CHAPTER I.

THE OLD CITY, ITS CITIZENS AND GUILDS.

In the history of the ancient Livery Companies of London we read the history and progress of not only the City but the Empire. During the many centuries of their existence the Guilds have performed a work for which they deserve the praise and continued support of not only every citizen, but every man who to-day enjoys the freedom of local self-government. There have been kings and prime ministers who, in their tyrannical measures, have forgotten the interests of the people and their trades in their desire to gain unlawful ends, but in every case for hundreds of years the citizens and the Guilds of London have stood forward to fight the great battles for freedom, and the continued and present existence of the Corporation of the ancient City, and the good work they do to-day, prove, if we carefully read their history, that to them we are more deeply indebted than “reformers” choose to acknowledge.

Generations ago “the City” was a very small place, surrounded by a wall with gates, through which the green fields and suburbs—then the pleasant villages of Southwark, Charing, St. Giles, Clerkenwell, Islington, Shoreditch, and the Tower Hamlets and Stepney—could be reached. These gates stood at or near the entrances of the present streets known as Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate, Ludgate, Billingsgate, Aldgate, and Bishopsgate, so that the reader can judge what the size of old London was. On the south side there was the River Thames with its Dowgate, and between this water-gate and Billingsgate was the entrance across the only bridge that then spanned the river, which existed close to where St. Magnus Church now stands—a few yards east of the present London Bridge. In the suburbs were many excellent springs of water, known as Holywells, and at one of these the parish clerks of the City assembled periodically and held their festivals. The well existed till late years in Ray Street, close to the Middlesex Sessions House, and the district is now known as Clerkenwell. The Parish Clerks’ Company, although not a livery guild, still exists, and is one of the oldest of the Guilds.

It was long before the time of famous John Stow that London found a contemporary topographer, for as early as the year 1179—now 710 years ago—William Fitzstephen tells us the citizens everywhere “are esteemed the politest of all others in their manners, their dress, and the elegance and splendour of their tables,” and he pictures us the City in all its primitive grandeur, while the citizens themselves were dignified by the name of barons, a fact borne out by their description in King John’s charter. Speaking of this charter reminds us that a brief epitome of the principal grants, from the Conquest to the reign of Edward IV., when the Ironmongers’ Company received its incorporation, will help the reader to more easily comprehend the progress of the citizens and the Guilds.

There is no document more treasured at Guildhall than the diminutive parchment which William the Conqueror gave to the citizens 800 years ago, and upon which we all base our rights and privileges.

I will that ye be worthy of all those laws which ye were in King Edward’s day; and I will that each child be his father’s heir after his father’s day, and I will not suffer that any man do you wrong. God preserve you.

In the Confessor’s time “the burgesses” of London had obtained the king’s warrant for their freedom, and their children’s heirship, so that their lives and their goods should be protected from the rapacity of the Lords. The foreign merchant was only permitted in the City as a lodger, and was strictly forbidden from selling his wares by retail and underselling and infringing the rights of his entertainer, the citizen. Thus do we see nearly a thousand years ago a precaution taken which we to-day are still clamouring for!

King Henry I., for a quit rent of 300_l._ per annum, granted the citizens the Sheriffwick of Middlesex, which 750 years later has been taken from them. The same monarch also granted them the privilege of hunting, and it is probably through this right the Londoners obtained of late years, for ever, Epping Forest as an open space.

Being dependent upon the king, before the days of charter rights the citizens were often sorely fleeced upon the slightest pretence, and in order to protect themselves they in process of time formed guilds or fraternities of different trades. Richard I. freed them from toll and lestage throughout England, and gave them the conservancy of the River Thames, which right was taken from them some thirty years ago. Of course King John enlarged their privileges in 1199, for the City paid him 3,000 marks, and kings would do anything if you paid them handsomely. Five charters out of eight granted by Henry III. cost them one-fifteenth of their estate, and for another, dated 1265, they paid 13,000_l._ We mention this to show that having bought these privileges it is unreasonable to deprive them of their rights without compensation, and yet this question is never properly understood or thought of.

In the fifth charter granted by King John (1214) the citizens of London received the privilege of choosing their own Mayor from among themselves, and it is to this right many of the livery companies owe their foundation. The first Edward permitted the Chief Magistrate to be sworn in before the Constable at the Tower should the king or his judges be absent from London; and, furthermore, no stranger was to be admitted to the City freedom unless six honest and sufficient members of a mystery or trade be surety. In 1311 Edward II. exempted the citizens from service outside the City in the time of war or tumult, and for this privilege the king was favoured with a gift of 2,000 marks.

To King Edward III. the citizens are indebted for many of their most valued privileges. Thus, in 1327, the Mayor was instituted one of the judges in trials at the Old Bailey (Newgate), the right to bring felons from any part of England and to their goods, the right of devising in Mortmain and forbidding the holding of markets within seven miles of the City. And in order to give them control over such persons as escaped to Southwark to avoid justice, that ancient village was added to the City liberties (and subsequently designated Bridge Ward Without). In 1337 the same king confirmed the rights and privileges, forbidding “foreign” merchant traders retailing in the City and acting as brokers; and in 1354 granted a fifth charter, permitting the Mayor to have gold or silver maces carried before him, from which time the title of Lord Mayor of London has been assumed by London’s Chief Magistrate.

Edward IV. was not behind his predecessors in favouring the citizens, but then it must be noted they paid him some 12,000_l._ for four charters. In 1462 the Mayor, ex-Mayors, and Recorder were all made perpetual justices, and were exempted from serving on juries, &c., while Bartholomew Fair, with a court of Pie Poudre, was to be held in Smithfield. And in 1478 they obtained the right of electing a coroner, and for wine-gauging, &c. As it was Edward IV. who granted the Ironmongers their charter, we have traced the progress of the City privileges so far, and leave the Ironmongers’ records to tell the tale of subsequent progress.

In the course of the preceding remarks the citizens have been so continually alluded to, that a few notes about them and what really constituted a citizen will not be out of place here. In the first place, we think it is not generally known that every member of a City Company is a citizen of London, but every citizen is not a member of a Company. There are two grades of citizens—one free of the City only; the other free of both City and Company, the latter freeman being designated as “citizen and ironmonger,” or whatever Company he may belong to. As the elections or admissions to all the Companies are the same, that describing the admission to the Ironmongers’ will be found in a subsequent chapter of our history.

In all the early charters the general term is “citizens,” but the Conqueror calls them “burhwarn” (inhabitants or burgesses of the borough), and John and Henry III. call them “barons.” The citizens or freemen were the men or inhabitants of free condition and householders, in contradistinction to the bondsmen or villains of the great lords. In the time of Henry III. (1260) all persons of the age of twelve years and upwards were commanded to swear allegiance to the king. In 1305 four persons who held land from the Bishop of London, and dwelt outside the City, were deprived of their freedom, and about the same time the City records declare that everyone who is sworn a freeman, and acts contrary to his oath, should be compelled to “forsweare the town” and lose his privileges. The statute of the 18th Edward II. for View of Frankpledge contains a list of articles still in use, but the statute has been improperly neglected. In 1326 all alien merchants were directed to be amerced, and in 1364 it was ordained that a citizen should obtain his privileges by birth (as a son of a citizen), by servitude (as an apprentice), or by presentment of a mystery or Guild. In 1377, and for a few years after, it was decreed that members of the Common Council should only be chosen from the mysteries, and in 1385 a most important decision was come to, for upon the complaint of the Mercers and the Drapers that some persons had been improperly admitted to the Haberdashers’ and Weavers’ Guilds who were not of those trades, they were at once expelled the City. In the seventh year of Edward IV. no freeman or officer of the City was to be allowed to use the livery of any lord or great man, on pain of losing his office and freedom, so it is pretty evident the two evils which at the present time (1889) beset us—foreign traders and civil servant traders—were not unknown 400 years ago.

We shall conclude this the first chapter of our history by a brief notice of what is to be understood by the description “Guild.” In ancient times Guilds or Gilds were of two kinds—religious and secular. The term “Guilds” is from the Saxon—to pay, an amerciement or payment towards the support of a brotherhood. The religious Guilds existed until their dissolution by Edward VI.; their foundations in some cases were very early, for at Glemsford, in Suffolk, in Canute’s time, existed a fraternity of clerks. In London, the “Cnughts” or “Cnuighten Gild,” of thirteen persons, had their district or soke outside the City walls, near the Tower, and was the origin of Portsoken Ward. The Gilda Theutonicorum, the steel-yard merchants of Dowgate, who first existed 900 years ago, and held a most important position, had their guildhall in the neighbourhood where of late years the iron trade has been so well known (Thames Street), and yet it must be borne in mind that the definition of _steel_-yard was in reality a yard for warehousing general _staple_ goods, and not solely for steel or iron ware. The transfer of all trade concerns to the management and jurisdiction of the Craft Guild was generally accomplished by a confirmation of their ordinance, that everyone carrying on a trade within the town should join the Guild, for which the Guild paid certain taxes—in London to the King—and under Henry I. (1100-1133), and every succeeding reign, the Weavers paid a fee-farm rent, and in 1179 no less than eighteen Guilds were amerced as adulterine, or set up without licence. This was the same year that Fitzstephen tells us the followers of the several trades, the vendors of various commodities, and the labourers of every kind were to be found in their proper and distinct places. Now, in proof of this, we find that to this day in the neighbourhood of Cheap (market) side the streets and lanes still exist wherein the particular trades in the old City were carried on, viz., Milk Street, Bread Street Poultry, Cornhill, Wood Street, Candlewick (now Cannon) Street, and Ironmonger Lane—in which latter thoroughfare and Old Jewry, close to the Guildhall, the ironmongers of old London carried on their business, as will be proved in another chapter.

Many of the ancient Guilds in local places which related to ironmongers will be mentioned further on, but we may mention that Walford, speaking of the Reading Cutlers’ and Bellfounders’ Guilds, tells us that one of their orders was:—“No smith may sell iron wares within the borough except a freeman, on forfeiture of two shillings each time.” Next to the Saddlers’ and Weavers’ Guilds of London in antiquity are the Glovers’ and the Blacksmiths’—the latter ordinances are dated 1434—and of this particular Company the writer of the present history will at some future time give some interesting and little known details. Suffice it to say now that one of the orders particularly ordained: “If eny of the seid bretheren or there wyves be absent fro oure comon dyner or elles fro oure quater dai schall paie as moche as if he or she ware present.” It is proved in this ordinance that dinners were common with the City Guilds four centuries ago, and that the wives of the members were of as much importance to the craft as the members themselves. At the present day, we regret to find that the ladies are not always considered with so brotherly an attention as the blacksmiths considered their ladies in King Henry’s day.

Another of the ancient Guilds was the Farriers’, whose orders, about the year 1324, included the charges to be made for shoeing horses, at the rate of a penny halfpenny for six nails, and twopence for eight nails.

In Buckingham there was a Guild called the Mercers’, which existed from early days. Even as late as the seventeenth century the minutes of this Company contained many very curious entries. For instance, in 1665, when Thomas Arnott, the eldest son of Walter Arnott, was made free upon the understanding that he was “to follow the trade of an ironmonger,” he paid “one gallon of good wyne for his freedom,” and when his brother Thomas was admitted in 1671 “to follow only ye trade of an ironmonger,” he also paid the like fee. Upon turning to the ordinances of the Company we find that the ironmongers of the borough were, with other trades, associated under the name of the Mercers’, and that the fifth clause particularly orders “noe strange pson or fforeigner inhabiting within the said borough or pish, and not ffree of the same, shall bee made ffree of the said Companies to the intent to sell or utter any kind of wares usually solde by any artificier, before such time as every such strange or forrein pson have paid for his freedome”—the sums specified in a schedule annexed, and which “for every ironmonger” was 20_l._, and “one good leather buckett for the use of the said Corporation,” and that the son of such person or freeman so admitted shall, upon being made free of the Company “whereunto he hath beene an apprentice in forme aforesaid,” pay to “the bayliffe and burgesses and his Company one gallon of good wyne.”

As we proceed with our history we shall find some curious facts connected with the London ironmongers, and that their ordinances, quaint and still in force, contain many very illustrative evidences of the trade-unions of centuries ago.