Chapter XXVI: Part I: Foundation and Object (2)

The Company possesses no Livery, though a considerable number of freemen.

_The Pewterers._ See p. 152.

THE PINMAKERS

Incorporated by Charles I. in 1636. They had a Master, 2 Wardens, and 18 Assistants, but no Livery. The Pinners, before this incorporation, were united first with the Wire Makers, and then with the Girdlers. They had a Hall in St. Mary-at-Hill, whence they moved to Old Broad Street. Their Hall was for a long time a Nonconformist chapel. It was taken down in 1787. The Company no longer exists. They had also a Hall in Addle Street, which they sold to the Plaisterers before the time of Stow.

THE PLAISTERERS

By charter of 16 Henry VII., March 10, 1501, the King gave power to establish the Company as the Guild or Fraternity in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of men of the Mystery or Art of Pargettors in the City of London, commonly called Plaisterers, to be increased and augmented when necessary, and to be governed by a Master and two Wardens, to be elected annually. The said Master and Wardens and brotherhood were to be a body corporate, with perpetual succession and a common seal, and they were empowered to purchase and enjoy in fee and perpetuity lands and other possessions in the City, suburbs, and elsewhere. And the charter empowered the said Master and Wardens to sue and be sued as “The master and wardens of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary of Pargettors, commonly called Plaisterers, London.”

The charter of Elizabeth, February 10, 1597, confirmed the privileges of the Company, and extended the authority of the Masters and Wardens to and over all persons exercising the Art of Plaisterers, as well English as aliens and denizens inhabiting and exercising the said art within the City and suburbs and liberties thereof, or within two miles of the said City.

The charter of 19 Charles II., June 19, 1679, confirmed the privileges granted by the previous charters, and having in view the rebuilding of the City, forbade any person to carry on simultaneously the trades of a mason, bricklayer, or plaisterer, and also forbade any person to exercise or carry on the Art of a Plaisterer without having been apprenticed seven years to the mystery. And the jurisdiction of the Company was extended to three miles’ distance from the City.

The present Livery consists of 52; they have a Corporate Income of £1062; a Trust Income of £33. In Stow’s time they had a Hall in Addle Street. This was burnt down in the Great Fire, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, and again burnt in 1882. Riley gives an agreement (_Memorials_, p. 125), dated 1317, between one Adam a Plastrer and Sir John de Bretagne, Earl of Richmond. The Fraternity probably existed at the same time.

THE PLUMBERS

The Company had existence as a body from a very early period, as shown by ordinances passed in the reign of King Edward III. 1365. These ordinances may be found in Riley’s _Memorials_, p. 321.

The earliest charter of the Company was that of King James I. in 1611, and it is believed to be the only charter in existence. The Company is incorporated as the “Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Freemen of the Mystery of Plumbing of the City of London,” for the better ordering, rule, and government of the men of the mystery and Company aforesaid, and of all those who then exercised and used or thereafter should exercise and use the art and mystery of plumbing, or the materials, works, merchandises, or things whatsoever to the said mystery relating, and for the utility, advantage, and relief of the good and honest, and for the terror and correction of the evil, deceitful, and dishonest. And also that they might have, make, and exercise the superior scrutiny, correction, and government of all and singular the freemen of the mystery, as also all other persons using or exercising the art or mystery in the limits aforesaid, and of their servants and apprentices. And also the supervision, scrutiny, correction, reformation, emendation, government, the assaye, touch, and the trial of all and singular workings, works, weights, beams and scales, lead, solder, materials, wares, matters, merchandises, and of all things whatsoever touching or concerning the aforesaid mystery in the limits aforesaid. And also to seize, take, and place in safe custody such materials, etc., aforesaid from time to time so found deceptive, false, insufficient, unapproved, and unlawful, there to remain until it should be determined thereof according to the laws of the realm of England. And further also that it should not be lawful for any person or persons of the art and mystery, or any other person or persons whomsoever using or who might use the art and mystery, to make work or expose for sale any solder or leaden weights within the limits aforesaid or within three miles thereof, unless the same be first proved and tried by the Master and Wardens whether they are good, sufficient, true, and lawful according to the laws of the realm and the customs of the City or not. And upon such trial to impress or mark with the impression, image, or sign of St. Michael the Archangel upon the same before their use or employ.

The present Livery consists of 40. The Company has a Corporate Income of £880; a Trust Income of £20.

In Stow’s time the Plumbers had their Hall in Anchor Lane, a turning on the south side of Thames Street, next to Vintners’ Hall. For these premises they were tenants to the Vintners. After the Fire of 1666 the Plumbers left their old quarters and built a new Hall in Chequer Yard, where it is shown in Strype’s map, at the east end of the yard, north side. Maitland (1739) calls it a good handsome building. Malcolm, writing in 1802, says that it had lately been pulled down, and warehouses of great extent, called after the name of the Company, erected on its site. At about the same time a new Hall of red brick was built in Bush Lane (then called Great Bush Lane). It was rebuilt in 1830, but finally pulled down to make way for Cannon Street Station. Hallam (_Constitutional History_) says that the first instance of actual punishment inflicted on Protestant dissenters was in 1567, when a company of more than a hundred were seized during their religious exercises at Plumbers’ Hall (the one in Anchor Lane), which they had hired on pretence of a wedding; fourteen or fifteen of them were sent to prison.

THE POULTERS

The ancient market of the Poulters was around the place still called the Poultry (see p. 11); they also sold poultry in the stocks market in Gracechurch Street and in Newgate Street. Riley’s _Memorials_ contain many regulations and ordinances for the sale of poultry. One remarks that the ordinances of the City in one respect, and in one only, were observed with the greatest care: those, namely, relating to the sale of food.

The Poulters Company existed by prescription as early as 1345. It was, however, incorporated by Royal Charter in the nineteenth year of Henry VII., on February 23, 1504. The charter was renewed by Queen Elizabeth, February 22, in the thirtieth year of her reign, confirmed by Charles II., on June 13, in the sixth year of his reign, and also by James II. subsequently, but these charters, like those of many of the Companies, were destroyed in the Fire of London in 1666. The charter under which the Company now acts was granted by William and Mary, May 6, 1692.

In the year 1763 the charter was supplemented by an Act of the Corporation of London and by another Act of the Corporation in 1820. The charter gives power to the Company to inspect the poultry brought to market, but that power has long since been suspended by the Acts of the Legislature.

Their present Livery is 126; their Corporate Income is £1020; their Trust Income is £430; they have no Hall.

_The Saddlers._ See p. 9.

_The Salters._ See p. 111.

THE SCRIVENERS

The Company now known as the Scriveners Company had existed from a very early period as the Fraternity or Mystery of the Scriveners or Writers of the Court Letter of the City of London, and was “time out of mind” a society or Company by prescription. The Company has no document showing the probable date of the foundation of this society, but their records extend back to 47 Edward III., being the year 1374.

The Company cannot say what were the exact circumstances in which it had its origin, but presumes that the Scriveners of London formed themselves into a society for the purpose of more effectually protecting their own interests and those of the occupation or craft which they carried on.

In the year 1373 (Riley, _Memorials_, p. 372) the “Court Hand writers and scriveners obtained their Ordinances.” These were chiefly directed against “foreigners.”

It was incorporated by James I. in 1616 for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 24 Assistants, with a Livery of 53.

At the time of the Great Fire of London all the archives of the Company were burnt except the ancient book called their common paper, and which book is still extant.

Their present Livery is 50. Their Trust Income is £10. Their Corporate Income is about £440. They have no Hall. Formerly they had a Hall in Noble Street which they sold to the Coachmakers. “At present,” says Maitland, 1750, “they are endeavouring by course of Law to oblige all Attorneys of the City to become Members.” An attempt which does not seem to have been successful.

The Scriveners’ work was much like that of solicitors of the present day. They made wills, drew up conveyances and other legal documents. They also wrote letters both of a business and a private nature. Some of them became financiers and bankers. In fact, the step from drawing up legal documents to advising on affairs of all kinds was easy and natural.

THE SHIPWRIGHTS

The precise year of the foundation of the Company is unknown, but it is mentioned in 1428 in the City records, from which it appears that it existed as a Fraternity, having a trade guild or mystery and a religious guild in connection with it, with a presumption in favour of its having existed by prescription for some time before that period. In a parchment book belonging to the Company there are ordinances of the religious society, the earliest of which is dated in 1456. Additions were made thereto in 1483, beginning, “In Dei nomine, Amen. It is not unknown to all the brethren and sisters of the fraternitie of Saint Symon and Jude hath been holden in London by the crafte of shipwrights of tyme out of minde,” etc. After which follow various ordinances relating to the taking of apprentices, and other matters, and more especially enjoining its members “to viewe and serche that the brethren of that fraternitie doe use in their said trades good and seasonable timber, and doe their worke workmanlike as appertaineth.”

The Company was incorporated by James I. in 1605 for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 36 Assistants.

In 1613 commenced a dispute between the Company and the foreign shipwrights who carried on their craft on the opposite side of the river, at Redrithe or Rotherhithe. The foreign shipwrights (so-called from being outside the liberties of the City) had, in the previous year, obtained a charter of incorporation, acting upon which they sought to exact fines from and impose duties upon the free shipwrights, at that time working hard by at Ratcliffe, having previously been compelled to leave the crowded part of the City by reason of the noise occasioned by exercising their trade and from fear of fire. The free shipwrights resented this treatment, and presented their case before the Court of Aldermen. The City upheld the free shipwrights, and in 1620 their ordinances were approved by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen.

In 1631, from continued opposition, their funds were reduced so low that they were allowed to make twelve persons free of the City by redemption; and this number was from time to time increased. In 1638 another attempt was made to free themselves from their rivals by representing their case before the King in Council, which resulted in their being granted by the King exemption from the jurisdiction of the new Corporation. This order is dated Whitehall, March 17, 1638. In 1670 attacks were again renewed on the free shipwrights by the new Corporation, and, their cases having been laid before the High Court of Admiralty by Charles II., the Attorney-General, on March 18, 1684-85, decided in favour of the Company, which decision was approved by the King.

In 1782 a Livery was granted to the Company by the Court of Aldermen, the number being limited to 100 and the fine to 15 guineas; in 1830 the number was increased to 200 and the fine to 20 guineas.

Their members now number 200. Their Corporate Income is £830. They have now no Hall.

The Company had formerly a Hall at Ratcliffe Cross, in Butcher Street, but it has long since disappeared.

_The Skinners._ See p. 238.

THE SPECTACLE MAKERS

Incorporated by Charles I., 1629, for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 15 Assistants. The Company is numerically very strong, the Livery numbering 356. They have a Corporate Income of £1100, and a Trust Income of £45. They have no Hall.

_The Stationers._ See p. 199.

_The Tallow Chandlers._ See p. 243.

THE TIN-PLATE WORKERS

This Company was incorporated by Charles II. in 1670 for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 20 Assistants. At present it has 80 members. There are no particulars as to the Corporate Income, but there is a Trust Income of £7:7s.

The history of the Company is obscure. Hazlitt thinks that it was a branch of the Girdlers, that it was originally the Wire Workers, and that it may also have been associated with the Wire Sellers and the Wire Drawers. It has no Hall.

THE TURNERS

Incorporated by James I. in 1604 for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 24 Assistants, with a Livery of 144. At present there is a Livery of 193; a Corporate Income of £700; but no Hall.

The principal work of the Turners originally was to make wooden measures. It was therefore important that these measures should be true. In 1310 (Riley, _Memorials_, p. 78) six turners were sworn before the mayor and aldermen, that they would in future make no other measures than gallons, potells (pottles, then a measure of two quarts), and quarts, and that they would not make false measures such as “chopyns” (chopines) and “gylles” (gills). In 1347 (Riley, _Memorials_, p. 234) some turners were brought before the mayor and aldermen, charged with making false measures. Our earliest introduction, therefore, to the Fraternity of Turners is not much to their credit. It is, however, greatly to their credit that they now hold annual exhibitions of turnery work in the City with prizes for its encouragement.

THE TYLERS AND BRICKLAYERS

This Company was incorporated by Elizabeth in 1568 for a Master, 2 Wardens, 38 Assistants, and 103 Liverymen. At present there is a Livery of 73; a Corporate Income of £610; a Trust Income of £170; but no Hall.

The Tylers were an ancient Fraternity dating from the time when tiles were first employed instead of thatch for roofing houses. As bricks were not used in English architecture before the end of the fifteenth century, there could have been no bricklayers. The connection of the men who put on the roof with the men who built the house was natural.

THE UPHOLDERS

This Company was incorporated by Charles I. in 1627 for a Master, 2 Wardens, and 28 Assistants, with a Livery of 131 members. At present the Livery consists of 20 members; they have a Corporate Income of £284; a Trust Income of £20; but no Hall. The Fripperers, Philipers, or Upholders were the buyers and sellers of second-hand clothes, fur robes, furniture, and other things. There seems to have been a large trade of this kind, chiefly in the parish of St. Michael’s, Cornhill.

_The Vintners._ See p. 229.

_The Watermen._ See p. 267.

_The Wax Chandlers._ See p. 30.

THE WEAVERS

This is certainly the oldest Gild of which we have historical information. The weavers included under one Fraternity, at first, all the trades which belong to the manufacture and use of textile stuffs. The history of the Gild is briefly but clearly told by Loftie in his _History of London_.

“The weavers, again, by their superior wealth, and their superior organisation, were constantly exciting the envy, not only of other trades but also of the city guild itself. They had taken care to obtain acknowledgment as early as 1130, when Robert, son of Levestan, who may have been their alderman, paid 16£ into the treasury for them. They had a charter, more or less formal, in which Henry I. enacted that no one should exercise their trade in London or Southwark except he be a member of their guild. This was confirmed by Henry II. On the establishment of the mayoralty the weavers had a narrow escape. In 1202 the citizens offered the king sixty marks to suppress the guild, but they had money as well as influence, and the king only renewed their privileges, while he increased their annual payment. ‘Although,’ as Mr. Stubbs remarks, ‘there is no positive evidence to connect them and their fellow-guildsmen with the factions of Thomas FitzThomas and Walter Hervey, or with the later troubles under Edward I., it is not at all unlikely that their struggle with the governing body was a continuous one.’ Edward gave them a charter so worded that they assumed powers of self-government, which the city authorities could not recognise, and in the following reign a verdict against them was obtained after long litigation.

“It was perhaps in consequence of this verdict that the old corporation of the weavers resolved itself or was divided by a higher power into its constituent elements, and we henceforth hear of the drapers, tailors, and others, but no more of the weavers till long after. There is, however, absolute silence on the subject in the works of London historians. The phenomena are altogether peculiar, and but few facts can be picked out as tolerably certain. The weavers touched on one side the trade in linen, on the other that in wool. The woollen drapers were naturally very much divided in their interests from the linen-armourers, and the tailors who constructed garments, as well from the vegetable as from the animal production, were distinct from those who wove the cloth. We find, therefore, not only great dissension at times among the weavers, but a strong tendency to establish separate interests. The drapers, under their Latin designation of _panarii_, very soon divided themselves from the tailors, _cissores_; and, though there is no evidence of their separate existence before 1299, when the tailors’ records commence, it is very probable that from time to time they both rebelled against the tyranny of the weavers. Certain it is, that this powerful guild, which had subsisted through all changes and chances from the time of Henry I. at least, now suddenly and unaccountably disappears; while from its ashes rise the tailors—to whom long after, in the reign of Henry VII. the title of ‘Merchant Taylors’ was conceded—the clothworkers, at first ‘shermen’ and fullers, and the drapers, all of which preserve, more or less dimly, a tradition of their previous united state of existence” (vol. i. pp. 168, 170).

Was the old Gild of Weavers, that licensed by Henry I. and Henry II., entirely dissolved in consequence of the many branches which broke off from the parent trunk? It would appear that since the Craft of the Weavers was one thing and that of the Drapers was another, the Gild of the Weavers would still remain, in which case, though we cannot say that the Company is the most ancient, it would be quite true that the Company is descended from the most ancient Fraternity known.

It has now a Livery of 106; a Corporate Income of £1067; and a Trust Income of £1087. It formerly had a Hall in Basinghall Street. This was destroyed in the Great Fire, and, though subsequently rebuilt, was pulled down in 1856, when offices were built on the site.

THE WHEELWRIGHTS

The Company was founded by a charter granted by King Charles II., February 3, 1670, in compliance with a petition presented by divers wheelwrights, in and near the City of London, praying that, as “certain foreigners undertake the profession and trade of a wheelwright, notwithstanding they are ignorant and unskilful 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 other great inconveniences and misdemeanours used and practised in the said art and trade,” they might, for the prevention thereof, be incorporated into a body politic.

At present they have a Livery of 120; a Corporate Income of £300; no Trust Income, and no Hall.

THE WOOLMEN

The date of the foundation of the Company was probably about 1300.

By the 27 Edward III. c. 23, the Company had the right of appointing licencemen to wind wools. The Company possesses a book of ordinances allowed and confirmed to the Company of Woolmen of the City of London by the Lord Chancellor of England and the two chief justices of either bench in the year 1587. Sixteen of the ordinances regulate the election of the governing body and the clerk, etc. The Company also possesses an order of the Court of Aldermen for granting a Livery to the Woolmen’s Company, and in the report made by the Committee of Privileges and subsequently approved and confirmed by the said court. The Company has existed under various names, such as Woolpackers, Woolwinders, and Woolmen; it was designated by all these titles in a proclamation of Charles II., but for the last three hundred years it has been known chiefly by the style of the Company of Woolmen.

The right of the Company to appoint and license duly qualified persons, having previously examined them, to wind wools has long ceased to exist; the last person licensed was in the year 1779. By proclamations in the reign of Charles II., woolcombers were obliged to be licensed by the Company.

The Master of the Woolmen’s Company has the right to nominate to the Court of Assistants of the Merchant Taylors Company two poor members of the Company as pensioners under Vernon’s Charity.

The Company lost its charter and most of its documents in the Fire of London, when the Company’s Hall was burnt down.

Their members number 20. Their Corporate Income is £376; they have no Trust Income, and no Hall. Considering that the staple trade of England for many centuries was that of wool, there can be little doubt of the extreme antiquity of this Company.