-48; Alms- 
 houses 445 ; Antiquity 433 ; Armoury 
 440 ; Bequests to 443 ; Bye-laws 437-8 ; 
 Charters 437 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 443 ; Cost of Dinners 447 : 
 Constitution of Court 438 ; Difficulties 
 
 435 ; Earliest Trace of 434 ; Education 
 441-2 ; Expenditure 444-5 ; Fees 439; 
 Governing Body 79 ; Grant of Arms 
 437 ; Hall 439-41 ; Income 445 ; 
 Inventory 440 ; Livery 438-9 ; Marks 
 
 436 ; Numerical Strength 438 ; Order 
 of Precedence 438 ; Ordinances 434, 435; 
 Pall 394,395, 440,444; Peculiar Customs 
 443 ; Penalties imposed 435 ; Pensions 
 445-6 ; Records 441 ; Schools 446 ; 
 Trust Estate 446. 
 
 Copland, William, Printer 319. 
 
 Coppc, Hugh, Plaisterer, Gifts of 593. 
 
 Coppersmiths — see Founders. 
 
 Corders of the Ropery Company, The 
 III. 
 
 Cordwainer, Richard le 454. 
 
 Cordwainers' Company, The 449-56 ; 
 Bibliography 455-6; Charters 451-2; 
 Expenditure 453 ; Feud with Cobblers 
 450-1 ; Grant of Arms 453 ; Hall 452, 
 454-5 ; Numerical Strength 452-3 ; 
 
 Ordinances 449-50, 451 ; Origin 449, 
 
 451. 
 
 Corporate Estate, Mode of Acquirement 
 98. 
 
 Corporate Income 96-8, 99. 
 „ Tax, The 2-3. 
 
 Corporation of Retail Traders of London 
 and Suburbs, Proposed 154. 
 
 Corporations, Foreign 1 56. 
 
 „ Norwegian Trade, Dissolu- 
 
 tion of 74. 
 
 Corporations, Swedish Trade, Dissolution 
 
 of74- 
 Corpus Christi, Gild of 291, 293, 304. 
 ,, „ Skinners' Procession of 
 
 260. 
 Corsors, The 155. 
 Corveiser, Richard Ic 648. 
 Court of Aldermen, Dispute with ISrcwers 
 
 381. 
 Courts, Constitution 77-9, S2-3 ; Meetings 
 
 97- 
 
 Courts of Assistants 77. 
 
 Coutts, Lady Burdett 649. 
 
 Coventry, Thomas, Lord, Peppercr 194. 
 
 Crabbe, George, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Craft Gilds, 62, 63, 67, 75, 350. Sen alsc 
 Companies, Gilds. 
 
 Craft Gilds — see Gilds. 
 
 Craythorne Estate, The 465. 
 
 Cretz, Johii de, Serjeant- Painter 5S0. 
 
 Cromwell — see Williams. 
 
 Crosby, Sir John 194, 671. 
 
 Crosse & Blackwell, Messrs. 509. 
 
 Crowder, John, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Culverwell, Rich., Brewer, Bequests of 
 38S. 
 
 Curriers' Company, The 456-61 ; Charter 
 459 ; Connection with Irish Estate 461 ; 
 Constitution 459 ; Expenditure 461 ; 
 c;rant of Arms 45S ; Hall 459-60, 461 ; 
 Income 461 ; Ordinances 457 ; Privi- 
 leges 458. 
 
 Curtes, Mistress 560. 
 
 Cutlers' Company, The 81, 461-7 ; 
 Charters 463, 464 ; Constitution of 
 Court 463-4 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 466 ; Differences with Sheathers 
 462 ; Disbursements 466 ; Estates 465 ; 
 Hall 463, 465-6 ; Income 466 ; Numer- 
 ical Strength 464-5 ; Order of Prece- 
 dence 464 ; Ordinances 461-2, 464. 
 
 Cuver, Alice le, Insolvency of 434. 
 
 Cuver, Robert le, Insolvency of 434.
 
 68o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Daniel, Roger, King's Printer 555. 
 
 Darrell, Christopher, of Newdigate 311. 
 
 Dashwood, Alderman, Saddler 608, 612. 
 
 Dashwood, Sir Samuel, Vintner, Lord 
 Mayor 325, 32S. 
 
 Davies, Sir Thomas, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Davis, Thomas, Saddler 611. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey, Apothecary 352 
 
 Davy, Oliver, and Whit Johnson, Gold- 
 smiths, Contention between 240. 
 
 Day, Mr., of Epping 106. 
 
 Day, VVm., Vintner, Bequest of 327. 
 
 Delaunay, Noah, Founder 502. 
 
 Delaune, Gideon, Apothecary 347-8. 
 
 Dentistry 363. 
 
 Devil among the Tailors, Story of 263, 
 
 571- 
 
 Dickes, Richard, Vinegar Maker 149. 
 
 Dinghen van den Plasse, Mistress 142-3. 
 
 Disendowment, Agitation for 6. 
 
 Distillers' Company, The 467-72 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 471-2 ; Charter 467, 469 ; Con- 
 stitution of Court 469-70 : Entrance 
 Fees 469-70 ; Grant of Arms 468 ; 
 Numerical Strength 469 ; Oath of 
 Freemen 471 ; Rules and Orders 469- 
 70. 
 
 Doctors' Commons, Division of Property 
 of 73. 
 
 Doddington, Henry, Painter 580. 
 
 Domville, William, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Dome, Edward 553-4. 
 
 Dome, John, Stationer 626. 
 
 Draper, Sir Christopher, Lord Mayor 303 ; 
 Bequest of 307 ; Civic Show 310-1. 
 
 Drapers' Company, The 198-212 ; Bye- 
 Laws 203 ; Charters 200-3 ; Code 203 ; 
 Distinction from Merch. Taylors 265 ; 
 Eminent Members 2 10- 11 ; Entertain- 
 ments 206 ; Estates 201-3 > E.xpendi- 
 ture 204; Hall 206-10; Inventory of 
 Contents of Hall 208-9 i Livery 2 1 1 ; 
 Numerical Strength 210; Ordinances 
 203.; Origin 198; Peculiar Province 
 of 199 ; Privileges 71 ; Trade 204-5 ! 
 Wealth 205. 
 
 Drapery, New 336 ; Old 336. 
 
 Drinkwater, Thomas, Taverner 317. 
 
 Duchewoman, Katherine, Embroiderer 
 393-4- 
 
 Dyeing, Frauds Committed in 474. 
 
 Dyer, The, Importance of 472-3. 
 
 Dyer, John, Woodirionger 152. 
 
 Dyers' Conipany, The 472-7 ; Biblio- 
 
 graphy 477 ; Charter 475 ; Connection 
 with Irish Estate 476, with Vintners 
 475 ; Constitution of Court 476 ; Hall 
 476-7 ; Loss by Fires 474-5 ; Numerical 
 Strength 476 ; Order of Precedence 
 472 ; Property 476 ; Standing Orders 
 475 ; Trust Administration 476. 
 
 Dykeman, William, Ironmonger 303. 
 
 Dyson, Humphrey, Antiquary 211. 
 
 Earlom, Richard, Engraver 612. 
 Earnshaw, Thomas, Clockmaker 425. 
 East, Edward, Clockmaker 425. 
 East India Company, New 161. 
 
 „ „ ,, United 161. 
 
 East India Merchants 161. 
 Easterlings of the Steelyard 156, 157 ; 
 
 Bibliography 163. 
 Edensore, Robert de, Scrivener 614 ; 
 Edwin, Sir Humphrey, Lord Mayor 367. 
 Eggs, Price of, in 14th Cent. 430. 
 Elbing, Merchants of the 158. 
 Elder, William, Plaisterer, Bequest of 
 
 592. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, wears silk Stockings 
 
 177- 
 Ely Fair 531. 
 "Emperor's Men " 126. 
 Entertainments 97. 
 Estate, Corporate, Mode of Acquirement 
 
 98. 
 Evans, David, Lord Mayor 396. 
 Ewin, John 1S2. 
 Expenditure 91-6. 
 Eyre, Sir Simon, Vintner and founder of 
 
 Leadenhall Market 211,326. 
 
 Fair, Charlton 530 ; Ely 531 ; Horn 530 : 
 Sandwich 670; Stourbridge 531. 
 
 Fanhope, Lord 224. 
 
 Fanmakers' Company, The 478-80 ; 
 Bibliography 480 ; Charter 479 ; 
 Income 480 ; Numerical Strength 479. 
 
 Fans, Exhibition of 480 ; Introduction 
 into England 478. 
 
 Farrier, The, Charges in 14th Cent. 481. 
 
 Farriers' Company, The 480-3 ; Biblio- 
 graphy ; 483 ; Bye-Laws 482 ; Charter 
 482 ; Numerical Strength 482 ; Ordin- 
 ances 481 ; Prizes offered by 482-483. 
 
 Farringdon, William, Goldsmith 233. 
 
 Faryngdon, Sir Nicholas, Goldsmith 246. 
 
 Fees, Court 67, 76, 77, 78, 96. 
 „ „ of Ironmongers 301.
 
 INDF.X, 
 
 68 I 
 
 Feite, William Le, Butcher 396. • 
 
 Fellowship Porters, The 154-5; Biblio- 
 graphy 155. 
 
 Fcltmakers' Company, The 483-6 ; liiljlio- 
 graphy 486 ; Causes of Decline 485 ; 
 Charters, 484-5 ; Numerical Strength 
 485 ; Order of Precedence 4S4. 
 
 Felt-manufacture, Origin of 483. 
 
 Ferbras, Rob., Leatherseller, bequest of 
 550, 556. 
 
 Ferris, Richard, of F'addington, Barber- 
 Surgeon 367. 
 
 Feudalism 23. 
 
 Field, Francis 653. 
 
 Field, Henry, Tanner 637. 
 
 Field, Richard, Stationer 637. 
 
 Finch, Sir Heneage, Earl of Nottingham, 
 I'epperer 194. 
 
 Finkell, Sir John, Draper 657. 
 
 Fire of London, Effect on Companies 37- 
 8. 
 
 Firth, James F., Cooper 448. 
 
 Firth, J. H. B., Attack on Companies 
 100. 
 
 Fish Tariff 218. 
 
 Fisher, Thomas, Founder 500. 
 
 Fishermen, Free, Company of in. 
 
 Fishmongers' Company, The 215-30 ; 
 Administrators of 64 ; Bibliography 
 230-1 ; 'Charges against 220 ; Charters 
 216, 217, 2ig, 222 ; Constitution of 
 Court 223, 228 ; Disputes w. Skinners 
 260 ; Eminent Members 227 ; Grants 
 to 216, 217, 222, 223; Hall 224-22S ; 
 Hall-Moots 221. 
 
 Incorporation w. Stock-fishmongers 221 ; 
 Order of Precedence 220 ; Ordinances 
 223, 228 ; Origin 215 ; Powers 69-70 ; 
 Procession 217. 
 
 Fisher, Jasper, J. P. 246-7. 
 
 Fitz Alwyn, Henry, ist Lord ^Layor of 
 London 169-198. 
 
 Fitz Alwyn, Robert, 2nd Lord Mayor of 
 London 169. 
 
 Fitzwilliam, Wm., founder of House of 
 Black Nuns 246, 267, 557. 
 
 " Five Times Five " 324. 
 
 Flael, Radulph, Alderman 232. 
 
 Flaundene, John 664. 
 
 Fla) ing Act, The 402. 
 
 Fleet, Sir John, Lord M;iyoi- 444. 
 
 Flemish Weavers 664. 
 
 Flemming, Richard, Ironmonger 300, 305. 
 
 Fletchers and Bowyers' Company, The 
 C.C. 
 
 374, 486-8 ; Cause of Decline 488 ; 
 Connection witli Irish Estate 488 ; 
 Constitution of Court 488 ; Efforts to 
 reconcile differences with the Bowyers 
 486-7 ; Grant of Arms 487 ; Hall 487 ; 
 Ordinances 487. 
 
 Flyckc, Henry, Girdler, Gifts of 513. 
 
 Foe, Daniel, Author 403. 
 
 Foe, James, Butcher 403. 
 
 Foisters, The 155. 
 
 Forcers, The 1 12. 
 
 Foster, Thos., Broderer, Will of 391. 
 
 Fot, William, Poulter 599. 
 
 Founders' Company, The 488-504 ; Ap- 
 prentices 492 ; Book of Account 498 ; 
 Ceremony of Admission 503 ; Chari- 
 table Fund 503 ; Charter 492 ; 
 Committal to Newgate, 501 ; Con- 
 nection with Irish Estate 500 ; Con- 
 stitution 493; Constitution of Court 
 495 ; Democratic Nature 491 ; Disputes 
 between Court and Commonalty 494 ; 
 Expenditure 495, 501-2 ; Fraudulent 
 Practices 502 ; Grant of Arms 491 ; 
 Hall 359, 49r, 492, 497-8, 502 ; Income 
 491, 495 ; Livery 492 ; Numerical 
 Strength 495 ; Ordinances 4S8, 489, 
 490, 494 ; Pall 395 ; Plate 500 ; 
 Poverty 498-9, 503 ; Powers 70 ; 
 Prizes offered by 495-6. 
 
 P'oundries, Prohibition of 311. 
 
 Framework Knitters' Company, The 
 505-7 ; Charter 506 ; Constitution of 
 Court 506 ; Hall 507. 
 
 Francis, John, of Nortliampton 520. 
 
 Fraternity of St. Anthony 129. 
 
 " Free Burgage " 69. 
 
 " Freedom of the City " 75, 76, 80. 
 
 Free Fishermen, Company of 1 1 1. 
 
 Freeholds, City, 36-7. 
 
 Freemasonry, Origin of 567. 
 
 Freemasons, The 565-6, 567. 
 
 Freemen, Their Number Si. 
 
 French Merchants, Company of 162. 
 
 Friers' Hall, The, used as glass factory 
 
 515- 
 
 Frill, Thomas, Gifts of 465. 
 
 Fripperers — see Upholders. 
 
 Frith Gild, The 61. 
 
 Frodsham, Wm. Jas., Clockmakcr 425. 
 
 Fromantel, Ahasuerus, Clockniaker 425. 
 
 Fruiterers' Company, The 507-10; Biblio- 
 graphy 509-10 ; Connection with Iriah 
 testate 50S ; Constitution of Court 50S ; 
 
 86
 
 682 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Order of Precedence 508 ; Prizes 
 offered by 50S. 
 Fullers, The 112-3; Their Importance 
 
 332- 
 „ „ at Newcastle 73. 
 
 Funds, Application of 67. 
 Furbishers, The 113. 
 Furs, List of, anciently in use 251. 
 
 Gale, Robert, Vintner, Bequests of 327. 
 
 Gale, Thomas 367. 
 
 Galley Quay 319. 
 
 Galoches, Introduction of Wooden 454, 
 
 582. 
 Garden, The Physic, of the Apothecaries 
 
 352. 
 Gardeners' Company, The 114. 
 Garlands, Ornamental 395. 
 Garrett, James, Apothecary 348. 
 Gase, John, Saddler & Baker 360. 
 Gedde, Walter, Glazier 518. 
 Geffery's F.state 301. 
 " Genossenschaften," Establishment of 
 
 74- 
 Gerard, Benet, Brewer 3S8. 
 " Gewerbe-Ordnung," The 74. 
 Gibbons, Grinling, Joiner 547. 
 Gibson, Nich., Sheriff, Bequests of 446, 
 
 447- 
 Gild of Corpus Christi 291, 293. 
 
 „ of Pilgrims 263. 
 
 „ of St. George of Norwich 73. 
 " Gild Day," The 67. 
 Gild Merchant, The 62-3. 
 Gilds, Adulterine 396 ; Continental 72-5, 
 
 164-6; Suppression in various Countries 
 
 74-5- 
 
 " Gilds of Bridge " 299. 
 
 Giles, Thomas, of Lombard Street 310. 
 
 Gill, William, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Girdlers' Company, The 131, 510-4; 
 .Antiquity 511; Charter 5 1 1 ; Connec- 
 tion w. Irish Estate 513 ; Constitution 
 of Court 513 ; Hall 513, 514 ; History 
 511 ; Income 513 ; Numerical Strength 
 513; Ordinances 512; Property 513, 514 ; 
 Union w. Wyreworkers and Pinners 
 511. 
 
 Gisors, .Sir John de. Lord Mayor 194. 
 
 Glass-Sellers' Company, The 514-7 ; 
 Bibliography 517 ; Bye-laws 516 ; 
 Charter 515 ; Income 516; Numerical 
 Strength 516. 
 
 Glaziers' Bill 518. 
 
 Glaziers' Company, The 517-9 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 519; Bye-laws 519; Charter 
 518, 519; Committal of Members to 
 Newgate 518 ; Constitution of Court 
 
 519 ; Estate 519. 
 
 Glover, Nathaniel, Painter, Exorbitant 
 charges 577. 
 
 Glovers' Company, The 134, 520-3 ; 
 Bibliographer 523 ; Charter 522 ; Con- 
 stitution of Court 522 ; Grant of Arms 
 
 520 ; Hall 522 ; Numerical Strength 
 522 ; Order of Precedence 521 ; Ordi- 
 nances 520, 521 ; Union with Pursers 
 and Leathersellers 521. 
 
 Glovers-Pursers and Leathersellers' Com- 
 pany 134, 521, 550-1. 
 
 Gloves, Price of, in 14th cent. 522-3. 
 
 Godale, William, Currier 555. 
 
 Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers Company, 
 The 369, 523-7 ; Bibliography 527 ; 
 Charter 525-6 ; Constitution of Court 
 526 ; Grant of Arms 527 ; Numerical 
 Strength 526. 
 
 (Goldsmith, Oliver, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Goldsmiths' Company, The 232-47 ; Ac- 
 counts 241-2 ; Administrators, 64 ; 
 Arrest 234 ; Bequests made to, Re- 
 gaining of 236-7 ; Bibliography 247-9; 
 Charters 234-5, 236 ; Dispute w. Mer- 
 chant Taylors 232, 263 ; Effects of Fire 
 of London 244 ; Eminent Members 
 246 ; First Notice of 232 ; Hall 243 ; 
 Incoine, Sources of 241-2 ; Li\ery 
 244 ; Numerical Strength 242 ; Ordi- 
 nances 237, 246; Powers 70; Privileges 
 235-6, 237 ; State Visits to Fairs 238 ; 
 Trial of Skill 240. 
 
 Gordon Riots 428. 
 
 Grace, Thomas, Founder 489. 
 
 Graham, George, F.R.S., Clockmaker 425. 
 
 Graveley, Edward, Master Carpenter 406. 
 
 Great Beam, The King's 126, 165. 
 
 Great Crosby School 94. 
 
 Green, William, Leatherseller 560. 
 
 Greene, Thomas, Brewer 3S5. 
 
 Greenhill, Mr., Painter 581. 
 
 Gremois, The Spanish 75. 
 
 Grendon, William, Scrivener, Fraud of 
 614. 
 
 Grenecroft, Richard, Tallow Chandler 
 641. 
 
 Gresham, Sir Rich., lends money to 
 Mercers' Co. 178. 
 
 Gresham, .Sir Tlios-, founder of Royal
 
 INDEX. 
 
 683 
 
 Exchange 181, 182 ; Oueen Elizabeth 
 dines with him 445. 
 
 Gresliani, WiMiani iSi. 
 
 Grcshams, The 18 1-2. 
 
 Grey Tawyers, The 147. 
 
 Grocers' Company, The 187-94 ; Adminis- 
 trators 64 ; Articles of Merchandise 1 8g ; 
 Bibliography 194-7 ; Complaint against 
 their Drugs 347 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 190 ; Court of Assistants 188 ; 
 Eminent Members 194 ; Enmity to- 
 wards Grocers 348-9 ; Financial Em- 
 barrassments 191 ; Foundation 130; 
 Hall 193 ; Losses by F"ire of London 
 191 ; Numerical Strength 192 ; Ordin- 
 ances 188-9; Origin 187; Philanthropic 
 Works 192 ; Privileges 71 ; Right of 
 Search 189-go ; Severance from Apothe- 
 caries 190 ; Staff 193. 
 
 Gunmakers' Company, The 528-30 ; 
 Charter 528 ; Hall 529 ; Income 529 ; 
 Numerical Strength 529 ; Ordinances 
 529 ; Powers 70 ; Proof House, White- 
 chapel 529. 
 
 Guy, Thos. Founder of Guv's Hospital 
 183. 
 
 Haberdashers' Company, The 285-92 ; 
 Almshouses 290 ; Articles of Com- 
 merce 287 ; Bibliography 291-2 ; Char- 
 ters 286-7 ; Connection vv. Irish Estate 
 288; Constitution of Court 288; Hall 
 288-90 ; Ordinances 288 ; Origin 285 ; 
 Schools 290 ; of St. Katharine the 
 Virgin and of St. Nicholas 115 ; Shop- 
 contents in 1378 1 1 5-6. 
 
 Haines, John, Carpenter 407. 
 
 I lall, The Common 3, 80, 81. 
 
 Hall-Moots, Bakers', Objects of 104 ; 
 Fishmongers' 221. 
 
 Halliwell Chalice, The 129. 
 
 Halliwell, Geoffrey de, Pepperer 191. 
 
 Halls, The 46. 
 
 Hannis, John, Framework Knitter 506. 
 
 Hanseatic League, The 164-6. 
 
 Harris, John, Clockmaker 425. 
 
 Harvest, Edw., Gunner and Brewer 388, 
 528. 
 
 Haselwood, John, Leatherseller, Bequest 
 of 557. 
 
 Hatband Makers' Society, The 1 16-7. 
 
 Hatherley, Sir John, Loid Major 303. 
 
 Hatters, The 117. 
 
 1 1, yinongers, The 117-20. 
 
 Heath, John, Cluthworker 339. 
 
 Heathcote, Sir Gilbert, Lord Mayor 328. 
 
 Heaumers, The 117, 355. 
 
 Keith, John, Cooper 439. 
 
 Helmetry, Trade of 117. 
 
 Hend, John, Lord Mayor 206, 210-1. 
 
 Herbert, W., Hisl. of the Twelve Great 
 Companies 52. 
 
 Heme, William, Sergeant- Painter 58 r. 
 
 Hewer, William, Clothworker 339. 
 
 Hey ward, James, Linen Draper 121. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas, Dramatist 534. 
 
 Hicks, Sir Baptist, Vise. Campden 181. 
 
 Hickson, James, Brewer 385. 
 
 History of Thomas Hickatlirifl 389. 
 
 Hobson, William 290-1. 
 
 Hoddesden, Thomas, Glover 520. 
 
 Hodgkin, Mr., Saddler 611. 
 
 Honnor, Young Geo., Saddler, Bequests 
 of 610-1. 
 
 Honnor's Home 610. 
 
 Hook, Charles, Schoolmaster 241. 
 
 Horn, Andrew, Author of Liber Horn 
 217, 219. 
 
 Horn Fair 530. 
 
 Homers' Company, The 316, 530-7 ; 
 Charter 531 ; Connection with Bottlers 
 534 ; Decline 532-3 ; Exhibition 533 : 
 Fairs 530, 531 ; Fees 532 ; Income 532 ; 
 Numerical Strength 532 ; Order of 
 Precedence 531 ; Privileges 531-2. 
 
 Horse-Corsors, Union with Innholders 
 538. 
 
 Horse-dealers, The 155. 
 
 Hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon 169. 
 
 Hostler, Origin of the word 118-9. 
 
 Hostelers, The 1 1 7-20. 
 
 "Hot Cross Buns" 104. 
 
 House of Black Nuns 246, 267, 
 
 Housman, Mr., Painter 581. 
 
 Howard, William, Clothworker 338. 
 
 Howard and W"alson, Painters, Trial be- 
 tween 578. 
 
 Howell, James, Author 208, 513. 
 
 Howell, Thos., Bequest of 207-8, 210; 
 Will 207, 211. 
 
 Hudson's Bay Company 163. 
 
 Hulet, Mr., Stationer 636. 
 
 Hungerford, John, Shearman 136. 
 
 Hunt, And., Girdler, Bequest of 513-4- 
 
 Hunter, John, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Hunter, William, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Hurers, The 120 ; Bibliography 121. 
 
 Hurriers — see Hurers.
 
 684 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Iddesleigli, Karl of, Feltmaker 4S5. 
 
 Income, Corporate 96-8, 99. 
 
 Incorporation 27. See also the names of 
 the various Companies^ passim. 
 
 Innholders' Company, The 118,537-43; 
 Bibliography 542-3 ; Charter 538, 540 ; 
 Hall 538, 340 ; Income 541, 542 ; Nu- 
 merical Strength 540; Origin 537 ; Salt- 
 cellar 542 ; Trust Estate 541, 542 ; 
 Union with Horse-Corsors 538. 
 
 Inns of Court 63 ; Primitive 1 18-9. 
 
 "Innungen," The Austrian 74. 
 
 Instrument-Makers, The 155. 
 
 Irish Estate 28-32 ; Apportionment of 
 property among Companies 176. See 
 also names 0/ the various Companies, 
 passim. 
 
 Iron trade in England 298-9. 
 
 Ironmongers' Company, The 29S-314; 
 Antiquity 298, 299 ; Armoury 307 ; 
 Arms 301, 305 ; Bibliography 312-4 ; 
 Charters 300-1 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 312 ; Election of Wardens 303-4 ; 
 Furniture 307-8 ; Governing Body 79 ; 
 Hall 304-8 ; Inventory 305, 306 ; Letter 
 to, from Qu. Elizabeth 308 ; Limitation 
 of Rights 301-2 ; Livery 303 ; Numerical 
 Strength 302 ; Order of Precedence 
 300 ; Ordinances 301, 302 ; Original 
 Colony 304 ; Owners of Manor of 
 Norwood 305 ; Public Disbursements 
 308 ; Reply to Royal Commission 312 ; 
 Stability 302. 
 
 Isaacson, Paul 579. 
 
 hvyn, John 182. 
 
 Jacob, Richard, Vintner, Bequests o( 326. 
 
 Jacob, Sibilla, Bequests of 326. 
 
 James, Sir Baithol., Lord Mayor 206,655. 
 
 James, Edward, Upholder 655. 
 
 James, John, .Shipwright 620. 
 
 Jansen, Sir Stephen Theodore, Lord 
 Mayor 637. 
 
 Jarman, Mr., Architect 650. 
 
 Jenner, Edward, Apothecary 3;2. 
 
 Johnson, Whit, and Oliver Davy, Gold- 
 smiths, Contention between 240. 
 
 Joiners' Company, The 543-7 ; Charter 
 544 ; Dispute with Carpenters 416, 547, 
 with Saddlers and Painters 573-4, 604 ; 
 Governing Body 79 ; Hall 545 ; Income 
 544 ; Numerical Strength 544 ; Ordi- 
 nances 543, 544 ; Frauds committed by 
 603. 
 
 Jones, John, Pewterer, Bequests of 589. 
 Jones, Sir Francis, Lord Mayor 290. 
 Jones, Thomas, Innholder 541-2. 
 Jones, Mr. William, Will of 290. 
 Jordan, Thomas, City Poet 337. 
 Judd, Sir .Andrew, Founder of Tonbridge 
 
 School 259. 
 Jugge, Richard, Stationer 637. 
 Jurisdiction, Municipal, over Urban Gilds 
 
 67-8, So. 
 
 K.irlille, William, Bottle-maker 534. 
 
 Keats, John, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Keball, Jane, Bequest of 630. 
 
 Kemp, John, a Fleming 156. 
 
 Kent, Countess of 339. 
 
 Kent, Felicia de 304. 
 
 Kent, Robert de, Horse-merchant 304. 
 
 Kett, Benjamin, Vintner 328. 
 
 Key, John, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 King, Mr. Thomas, Founder 500. 
 
 King's Beam, The 349. 
 
 King's Pike Ponds, The 219. 
 
 King's Society, The 318. 
 
 Kingston, Henry de 318. 
 
 Kinton, Thomas, Cutler 465. 
 
 Kirriol, Sir Thomas, of Kent 360. 
 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, Painter 581. 
 
 Knight, George, Painter 577. 
 
 Knii;liten Gilds 61, 68. 
 
 Knollis, Sir Thomas, Pepperer 194. 
 
 Knyvett, Sir Anthony 440, 446. 
 
 Knyvett, Dame Avyce, 440, 448. 
 
 Kynaston, Mr. Edward, Vintner 635. 
 
 La Jllaut/ie Chapelle 113. 
 
 Lambe, William, Clothworker 339. 
 
 Lambert, William, Founder of On. Eliza- 
 beth's College at Greenwich 211. 
 
 Langley, Chas., Brewer, Bequests o 388. 
 
 Lapidaries, The 122. 
 
 Large, Robert, Mercer 182. 
 
 Latchford, Mr. Benjamin, Lorimer 563. 
 
 Latimer, Mr., Farrier 483. 
 
 Leathersellers' Company, The 133-4, 300, 
 548-61 i Almspeople559 ; Bibliography 
 134, 560 ; Charters 550, 552, 553 ; Con- 
 nection with Irish Estate 555 ; Constit. 
 of Court 534; Education 555 ; Edward 
 Darcie 533-4 ; Expenditure 555 ; Gar- 
 lands 560 ; Hall 556, 557, 558 ; Numeri- 
 cal Strength Si ; Order of Precedence 
 552 ; Ordinances 549, 550, 552 ; Origin
 
 INDEX. 
 
 685 
 
 548 ; Pall 560 ; Plate 559-60 ; Property 
 '^'iSSS ; Union w. Glovers 521, 550-4, 
 w. Pouch-makers 551, w. White Tanners 
 
 549- 
 
 Lee, Henry, Fuller 112. 
 
 Lee, Nathaniel, Dramatist 398. 
 
 Lee, William, M.A., Inventor of Frame- 
 work Knitting 505, 506. 
 
 Leeds, Clotluvorkcrs' College at 341-2. 
 
 Lely, Mr. Peter, Painter 581. 
 
 Lespicer, Thomas, of Portsmouth 21S. 
 
 Levant Company, The 159. 
 
 Liber Custtimaritin 52, 53. 
 
 Liher Horn 52, 53, 217. 
 
 Licences in .Mortmain 22, 30. 
 
 Lightermen, The Company of 149. See 
 also Watermen. 
 
 Lincoln, Wm. de. Saddler, Bequest of 61 1. 
 
 Linen-Armourers — see Merchant Taylors. 
 
 Linen-Drapers, The 121, 205. 
 
 Lions, Richard, Lapidary, Beheadal of 123. 
 
 Literary Notices, a few (leneral, 673. 
 
 Livery, The 19, 75, 77, 79-80. 
 
 Liverymen, Franchise of So-81. 
 
 Lizard, Manor of 312. 
 
 Locksmiths, Position of 31 1-2. 
 
 Lockyers, The 31 1-2. 
 
 Long, Laurence le, I5rewcr 380. 
 
 Long-Bowstring Makers 144, 375. 
 
 LordMayor, Electionof 80 ; Shows 309-1 1. 
 
 Loriners' Company, The 82, 141, 561-4 ; 
 Bibliography 564 ; Charter 562 ; Con- 
 stitution of Court 562-3 ; Disputes with 
 Joiners 604, with Saddlers 604 ; 
 Eminent Members 563 ; Hall 563 ; In- 
 come 563 ; Numerical Strength 563 ; 
 Ordinances 562, 603-4. 
 
 Lotall, Mr., Clockmaker 425, 502. 
 
 Lothbury, Bad Reputation of 493-4, 496. 
 
 Lottery, Public 357. 
 
 Lovekyn, Sir John, Lord i\layor 224, 227, 
 229. 
 
 Lovelace, Col. Rich., Poet and Painter 5S1. 
 
 Luck, Mr., Bricklayer 650. 
 
 Lustring Company, The Royal 163-4. 
 
 Luxury, Growth of 319. 
 
 Lydgate, John, Poet, Charge against 
 Bakers 104. 
 
 Magnay, Christopher, Lord Mayor 637. 
 Magnay, William, Lord .Mayor, 640. 
 Mailmakers, The 155. 
 Makers of Vinegar, Aqua Vilit ?LnAAqua 
 Composita, The 149. 
 
 Malyii, John, Carpenter, complaint ag.iinst 
 407. 
 
 Manor of Norwood 305. 
 
 Manor of Pellipar 312. 
 
 Marblers, The 121- 3; Bibliography, 
 122. 
 
 Mark, Ralph, Brewer 578. 
 
 Market, Leadeuhall 398-9. 
 
 Markets, Meat 397. 
 
 Marleberer, Hugo 122. 
 
 Marlow, Sir Richard, Lord Mayor 303. 
 
 Marshall, Joshua, Mason, bequest of 566. 
 
 Mascall, William, bequests of 388. 
 
 Mason, Peter, Founder of Merchant 
 Taylors' Trusts 266. 
 
 Mason, Roger, Vintner, bequests of 326. 
 
 Masons' Company, The 564-8 ; Byelaws 
 564-5 ; Charters 565 ; Grant of Arms 
 565 ; Hall 567 ; Income 566 ; Influence 
 568 ; Numerical Strength 566 ; Order 
 of Precedence 565. 
 
 Master, The 19. 
 
 Master-Surgeons 362 
 
 Masterman, Mr. John, M.P. 448. 
 
 Matfrey, Hugh, Fishmonger 218. 
 
 Mauncy, Thomas, King's Carpenter 406. 
 
 Maur, John, Alderman 135. 
 
 Maxhall, Nicholas, Ironmonger 300. 
 
 May, John, Deputy-Alnager, 336. 
 
 Mayerne, Sir Theod. de. Physician to 
 King 467-8. 
 
 Mead, Constituents of 377. 
 
 Meat Markets 397. 
 
 Meat, Prices in 1378 400. 
 
 Megucers, The 148. 
 
 Mellow, Laurence, Oil Merchant 140. 
 
 Membership, Grades of, in London 75. 
 
 Mepell, William, Founder 503-4. 
 
 " Mercerie," Meaning of the Term 176. 
 
 Mercers' Company, The 169-86 ; Admin- 
 istrators 64 ; Articles of Merchandise 
 169-70, 176-7 ; Benefits conferred by 
 Whittington on 170-2, 173; Bibliograpliy 
 173, 181, 185-6; Byelaws [71 ; Charters 
 170; Connection with Irish Estate 
 175-6; Court of Assistants iSo-i ; 
 Eminent Members 181-2 ; First Mayor 
 169; Governing Body 79; Hall 178-9; 
 Loss by Fire of London 184 ; Origin 
 169; Richard IL Co-founder of 174; 
 Staff 185. 
 
 Merchant Adventurers, The 15S ; of 
 Bristol 73 ; of Newcastle 73 ; New 
 French 162
 
 686 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Merchant Taylors' Company, The 263- 
 84 ; BibHography 282-4 i Charters 264, 
 267 ; Connection with Irish Estate 269; 
 Constitution of Court 278 ; Discontent 
 279 ; Dispute with Goldsmiths 232, 
 263, with Skinners 260, 271 ; Dis- 
 tinction from Drapers 265 ; Educational 
 Endowments 281-2 ; Eminent Members 
 280-1; Estates 266, 268-9; Expendi- 
 ture, Sources of 281 ; First Notice of 
 263 ; Functions 264 ; Hall 273-7 ; 
 Legend of the Devil and M.T. 263 ; 
 Losses in Fire of London 268-9 ; 
 Numerical Strength 278 ; Order of 
 Precedence 270 ; Ordinances 267-8 ; 
 Privileges 267, 280 ; Public Calls on 
 Finances 269-70, 271-2 ; Records 
 271-3; Religious Attributes 264 ; School 
 93, 94, 28 1-2 ; " Strikes" among 278-9. 
 
 Merchants' Company of York 73. 
 
 „ Company of French 162 ; of 
 
 East India i6r ; of Elbing 158 ; of 
 the Levant 159; of Russia 159; of 
 Spain 161 ; of the Staple 157 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 163. 
 
 Meyne, New 31 8. 
 
 Micole, John 323. 
 
 Milliner, Origin of the term 120. 
 „ Funeral of a 116. 
 
 Milliners, The 120. 
 
 Minstrels' Company, The — sec Musicians. 
 
 Min'or of Justices 219. 
 
 " Mistery," Meaning of the term 24. 
 
 Mivell, William, Founder 503-4. 
 
 Monk, General, Visit to Clothworkers' 
 Hall 337 ; to Vintners' Hall 324-5. 
 
 Monk, John 465. 
 
 Monnox, Sir George, Philanthropist 211. 
 
 Montague, Mistress, gives Stockings to 
 Queen Elizabeth 177. 
 
 Moon, Francis Graham, Lord Mayor 
 640. 
 
 Morgan, Stephen, and Alice Chester, In- 
 denture between 406. 
 
 Morgan, Sylvanus, Painter 578, 581. 
 
 Morley, Samuel 649. 
 
 Mortmain, Licences in 22, 30. 
 
 Moscovite Company, The 159. 
 
 Motteux, Peter 480. 
 
 Motun, Hugh, Colourman 573. 
 
 MuUins, George, Plasterer, bequests of 
 589. 
 
 Munday, Anthony, Dramatist 211. 
 
 Municipal Commission 50-1. 
 
 Musicians' or Minstrels' Company, The 
 568-70; Bibliography 570; Charter 
 568-9 ; Connection with Irish Estate 
 569 ; Income 569 ; Numerical Strength 
 569 ; Order of Precedence 569. 
 
 Needlemakers' Company, The 73, 571-3 ; 
 Bibliography 573 ; Charter 572 ; In- 
 come 572 ; Numerical Strength 573. 
 
 Nepton, Thos. Poulter, bequests of 600. 
 
 Nets, Unlawful, Seizure of 219. 
 
 Netters, The 155. 
 
 Nevill, Colonel 152. 
 
 New East India Company 161. 
 „ French Merchants' Adventurers 162. 
 „ Meyne, or New Gathering Society 
 3>8. 
 
 Newman, Robert, Founder 489. 
 
 Newton, Mr., Clockmaker 425. 
 
 Nicholas, Sir Ambrose, Lord Mayor 296. 
 
 Nichols, Humphrey, Baker 105. 
 
 Nicholson, Thomas, Cordwainer 454. 
 
 Norman, Sir John, Lord Mayor 210. 
 
 Northerne, Stephen le. Store Dealer 654. 
 
 Norton, John, Stationer, bequest of 637. 
 
 Norwood, Manor of 305. 
 
 Nowell, Mr., Goldsmith 636. 
 
 Ogilby, John, Merchant Taylors' Pen- 
 sioner 272. 
 
 Oglethorpe, General, Founder 494. 
 
 Old Wool Quay, Sale of 445. 
 
 Oranges, Introduction into England i8g. 
 
 Ordinances 21-2. 
 
 Ostler, Origin of the term 118-9. 
 
 Owen, Dame Alice, and her benefactions 
 to the Brewers' Company 385, 387. 
 
 Oxenford, John de. Lord Mayor 328. 
 
 O.xford House 296. 
 
 Pabingham, Simon de, Mason 564. 
 
 Pageants, City 44-5. 
 
 Painters' Company, The 573-82 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 581-2 ; Charters 575, 578 ; Con- 
 nection with Irish Estate 578 ; Con- 
 stitution of Court 575 ; Dispute with 
 Joiners and Saddlers 573-4; Eminent 
 Members 581 ; Fines 581 ; Hall 575, 
 578, 579-So ; Inigo Jones dines with 
 5S0 ; Numerical Strength 578 ; Order 
 of Precedence 575 ; Ordinances 574, 
 575-7 ; Poverty 577- 
 
 Painter-Stainers — see Painters. 
 
 Palls, Carpenters' 394; Coopers' 394-5.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 687 
 
 440, 444 ; Founders' 395 ; Worked by 
 Broderers 394, Cost of same 394. 
 
 Palmer, William, Uladcr 106. 
 
 Pannarii, The 134-6. 
 
 Pargettors— ^^"6" Plaislerers. 
 
 Parish Clerks' Company, The 123-5 > 
 Hall 124 ; Plays 124. 
 
 P.irkes, John, Ciulcr 465. 
 
 Parkhiust, Thos., Stationer, Bequest of 
 
 637. 
 
 Pastelers, The 430, 43 r. 
 
 Patten Makers, The 134, 582-4 ; Charter 
 583 ; Constitution of Court 583 ; In- 
 come 583. 
 
 Paviours, The 125. 
 
 Peacock, John, Clotliworkcr 335. 
 
 Peech, John 548. 
 
 Peele, George, Dramatist 522. 
 
 Peele, James, Glover 310, 522. 
 
 Peele, Stephen, Stationer 522. 
 
 Pellipar, Manor of 3 12. 
 
 Pepis, John, Clockmaker 426. 
 
 Pepperers' Company, The 126-30 ; Added 
 Function 128 ; Ordinances 126 ; Union 
 \v. Spicers 129 ; Weights used by 126-S. 
 
 Pepys, John, Clockmaker 426. 
 
 Pepys, Mr., Cutler, Gift of 466. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, Clothworker 338, 339. 
 
 Pewter, Common Use of 586-7. 
 
 Pewterers' Company, The 312, 316, 
 584-90 ; Bequests to 589 : Bibliography 
 590 ; Charters 584, 585, 586 ; Connec- 
 tion w. Irish Estate 588 ; Constitution 
 of Court 588 ; Fees 588 ; Grant of 
 Arms 584 ; Hall 589 ; Income 588 ; 
 Numerical Strength 588 ; Order of Pre- 
 cedence 588 ; Ordinances 585 ; Ordi- 
 nances against 587 ; Rights 585-6. 
 
 Physic Garden, the Apothecaries' 352. 
 
 Physicians, College of 350, 352. 
 
 Picard, Henry, Lord Mayor 324, 328. 
 
 Pie- Bakers, The 430 
 
 Pike Ponds, The King's 219. 
 
 Pilcliard, Mr. Stephen, Founder 500. 
 
 " Pilgrim," The 264. 
 
 Pilgrims, Gild of 263. 
 
 Pin-Makers' Company, The 13 1-2 ; Bib- 
 liography 132. Stv a/so Vinners. 
 
 Pinners, The 1 3 1-2 ; Union with Wire- 
 workers and Girdlers 511, 513. 
 
 Pi.v, Trial of the 239. 
 
 Plaisterers' Company, The 590-3 ; Char- 
 ter 591 ; Complaint against Carpen- 
 ters 592 ; Connection w. Irish Estate 
 
 592 ; Constitution of Court 591 ; Dis- 
 pute with Tylers and Bricklayers 591 ; 
 Grant of Arms 591. 
 
 Planers, The 132. 
 
 Plastrer, Adam le, Plaisterer 590. 
 
 Piatt, Ricliard, Brewer, Founder of 
 Aldenham Almshouses and .Schools 
 38s, 388. 
 
 Playing-card Makers' Company, The 
 
 593-4- 
 Pleasant Conceits of Hobson 290. 
 Plumbers' Company, The 594-7 ; Charter 
 596 ; Constitution of Court 597 ; Order 
 of Precedence 596 ; Ordinances 595, 
 596 ; Property 597. 
 Porters, The Fellowship 154-5. 
 „ Packers' Waterside 155. 
 „ The Tackle 154-5. 
 „ The Ticket 155. 
 Portsoken, Meaning of 61. 
 Potter, Mr. Secondary, Turner 649. 
 Potters, The 133 ; Absorbed by Braziers 
 
 355- 
 
 Pouchmakers' Company, The 133-4 ; 
 .'Vrticles sold by 551-2 ; Union with 
 Leathersellers' 551. 
 
 Poulters' Company, The 598-601 ; Anti- 
 quity of 599, 600 ; Bibliogniphy 600-1; 
 Constitution of Court 600 ; Income 
 600; Numerical Strength 600; Order 
 of Precedence 600. 
 
 Prannel, Henry, Vintner, Bequests of 326. 
 
 Price, Mistress, Gift of 396. 
 
 Priory, St. Helen's 557-8. 
 
 Priour, John, Tallow Chandler 641. 
 
 Prisca, Coborn Charity 446-7. 
 
 Proof House, Gunmakers', Birmingham 
 529 ; Whitechapel 529. 
 
 Proufote, Robert, Shipwright 620. 
 
 Pudding Lane, Origin of the name 399. 
 
 Pulteneys, The, Earls of Bath 210. 
 
 Pursers, The 134 ; Union w. Glovers 521. 
 
 " Pursers of the Bridge " 299-300. 
 
 Pynson, Richard, Printer 637. 
 
 Quare, Daniel, Clockmaker 425. 
 
 Quay, Galley 319. 
 
 Quo Warranto, Writs of 42, 309. 
 
 Ravi Alley, or Merry Tricks 5S3. 
 Rameseye, Master William de. Mason 
 
 564. 
 Ramsey, David, Clockmaker 425 
 Randall, Lewis, Pewterer, Bequests of
 
 688 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Randolf, Margery 129. 
 
 Rawlins, Thos., Engraver to Mint 581. 
 
 Raynton, Thomas, Marbler 123. 
 
 Read, Sir Bartholomew, Goldsmith 243. 
 
 Reive, Nicholas, Scrivener, Bequest of 
 616. 
 
 Report of Royal Commission — see Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Retail Traders of London and Suburbs, 
 Proposed Corporation of 1 54. 
 
 Retunders, The 134-6. 
 
 Returns of the Gilds 39, 41. 
 
 Richard II., Co-founder of Mercers' Com- 
 pany 174. 
 
 Richardson, Samuel, Novelist 637. . 
 
 Richardson, William, Esq. 269. 
 
 Rider, William 505. 
 
 Riots, Gordon 428. 
 
 Robins, John, Pewterer, Bequests of 589. 
 
 Robinson, Sir John, Lord Mayor 338, 339. 
 
 Rokesley, Greg, de, Lord Mayor 234, 246, 
 670. 
 
 Rowland, Henry, Gunmaker 528, 529. 
 
 Royal Commission — see Commission. 
 „ Lustring Company, The 163-4. 
 
 Rudinge, Mr. Richard, Founder 492. 
 
 Rumbold, Nich., White Tawyer 555-6. 
 
 Russell, John, Wool-packer 153. 
 
 Saddlers' Company, The 81, 319, 601-13 ! 
 Almshouses 610 ; Antiquity 601 ; Aris- 
 tocratic Nature 607 ; Burials 608 ; 
 Charters 603, 605, 607 ; Connection 
 with Irish Estate 608 ; Constitution of 
 Court 6og ; Disputes with Joiners 573-4, 
 604, with Loriners 604, with Painters 
 573-4 ; Education 610 ; Estates 610 ; 
 Exhibitions 610 ; Frauds 603 ; Hall 
 601, 6ti-2; Income 610; Numerical 
 .Strength 81, 609 ; Order of Precedence 
 609, 610 ; Ordinances 604, 606, 609 ; 
 Quarrels 319 ; Pall 608 ; Titledeed 602. 
 
 St. Anthony, Fraternity of 129. 
 
 St. Bartholomew's Priory, Seizure of 
 Counterfeit Plate in 237-8. 
 
 St. George, Sir Henry 295. 
 
 St. Helen's Priory 557-8. 
 
 St. Paul's School 93-4 ; Dean Colet's 
 Benefactions to 172-4 ; Founding 172 ; 
 Plays Performed by Scholars 175 ; 
 Statutes 174-5. 
 
 St. Thomas of Aeon, Hospital of 169, 172. 
 
 Salaries 97. 
 
 Salle, Edmund, Clothworker 578. 
 
 Salomons, Mr. Llavid, Lord Mayor 448. 
 
 Salt, White, Manufacture of 294. 
 
 Sailers' Company, The 292-7 ; Alms- 
 houses 297 ; Antiquity 292 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 297 ; Charters 293-4, 295 ; City 
 Property 294 ; Connection with Irish 
 Estate 294 ; Constitution of Court 
 293-4 ; Founding 293 ; Halls 295-9 ; 
 Ordinances 294 ; Trade 292. 
 
 Salt-fishmongers, The 143. 
 
 Samborne, Richanl, Cooper 443. 
 
 Sandford, John, Founder 490. 
 
 Sandwich F'air 670. 
 
 Sawyers, The 137. 
 
 Scattergood, Thos., Pewterer, Bequest ot 
 589. 
 
 School, Aldenham Grammar 93, 384. 388 ; 
 Great Crosby 94 ; Merchant Taylors' 
 93, 94, 281-2 ; St. Paul's —see St. Paul's 
 School ; .Stationers' 634 ; Tonbridge 
 
 93- 94, 259- 
 
 Schools, The Companies' 93-5 ; Classical 
 93 ; Coopers' 446-7. 
 
 Scot, John, Printer 241. 
 
 Scriveners' Company, The 312, 613-9 ; 
 Bibliography 619 ; Business of 616, 
 617; Charter 615; Connection with 
 Irish Estate 616; Constitution 615; 
 Decline 617; Hall 617; Income 618: 
 Livery 614 ; Numerical Strength 618 ; 
 Ordinances 614, 615 ; Powers 70. 
 
 Search, Power of, by Companies, 22-3. 
 
 Searle, Robert, Lord Mayor 169. 
 
 Segrave, Gilbert de, Bishop of London 
 
 243- 
 Segrave, Sir Nicholas de 243. 
 Seres, William, Printer 634. 
 Serjeants' Inn 63 ; Division of Property 
 
 of73- 
 Sei-<'iiig-Ma/!'s Comfort 535. 
 Seynturer, Benedict, Sheriff 510. 
 Shakespear, John, Ironmonger 303. 
 Sharpe, Richard, Wax-Chandler 310 
 Shearmen's Company, The 134-6 ; 
 
 Elaborate Regulations 136; Hall 337 ; 
 
 Importance 332 ; .Scale of Wages 136. 
 Sheathers, The 137. 
 Sherley, Robert, sen., Goldsmitli 244. 
 Shermen 135, 271. 
 Shipup Society, The 318. 
 Shipway, Michael 402. 
 Shipwrights' Company, The 619-22 ; 
 
 Charter 620 ; Fees 622 ; Grant of Arms
 
 INDEX. 
 
 689 
 
 620 ; Hall 622 ; Ordinances 619-20, 
 
 621 ; Property 622. 
 Shipwrights' Company, Foreign 621. 
 Shivers, The 116, 137. 
 Shoes, Price, in 14th cent. 453. 
 Short, Mr., Scrivener 615. 
 Shuldham, Guy, \'intner, Ifequest of 323. 
 Shiirlcy, Sarah, Founders' Housekeeper 
 
 504. 
 Sierra Leone Company, The 161. 
 Silkmen, The 138. 
 Silk-Throwers, The 139; Bibliography 
 
 139- 
 
 Sizer, The 491, 493. 
 
 Skidmore, Stephen, \'intner, Bequest 327. 
 
 Skinners' Company, The 250-62 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 261-2 ; Charters 251, 252, 253, 
 254-6,259; Connection with Irish Estate 
 261 ; Dispute with Fishmongers 260, 
 with Taylors 260, 271, 473 ; Dissatisfac- 
 tion among Artisans 257; Earliest Home 
 257-8 ; Eminent Members 259 ; Estates 
 259 ; Hall 25S ; Income 261 ; Numeri- 
 cal Strength 260 ; Ordinances 252 ; 
 Original Nature 256-7 ; Privileges 
 251-2 ; Procession of Corpus Christi 
 260. 
 
 Slaughter of Animals, Regulations Con- 
 cerning 398. 
 
 Sloane, Sir Hans, Gift to Apothecaries 
 
 352- 
 Smith, Isaac, Pewterer, Bequest of 589. 
 Smith, Mr. \V. H., M.P., Feltniaker and 
 
 Stationer 485, 628. 
 Smollett, Tobias, Apothecary 352. 
 Soap-Makers, The 130, 140; Bibliography 
 
 140-1. 
 Soapers, The 130, 140. 
 Society of Retail Traders of London and 
 
 Suburbs 154. 
 Sommers Island Company, The 160. 
 So/i_(^ in Praise of the Leather Bottle, A 
 
 335-7. 
 South Sea Company, The 163. 
 Spain, Merchants of 161. 
 Sparke, William 308. 
 Spectacle Makers, The 82, 623-4 ; 
 
 Bibliography 624 ; Numerical Strength 
 
 624. 
 Spencer, .Sir Jno., Clothworker 335, 339. 
 Spicers of Cheap, The 129, 141 ; Date 
 
 of Incorporation 128. 
 Spurriers Company, The 141-2 ; Union 
 
 with Blacksmiths 372. 
 C.C. 
 
 Staple Inn, Division of Property of 73. 
 
 Staple, Merchants of the 157. 
 
 Staple, Removal of from Calais 664. 
 
 Stapylton, Alderman 296. 
 
 Starchmakers Company, The 142-3 ; 
 Bibliography 143. 
 
 Stationers Company, The 70-1, 624-41 ; 
 Antiquity 626 ; Bibliography 640-1 ; 
 Charities 634 ; Charter 627 ; Connec- 
 tion w. Irish Estate 634 ; Continua- 
 tion of Practical Duties 349 ; Eminent 
 Members 637 ; Fines 628 ; Hall 634-6; 
 Income 630: Livery 630; Numerical 
 Strength 628 ; Order of Precedence 
 627, 630 ; Ordinances 627-8 ; Origin of 
 Name 625 ; School 634. 
 
 Statutes of the Streets against Annoy- 
 ances 399. 
 
 Sterne, Thos., Currier, Bequests of 457, 
 
 458, 459- 
 
 .Stinard, Alice 305. 
 
 Stock-fishmongers Company, The 143-4. 
 
 Stocking Weavers — see Framework Knit- 
 ters. 
 
 Stockings, Knitted 505. 
 
 Stody, Sir Jno., Lord Mayor, Bequests of 
 323, 324, 326. 
 
 Stone, Sir Wm., Silk Mercer to (2ueen 
 Elizabeth 177. 
 
 Stourbridge Fair 531. ' 
 
 Stay, Ralph, Pewterer, Bequest of 5S9. 
 
 Stringers, The 144, 375. 
 
 Strode, Hy., Cooper and Founder of 
 Schools and Almshouses in Egham 446, 
 
 447- 
 
 Sunnynge, William, Carpenter 405. 
 
 Surgeons' Company, The 145-6 ; Act of 
 Parliament Concerning 363 ; Biblio- 
 graphy 145-6 ; Exemptions 364 ; Hall 
 350 ; Union w. Barbers 363-4, Dis- 
 solution of same 365. 
 
 Sutton, Thos., Founder of Charterhouse 
 
 514. 
 Swan, Humphrey, Broderer 396. 
 Swan Warden, The 322. 
 Swanson, Thos., Pewterer, Bequests of 
 
 589. 
 Swarms of Bees 656. 
 Swayne, Mr. John, Painter 577. 
 Sydenham, Dr., Apothecary 352. 
 
 Tackle- Porters, The 154-5. 
 Tailor, John, Master of Westminster 
 School 310. 
 
 ^7
 
 690 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Tallow Chnndlers' Company, The 641-5 ; 
 
 Articles of Commerce 643 ; Charters 
 
 642-3 ; Connection w. Irish Estate 
 
 643 ; Constitution of Court 644 ; Fines 
 
 645 ; Grant of Arms 641 ; Hall 645 ; 
 
 Income 645 ; Ordinances 643-4. 
 Tallow, Price of 657. 
 Tanners, The 147. 
 Tapestry Makers, The 147. 
 Tapissers, The 147, 393. 
 Tariff, Fish 218. 
 Tatam, Boniface, Vintner, Bequests of 
 
 326. 
 Tate, Sir Jno., Brewer, Gifts of 386-7. 
 Tate, Master, Crown .Official 409. 
 Tavern- Keepers, Regulations for 318. 
 Tawyers, The Grey 147. 
 
 The White 148. 
 Tax, Corporate 2-3. 
 Taylor, John, The Water Poet 150. 
 Taylors — sec Merchant Taylors. 
 Teasel, Fuller's 1 13. 
 Telarti, The (Weavers) 135. 
 Teutonic Gild 126, 164-6 ; Hall 165. 
 The Smith that forged him a New Dame 
 
 371- 
 The Tooth Drawer 368. 
 Thedr, Richard, Feltmaker 484. 
 Thompson, Robert, Founder 492. 
 Thornhill, Sir James, Painter 581. 
 Three- Craned Wharf, The 319. 
 Throwsters Company, The 139. 
 Thurlow, John, Tallow Chandler 641. 
 Ticket-Porters, The 155. 
 Tilson, Thomas, Glass-seller 515. 
 Tin- Plate Workers Company, The 646-7; 
 
 Exhibition 647. 
 Tobacco-Pipe Makers, The 14S. 
 Toke, Robert, Ironmonger 300. 
 Tompion, Thomas, Clockmaker 425. 
 Tomson, Richard, Cook 432. 
 Tonbridge School 93, 94, 259. 
 Tonson, Jacob, High Sheriff 637. 
 Tottell, Richard, Stationer 637. 
 Tournour, Warner de. Merchant Taylor 
 
 263. 
 Townsend, James, Esq., M.P., Lord 
 
 Mayor 558. 
 Trade Usages and Claims 41. 
 Trades, Enfranchisement of London 18. 
 Trades Unions and Gilds, DifTerence 
 
 between 32. 
 Trevor, Sir Thos., Baron of Exchequer 
 
 Trial of the Pix 239. 
 
 Troubles of Queen Elizabeth 290-1. 
 
 Truscott, Francis Wyatt, Lord Mayor 
 640. 
 
 Turkey Company, The 159. 
 
 Turner, Henry the 648. 
 
 Turner, John the 648. 
 
 Turner, Richard the 648. 
 
 Turner, William the 648. 
 
 Turners' Company, The 648-50 ; Charter 
 649 ; Constitution of Court 649 ; Ex- 
 hibitions 649 ; Prizes offered by 649. 
 
 Tyfifins, John, Founders' Cook 492. 
 
 Tylers and Bricklayers' Company, The 
 650-3 ; Almshouses 653 ; Bibliography 
 653 ; Charters 651-2 ; Connection with 
 Irish Estate 652 ; Constitution of Court 
 652 ; Dispute with Plaisterers 591 ; 
 Hall 652-3 ; Income 652 ; Numerical 
 Strength 652. 
 
 Tyrold, Thomas, Bottle-maker 534. 
 
 Ulster Plantation, The 2S-32. 
 
 Underwood, Jasper, Vintner, Bequests of 
 326. 
 
 United East India Company 161. 
 
 Upholders Company, The 653-6 ; Char- 
 ters 655 ; Constitution of Court 655 ; 
 Grant of Arms 655 ; Income 656 ; 
 Nature of Business 654-5; Numerical 
 Strength 655 ; Union w. Skinners 655. 
 
 Upholsters — see Upholders. 
 
 Vautrollier, Thomas, Printer, 637. 
 
 Venablcs, William, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Venetian Company, The 164. 
 
 Verrio, Sir Antonio, Painter 581. 
 
 Villiers, Sir Edward 525-6. 
 
 Vindication of the Companies' Corporate 
 Estate 98-100. 
 
 Vintner, Punishment of a 318. 
 
 Vintners' Company, The 315-30 ; Alms- 
 houses 323 ; Bibliography 328-30 ; 
 Charters 320-1 ; Constitution of Court 
 322; Customs 325; Formation 317; 
 (;ifts by 326 ; Grant of Arms 320 ; 
 Hall 323-4, 325, Genera! Monk at 
 324-5 ; Income 323 ; Incorporation 
 320 ; Limitations of Licence 320 ; Mea- 
 sures in use by 317 ; Mode of conduct- 
 ing trade, 317; Numerical Strength
 
 INUKX. 
 
 691 
 
 323 ; Ordinances 321 ; ■ Powers 70; 
 
 Kelics 325; Rights 317, 318, 321, 322; 
 
 Rights, Limitations of 320, 321-2. 
 Vintiy Ward, The 319. 
 Virginia Company, The 160. 
 Virginia Emigration Movement 415. 
 \'yni-r. Sir Robert, SlK-ritT 244. 
 
 Wages 32. 
 
 Walcy, John, Printer 241. 
 
 Wallis, Richard, Painter 57S, 581. 
 
 Walworth, Sir William 225 ; Statue 227 ; 
 Will 229. 
 
 Ward, Stephen, Wax Chandler 657. 
 
 Ward. Thomas, Shipwright 622. 
 
 Warden 19. 
 
 Warden, Robert, Poulterer, IJequest of 600. 
 
 Warden, The Swan 322. 
 
 Warner, Mr. Edward, Founder 502. 
 
 Warren, William, Minstrel 569. 
 
 Waiermen, The Company of 149-51 ; 
 Bibliography 151 ; Table of Fares 150. 
 
 Water-clocks, Manufacture of 417-1S. 
 
 Waterlow, Sir Sydney, Lord Mayor 640. 
 
 Watson, John, Gunmaker 529. 
 
 Watson and Howard, Painters, Trial be- 
 tween 57S. 
 
 Wax Chandlers' Company, The 656-9 ; 
 Charter 658 ; Constitution of Court 659 ; 
 Hall 659 ; Numerical Strength 659 ; 
 Order of Precedence 659 ; Ordinances 
 658 ; Property 659. 
 
 Wax, Large demands for 656-7 ; price 
 of657-S. 
 
 Weavers' Company, The 134-6, 660-7 ; 
 Antiquity 661 ; Bibliography 163, 666-7 ; 
 Charters 661-3, 665 ; Connection with 
 Irish Estate 665 ; Constitution of Court 
 663 ; Hall 666 ; Numerical Strength 
 666 ; Order of Precedence 665 ; Ordi- 
 nances 663, 665 ; Property, 666. 
 
 Weavers, Alien 156. 
 „ Flemish 156. 
 
 Webbe, Christopher, Salter 295. 
 
 Webster, Sir Godfrey 339. 
 
 Wells, Sir Spencer, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Wetham, Richard de, Mason 564. 
 
 Wheelwrights' Company, The 667-9 ! 
 Charter 667, 668 ; Constitution of Court 
 668 ; Fines 668 ; Income 669 ; Numeri- 
 cal Strength 669. 
 
 Whifflers 500. 
 
 Whiibread, Samuel, ISrcwer 385. 
 
 White, Master 409. 
 
 IVhite Hook of the City of London 52-3. 
 
 White and lirown liakers. United Gild 
 103-5, 358 ; Charters, 358 ; Division 
 between 358. 
 
 White Tawyers, The 148 ; Connection 
 with Leathersellers 549. 
 
 Whitehead, George, Shipwright 622. 
 
 Whitehead, Sir James 508-9. 
 
 Whittawyers' Company, The — sec White 
 Tawyeis. 
 
 Whittington, Sir Richard, 52, iSi ; char- 
 acter 173-4; death, 171 ; Fines lirewers 
 381 ; Gift of Leaden Hall to Corpora- 
 tion 399. 
 
 Willement, Mr. Thomas 535. 
 
 Williams, Sir Richard, ulias Cromwell 557. 
 
 Williamson, Sir Joseph 338. 
 
 Willimot, .Sir Robert, Lord Major 444, 
 448, 472. 
 
 Willingham, Mr. George, Gift of 580. 
 
 Wilson, Sir Erasmus, Apothecary 352. 
 
 Wine Drawers 318. 
 
 Wine, in London, Regulations 317-8. 
 
 Wing, Thos. Wm., bequest to Cloth- 
 workers 339. 
 
 VVisley, Richard, Founder 500. 
 
 Wire-Drawers, Gold and Silver 369. 
 
 Wire-workers, The — set- Wyreworkers. 
 
 Wolfe, Reginald, Stationer 637. 
 
 Wood, James, Bowyer, Bequest of 375-6. 
 
 Wood, Joane, Gifts to Brewers 387. 
 
 Wood, Robert, Alderman 300. 
 
 Wood, Thomas, Ironmonger 302. 
 
 Wood, Toby, Cooper 446. 
 
 Woodfall, Henry Sampson, Printer 637. 
 
 Woodmongers, The 15 1-3 ; Bibliography 
 153 ; Incorporation with Carmen 109 ; 
 Relations with Clockmakers 1 52 ; Rup- 
 ture with Carpenters 416. 
 
 Woolmen, The 153, 670-3 ; Charter 672 ; 
 Constitution of Court 672 : Ordinances 
 672. 
 
 Woolpackers, The 1 53, 670. 
 
 Woolwinders, The 670. 
 
 Worde, Wynkyn de. Stationer 626, 637. 
 
 Wotton, Sir Nicholas, Lord Mayor 204. 
 
 Wright, Mr., Painter 58 1. 
 
 Wright, Nicholas, Glover 520. 
 
 Wright, Richard, Ironmonger 302. 
 
 Wright, Thomas, Lord Mayor 637. 
 
 Writs of Quo iVarninto, 42, 309. 
 
 Wyld, George, D.D., Painter 581. 
 
 Wymond, Thomas, Fuller it 2.
 
 692 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Wyreworkers 131 ; Union with Girdlers 
 and Pinners 511,513. 
 
 " Yeomanry," The 19, 301 ; Cause of their 
 Discontent, 19, 20. 
 
 Young, — , Glazier to Queen Ehzabeth 517. 
 Young, John, Cordwainer 452. 
 
 Zouche, Sir Alan de la, Pepperer 194. 
 
 Butler tk Tiinner. The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
 
 A SELECT LIST OF WORKS OR EDITIONS 
 
 l;v 
 
 WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 OF lUK INNER TKMPLE 
 
 CHRONOLOGICALL Y ARRANGED. 
 1860-1891. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC: 
 Its Rise, its Greatness, and its Civilization. 
 
 With Maps and Illustrations. 
 4 vols. 8vo. Smith, Elder cv Co. i860. 
 A new edition, entirely recast, with im[)ortant additions, in 3 vols., crown Svo, 
 is in readiness for the press. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS AND 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 1867-76. Mediiini Svo. 1876. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS AND 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 .Second .Series. 1876-82. Medium Svo. 1882. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS AND 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 A Third and Final Series. Medium Svo. 1886. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS AND 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Supplements to the Third and Final Series. 2 vols. Medium Svo. 18S9-92. 
 
 A GENERAL INDEX TO HAZLITT'S BIB- 
 LIOGRAPHICAL WORKS (1867-89). 
 
 By G. J. Gray. 
 
 Medium Svo. 2 vols., about 1000 pp. [In the Press. 
 
 This invaluable volume will assist the student and collector in using the 
 several volumes of which the Series now consists, and will enable him to 
 ascertain at a glance whether and where a book, tract, or broadside is to be 
 found. It is a labour which Mr. Gray has undertaken con amore, and reflects 
 the highest honour on his industry, discernment, and literary zeal. 
 
 f^* All these books are now on sale by Mr. Qu.\ritch. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 With Portions of his Correspondence. 
 
 Portraits after miniatures by John Hazlitt. 
 
 2 vols. <Svo. 1867.
 
 BLOUNT'S JOCULAR TENURES. 
 
 Tenures of Land and Custonns of Manors. 
 
 Originally published by Thomas Blount of the Inner Temple in 1679. 
 
 An entirely new and greatly enLirged edition by W. C.\rew Hazlitt, of that 
 
 Ilk. Medium 8vo. 1874. 
 
 SHAKESPEAR'S LIBRARY: 
 
 A Collection of the Novels, Plays, and other Material supposed to have been 
 
 used by Shakespear. 
 An entirely new edition. 6 vols. 121110. 1875. 
 
 CATALOGUE OF THE HUTH LIBRARY. 
 
 [English portion.] 5 vols. Large 8vo. 1880. 200 copies printed. 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE ELECTORS OF MID- 
 SURREY, AMONG WHOM I LIVE. 
 
 In Rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's Manifesto. 
 
 1 886. 8vo, pp. 32. 
 
 " Who would not grieve if such a man there be ? 
 Who would not weep if Atticus were he?" — PoPE. 
 
 SCHOOLS, SCHOOLBOOKS, AND SCHOOL- 
 MASTERS. 
 
 A Contribution to the History of Educational Development. 
 i2mo. J. W. Jarvis ^f Son. 1888. Pp. 300 + vi. 
 
 Survey of the old system of teaching — Dr. Busby — Early Dictionaries — Colloi|uies in the 
 Tenth, Twelfth, and Tliirteenth Centuries— Earliest printed works of instruction, Uonatus and 
 otliers — Stanbridge — Roliert Whittinglon— Guarini of Verona — Vulgaria of Terence— Scliool 
 Classics — Erasmus and More— Dean Colet — Foundation of St. Paul's— Thomas Linacre — 
 VVoIsey's Edition of Lily's Grammar — Merchant Taylors' School — Old Mode of Advertising — 
 Private Establishments — Museum Minerv;^ at Bethual Green — Manchester Old School — Shake- 
 spear, Sir Hugh Evans, and Holofernes — Educational Condition of Scotland — Female Educa- 
 tion — Shakespear's Daughters — Goldsmith — Ascham and Mulcaster — Ben Jonson and .Shirley, 
 writersof Grammars — Foreigners' English — Phonography — BuUokar — Charles Butler — Dr. Jones. 
 
 A LITTLE BOOK FOR MEN AND WOMEN 
 ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 121110. Reevvs 6- Turner. 1891. 
 
 TALES AND LEGENDS OF NATIONAL 
 
 ORIGIN OR WIDELY CURRENT IN ENGLAND 
 
 FROM EARLY TIMES. 
 
 With Critical Introductions. 8vo. Srpan Sonneiischdn e^ Co. 1891. 
 
 A MANUAL FOR THE COLLECTOR AND 
 AMATEUR OF OLD ENGLISH PLAYS. 
 
 Sm. 4to. Only 250 copies printed. Picker iiii^ &= Chatto.
 
 
 
 
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