A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London A.D. 1351-1889 / With an Appendix Containing Some Account of the Blacksmiths' Company

Again, from these great companies the Lord Mayor was always chosen. The first Mayor was Henry Fitzalwyn, “Draper,” near the London Stone, which is an ancient City relic still existing (but not on its original site) in Cannon Street, not many yards from the office of The Ironmonger, in which this history is first published exactly 700 years afterwards, for Fitzalwyn was first chosen in 1189, and continued to hold office twenty-four successive years. As we have said, the Lord Mayor was always “one of the Twelve”; but in 1742 Sir Robert Wilmot, “Cooper,” declining to be “translated” to the Clothworkers (as was the custom when the Mayor elect was of a minor company), and there being no law to compel him, he was consequently the first Mayor not of the great companies; and it is a curious fact that Wilmot’s predecessor in office was an ironmonger, and to this day the Coopers and the Ironmongers are associated in the Irish estate.

After a lapse of 500 years it will be interesting to many, and to those who object to oath-taking in particular, if we give in its original form the wording of the Ironmongers’ Warden’s oath required to be taken before admission in the fiftieth year of Edward III. Its quaint phraseology must be our excuse for the transcript:—“Yᵉ shall swere that yᵉ shall wele and treuly ov’see the Craft of Iremongers’ wherof yᵉ be chosen Wardeyn for the yeere. And all the goode reules and ordynces of the same craft that been approved here be the Court, and noon other, yᵉ shal kepe and doo to be kept. And all the defautes that yᵉ fynde in the same Craft ydon to the Chambleyn of yᵉ Citee for the tyme beyng, yᵉ shal wele and treuly P’sente. Sparyng noo man for favor ne grevyng noo p’sone for hate. Extorcion ne wrong under colour of your office yᵉ shall non doo, nethir to noo thing thot shalbe ayenst the State, peas, and profite of oure Sovereyn Lord the Kyng or to the Citee yᵉ shall not consente, but for the tyme that yᵉ shalbe in office in all things thot shalbe longyng unto the same craft after the lawes and ffranchises of the seide Citee welle and laufully yᵉ shal have you. So helpe you God and all Seyntes.”

In 1397, one of the years of “Dick Whittington” as Lord Mayor, a curious case came before the Court of Aldermen for decision. William Sevenoake, a native of Sevenoaks, in Kent, and who, subsequent to the date we mention, was Sheriff and Mayor of London, and founder of the schools and almshouses at Sevenoaks, prayed the Court to be enrolled on the Grocers’ Company, notwithstanding in his apprenticeship his master Hugh de Boys was called an ironmonger. The Grocers having proved the facts, William was accordingly entered as a grocer, and 40s. paid for the privilege.

Before their incorporation, the Ironmongers were represented by three Mayors of London, viz., Sir Richard Marlow, 1409-10, and again, 1417-18, and by Sir John Hatherley, 1442-43, and yet, after their incorporation, and not until the year 1566-67 did another ironmonger fill the “chair,” although several sheriffs represented the Guild both before and after their charter was granted.

Herbert, the Guildhall librarian of half a century ago, speaking of the compulsory enrolment of the Companies’ charters, “regretted exceedingly that so little could be found about the ancient state of the City Guilds among the State papers and records preserved by the nation.” If the zealous literary citizen had only known then what we know to-day he would not only have regretted, but denounced in the strongest terms (as we do now), the gross mismanagement of the State Paper Office in the past and the red-tapeism of the present time, the former losing to us for ever most valuable records, the latter placing every obstacle possible in the way of the documents now remaining being conveniently used by historians, the publication of the contents thereof greatly helping towards their future preservation. In our searches at the Public Record Office for the purpose of this history, we have experienced this inconvenience, and we certainly consider it should not exist in a Government institution supported by the public. When we find the authorities at the British Museum, and the Guildhall, and other repositories open to us, and giving every facility with their records, which, after all, embrace priceless treasures and quite as worthy of safe custody, the restrictions placed upon literary research by the Master of the Rolls and the Record Office officials is really worthy a Royal Commission of inquiry.

When Henry VII. entered the City in 1485 the Guilds supplied 435 members to meet the King, and of these ten were Ironmongers. In the year 1504 there was a subscription of the sixty-one Companies, amounting to 313l. 16s. 8d., towards the erection of the kitchen and offices at Guildhall, and 5l. was the sum the Ironmongers gave. It must be borne in mind that in those days a small sum went a long way.

We now arrive at an interesting period of the Company’s history. Eight years previous to obtaining their charter of incorporation the Ironmongers obtained a grant of arms. Both charter and grant have been repeatedly exhibited and described, and beautiful facsimiles of the two documents will be found in Mr. G. R. French’s “Catalogue of the Ironmongers’ Exhibition of Antiquities,” in 1861, a most sumptuously printed and privately circulated work, and now very scarce.

By warrant dated September 1, the thirty-fourth of Henry VI. (1455), “Lancastre, Kyng of Armes,” and the College of Arms granted “Unto the honurable Crafte and felasship of the ffraunchised men of Iremongers of the Citie of London a token of armes, that is to sey: Silver a cheveron of Gowles sitte betwene three gaddes of stele of asure, on the cheueron three swevells of golde: with two lizardes of theire owne kynde encoupled with gowlys, on the helmet.”

The two lizards on the helmet, it must be borne in mind, represent the crest. “The Crafte” and their successors were to hold and enjoy these arms “for evermore,” and the privilege of using a tabard upon all state occasions. Clarenceux, King at Arms, inspected the original grant in 1530-31, and signed its confirmation, and in 1560 William Hervy, another Clarenceux, curiously enough upon inspecting the same document, found the patent “to be without good authoryte,” and therefore, either to ease his conscience or that of the College, or for the more likely reason to be mentioned presently, confirms once again the same grant of “armes, helme, and crest” to “the Corporacon, Company, and Comynalty, and to their successors for evermore,” to use the same “in shylde banners, standardes, and otherwyse,” and “without impedyment or interuption of any person or persons,” for the confirmation of which privilege, already enjoyed for one hundred years, the Ironmongers’ books, Mr. Nicholl tells us, show that “Mayster Clarensys” received thirty-seven shillings, and “his svant for bringing them hom” twelve pence for his own use.

Notwithstanding the official granting and confirmation, another gentleman from the college, this time the Richmond Herald, inspected the same document, and he too did the Company the honour in 1634 of again “confirming” the same grants, so that it is impossible to deny to the Ironmongers the right and privilege of bearing arms; and one fact is certain, if ever a Corporation or Brotherhood possessed appropriate armorials suggestive of their trade it is this Guild, which cannot be said of the armorial shields of many other City Companies.

Now, we have gone into this matter of the granting of the arms and the three confirmations beyond the usually allotted space in histories for the simple reason that one of the most extraordinary circumstances in connection with heraldic grants has yet to be explained. The Ironmongers’ Company, although possessing a grant which has been thrice confirmed by the College, and in which the two lizards appear as a crest, never received from either of the Heralds who were good enough for a consideration to inspect and confirm an authority which each ought to have given, to use “supporters” to the armorial shield, or, if the Company had no right to use them, to inquire the reason why, &c., when such were assumed.

The Company adopting the supporters, two lizards, as in the crest, Edmondson, another Herald, in 1780 actually stated in his Heraldic work that they were given the Company in one of the confirmations! In 1812 the question again came before Garter, King of Arms, when the Collegians were good enough to say that the Ironmongers might have a “confirmation” of the supporters upon paying the modest fee of 73l. It is needless to say that the Company declined to pay this (in our opinion) extortionate demand, and so to this day (as it has exercised from a period long before this century dawned) the Ironmongers bear their supporters, as only true citizens should.

It may be interesting to note here that in many armorial shields of private families there are similarities to that of the Ironmongers’, except that, in place of the chevron between three gads of steel, there are a chevron between three billets of wood, and it is particularly interesting to call attention to the fact that such a coat is to be found in a seal dated 1359, and still more curious that in the deed on which this seal appears three ironmongers are mentioned: John Deynes, William Dikeman, and Henry de Ware. This was nearly a century previous to the Company receiving a grant of arms.

The lizards, now used by the Ironmongers as crest and supporters, were also used when naming their manor in Ireland in the reign of James I., now known as the “Manor of Lizard,” and about which we shall speak hereafter. Mr. Herbert, fifty years ago, remarks:—“What are in the arms termed ‘lizards,’ we may rather imagine were intended to represent salamanders—a creature supposed, like iron, to live unhurt in fire.” Pennant says:—“The frolicsome agility of lizards enlivens the dried banks in hot climates, and the great affection which some of them show to mankind should further engage our regard and attention.” Another writer quaintly suggests that the dear little animal not only loves iron, but likes it hot, eating it with a relish, and digests it with ease. See also the head-piece to Herbert’s “History.”

Under the armorials is the Company’s motto, and that is, appropriately, “God is our strength.” It is not known when this was assumed, but the date is modern, for anciently—at all events, in the seventeenth century—the Ironmongers’ motto was “Assher Dure,” which a well-known antiquary translates as “steel endures,” and will be found in the heraldic volume of Companies’ arms in the British Museum.

A most important step was now taken, which in the history of the Guild at once entitled it to the style of “worshipful.” In 1463 it obtained a charter of incorporation. Written in Latin, it is not a lengthy document, but is interesting, and prettily illuminated in gold and colours, with the royal arms within the initial letter “E” of Edwardus, and another shield of the Company’s arms in the margin beneath. Pendant is a fine specimen of the royal seal of England, circular in size, in green wax, dated Westminster, March 20, the third year of Edward IV., then 1462, but, since the alteration of the calendar, now 1463. The King grants: “To our well-beloved and faithful liegemen all the freemen of the mystery and art of Iremongers of our City of London and suburbs thereof” the rights and privileges to be a body corporate for evermore, to have a master and two wardens (who are named as Richard Flemming, alderman; and Nicholas Marchall and Robert Toke) and a commonalty, with perpetual succession, under the name of “the master and keepers or wardens and commonalty of the mystery or art of Ironmongers of London,” to have a common seal, make ordinances, to purchase and hold lands and tenements to the value of 10 marks yearly.

The day upon which the Guild received their incorporation charter they, doubtless, celebrated with all the ceremonials and festivities which we, 400 years afterwards, indulge in to-day, and they recorded in their books a resolution: “That they shalle holde and kepe the said feste for their principall fesst, evermore.”

Ironmongers’ Hall in Fenchurch Street will be described in another chapter, but we may as well state that the site of the present building was granted in the year 1457 by the executors of Alice Stivard, the widow of Sir John Stivard, Knight, to the nineteen “citizen and ironmongers” mentioned (among whom were the three named in the charter), and that in the Company’s books occurs the entry, “Bought by the for wreten ffelowshipp and paid fore, and also posesson taken the XX daie of Octobr the XXXVI yer of King Henry the VI.”

Now, what do our reforming friends in 1889 say to this? There is nothing said about trusts here. It is as much the Company’s freehold and belongs to them, the “root and branch” descendants, as ever the commonest article that may be purchased (and paid for, mark ye!) by any citizen and working-man to-day. So, in simply quoting the purchase here, we do so to put all reformers on their guard not to be so ready to make hay (by their seizure) before the sun shines on assumed or presumed rights.

But we will go a little further. The Company did not buy without legal aid, for the books show “lernyd counsaile at the purchas makyng” received not only 26s. 8d. for their advice and labours, but there was paid “at taverns dyvers tymes” for refreshments to the same gentlemen the large sum of 3s. 6d.

Having purchased a house and garden, and regularly gone into housekeeping, the Ironmongers began their furnishing in humble style. Among the first articles purchased were the following:—

And the same accounts tell us that “the alderman and the bedill at ye possessyon takyng” received 2s. 6d. “For brede and ale at our possession takyn” 22d. was spent, while “barge hyre at twoo tymes” cost 14s., but there is no evidence what for, or where to the barges were so employed.

It must not be said that the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers commenced incorporated existence extravagantly. And we shall be able to show in our next chapter that, as they began so they continued, careful in the management of their charity trusts, and frugal in all matters pertaining to their government.

CHAPTER IV.
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF THE IRONMONGERS’ HISTORY.—I.

Although Mr. Alderman Cotton, one of the Parliamentary City Companies’ Commissioners, reported five years ago “that the returns made to the Commission show conclusively that the members of the Livery Companies were never exclusively of the trade the name of which was borne by their Company, and that for about 400 years the larger proportion of the members have not pretended to follow the crafts of their Companies,” and that “the Livery Companies are not to be classed with friendly or benevolent societies, with monastic institutions, or with political or other clubs, but rather approached the character of a masonic body, exercising in the past and at the present time a very good and important moral influence not only upon citizens and City life, but upon public life generally,” and foremost in the promotion of education and charitable acts, we shall show that, like many other of the Companies, the Ironmongers’ has never proved indifferent to its particular trade or its kindred associations.

It was contended before the Commissioners in 1882 that the whole of the charters of the Companies are bad because the King parted with his right to grant charters conferring the right of search. Without attempting to enter into the question, or debate the correctness of such an assertion, as only a lawyer could and would in “the good old times,” upon the power of the sovereign to make a grant which has stood the test of centuries, no such right is to be found in either of the Ironmongers’ charters. The records of the Company show that statutory legislation for the protection and regulation of the iron trade was enacted in the reign of Henry IV., Richard III., Henry VIII., and Edward VI., and that on certain occasions this Company have laid abuses of the trade before the Common Council that they might deal therewith, this company not having the power in itself. Amongst its own commonalty only the Ironmongers’ exercised supervision and control of trading, but as none of the trade joined the Company other than of their own free will and for their own good, obedience to such control can only be regarded as voluntary, and not as infringing the liberty of the subject contrary to the provisions of Magna Charta.

We therefore desire in the present chapter, while giving a chronicle of the Ironmongers’ progress during the past 400 years, to show that the old City Guild has a history in many respects peculiarly its own, and that since its incorporation it has frequently proved most valuable to the State, the City, and the people.

And yet the Ironmongers as brethren have had their troubles. Witness the City Sheriff of 1479, Robert Byfield by name and Ironmonger by Company, who, with Sir Bartholomew James, the then Lord Mayor, attended prayers at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and had the audacity to kneel too close to his Civic Majesty. His Lordship chid him for the affront; Mr. Sheriff resented the scolding, and the end of the extraordinary squabble was that the Court of Aldermen tried the case, and fined Mr. Byfield, who, says Stow, “payd 50l. towards the water conduits,” one of which, the great conduit in Cheapside, was then building. Our Sheriff, who resided in Tower Street, did not long survive the trial, for he died in 1482, and by his will proved he was far from being unmindful of religious or charitable influences, for he not only founded a chapel and made many bequests, but did not forget his poorer brethren in Fenchurch Street.

But not alone and personally have the Ironmongers suffered. Our early Monarchs appear to have considered the rich and powerful Citizens a fair field for plunder. While Royalty was privileged to run to excesses, and by extravagance spent the income their loyal subjects provided, the Citizens, because they exercised their moral and more business-like spirit of showing a balance on the right side of the ledger, were made victims of repeated extortions. It is no use denying, and unjust to deny, that our Sovereigns have so loved London as to sacrifice their comfort or their greed by visiting it for other than personal motives, and the records show but too plainly that Royalty in the past has depended upon the wealth of “a nation of shopkeepers” for a constant supply of the “needful.” The Royal draw upon the City purse commenced early in London’s existence, and great has been the loss to the Citizens; and yet to-day there are those who still clamour for the extinction of the very source which has kept the nation alive! Our remarks are not overdrawn, as our proofs are many—too many, in fact, to be detailed at large. One or two must suffice now.

Beginning, then, more than 350 years ago, King Henry VIII. set a bad example to his descendants. Having asked the City for 20,000l.—only as a loan, of course—in the year 1523, he, the more readily to raise it, “comandyed to have all the money and platt that was belonging to every hawlle or craft,” and so the poor Ironmongers had to pay up among the other Companies. The book sorrowfully records, “At the whyche comandmentt he had all oure money,” and that amounting to only 25l. 1s. 2d., the plate was pawned or sold, realising 46l. more, or a total of 71l. 14s. 2d.; and even then, not being satisfied, twenty of the richest members of the Company “lent” him out of their own pockets something like 190l., “Mr. Willm Denham oure Warden” heading the list with 30l. We hope he was repaid, but we doubt it.

The King having obtained this “little loan” so easily did not forget to be “a suitor” to the City again; but the next time the Ironmongers went to the Pawnbrokers was in 1544, when they “layd to plege, the xxij. day of May,” their ewers, salts, and cups, to provide “xiiij. men in harnes to goe over the see wᵗʰ the Kyngs army in to France, that was iiij. bowmen and x. byll men” fully equipped for service. Now we do not intend to quote every occasion when the Sovereign borrowed money, but a few selected cases will tell the tale. In 1575 a precept from the Lord Mayor commanded the Company to assist the Queen’s demand by paying 60l., coolly adding, “if youe have not soe moche in store then you shale borrowe the same at ynterest at thonly costs and lossis of yoʳ hall.” Next year the Queen commanded the City to raise and hold in readiness for her 140,000l., and a few years later, in 1588, the celebrated Armada year, when every county in England lent its thousands to assist in the defence of the nation, and the Companies of the City advanced 51,900l., we find the Ironmongers’ proportion was 2,300l. (“The City Guilds Subscription Lists,” in “The Western Antiquary,” May, 1888), raised among fourteen of the wealthiest members. In 1598 the Queen’s Privy Council sent for 20,000l. more, and the Ironmongers lent 880l. In 1614, the treasury being empty, and Parliament dissolved, the King asked for 100,000l.; but the City was far from prosperous that year. Government demands, the Ulster and Virginia plantations, and other calls had drained the City purse; and it was only after several meetings that the Ironmongers obliged His Majesty by making “a benevolence” of 179l. And when, in 1620, another demand was made, and the Company granted 170l., the members were compelled for a time to be so economical that not only were all their dinners stopped, but they actually fined each other so that the current expenses could be paid. And still the obnoxious and oppressive precepts poured in. In 1627, in 1628, in 1630, the citizens were truly “dearly beloved” to the King, and when, in 1640 and 1642, the Parliamentary demands for another trifling “loan” of 100,000l. made matters more and more disheartening, the Ironmongers were forced to part with 3,400l., and another advance a little later made the Government a debtor to the Company in the year 1652 of no less a sum than 9,536l. 3s. 7d. If we calculate what was owing to the other Corporations at the same time at only half this sum each, is it to be wondered at that there were civil wars, or that the extravagances of the “Merry Monarch” and his saintly brother James brought about in succession the shutting up of the Exchequer and the revolution of two centuries ago?

The Ironmongers had all along proved to be such true friends to the State that they found out to their cost, and too late, that they had not been true to themselves. Their account with the Government and their Royal masters of fifty years before still remained unsettled, and to so low a pitch had their exchequer fallen that in 1691 they were again compelled to pawn their plate for 253l., and no longer trust to the promises or bonds of their debtors. And so, striking off the balance of 5,000l. as a bad debt, they determined in future to trust only those who were trustworthy. But even the loss or money, and having to pawn their plate and valuables, were not their only troubles. The harassing demands of the State at times were so oppressive that it makes us wonder the City did not revolt sooner than it did and shut its gates to tyranny as Derry did in 1688. Only one example of oppression need I give here. In 1675 the Hearth Tax collector called in Fenchurch Street and demanded 4l. 16s. for “chimney money” for two empty houses, belonging to the Company, then standing between the present Queen Victoria and Thames Streets. The Ironmongers declined to pay the demand, whereupon (says the record) “he (the collector) did, wᵗʰ his consorts and constable, goe upp into the hall and took away one of the Company’s salts.” This was distressing with a vengeance, everyone will admit, and, notwithstanding that we think empty houses to-day should pay their share of taxation and thus lighten parochial rates, we do not advocate the sharp practice of King Charles’s collector.

Let us now take a rapid review of the Company’s history as applicable to the trade. If they did not possess the right of search or the power over the trade generally, like some of the other Guilds, they by advice and action with the Corporation and Companies have upon many occasions proved most beneficial and valuable. The earliest ordinances of the Guild are of the date 1498. They provide for the elections of the Master and Wardens “wᵗʰ tokens of garlands on their heds,” the charge of purchasing “clothing or lyvery” for the brotherhood at the drapers’ shops at Blackwell Hall (on or near the site of the present Guildhall Library); the settling of the dinners, when the member paid 2s., “and for the wyf if she be att the dyner xiid.” (which is not an ironmonger’s wife’s privilege at the present time); those freemen warned to attend the Hall and disobeying to be fined 4d., and the wardens 2s.; none to offer insult to their brethren; “no member to sue a brother for debt without leave of the wardens”; apprentices to be admitted to the fellowship “having served his tyme well and truly”; “straungers or foreigners (that is to say, those not already of the City) may be elected if introduced by four creditable liverymen”; “the Wardens, once in every two years at least, to search all manner of weights and measures that be used in the same felashippe, and when they find any default to levy fines at the discression of the master and wardens”; apprentices to be enrolled at Guildhall within the first year, and to be registered in the Company’s book; “no person in the felashippe shall take noon apprentice excepte he have sewertie and bond for him in Cˡⁱ sterling”; and no apprentice to be “under 14 years of age, and for no lesse terme than X yeres, except it be his first apprentice taken for necessitee, and for him he shel ax licence of the wardeyns,” and every apprentice his master shall advise to be “resonable and honest,” and shall see that he have clean and sound “hosyn, doblett, shirtis, and other necessaries,” ... “to kepe hym from colde and wete,” and by no means to suffer “his here to growe to long.” Finally, every member of the fellowship, whether in or out of the clothing (that is to say, liveryman or freeman), was required “to appear iiij. tymes in the yeere at the foure principal Courts, and these iiij. Courts ben ordeyned alway to endure to Goddes pleasir principally, and to redresse the maters that be not wele used, and to kepe pece and gode rewle among us,” and at these Courts all arrearages were to be paid—the master, 12d.; the present or past wardens, 8d.; the clothing (or liveryman), 6d.; and the yeomanry (or freeman), 4d.; and the wardens not to see the yeomanry decay.

Such then is an abstract of the earliest ordinances of the Ironmongers. At the present time the Company consists of a master, two wardens, the livery (all of whom comprise the Court, and, therefore, unlike any other City Company, who have a livery and a court of assistants as well), and the yeomanry, or freemen generally, over which presides a warden chosen by and from themselves at Easter, yearly. Of these we shall speak in another chapter.

The ordinances were revised and approved by the Lord Chancellor and Justices in February 1581, when the rules were either modified or extended. The elections are set forth; the four quarterly courts were settled, and at which the master paid his quarterage money of 16d.; the warden, 12d.; the liveryman, 9d. and the freemen, 4d. The apprentice always to be of the age not exceeding twenty-four when his term expired. The stranger or foreigner when admitted to pay 20l. The search of weights and measures to be once a year, or oftener, in the shops of the fellowship, and false ones destroyed, and fines of 40s. to the Company to be inflicted. Other special ordinances will be alluded to in another chapter.

The Company in 1549 interested themselves in the passing of the Act against the forging of iron gads instead of gads of steel, and six years later there are several entries relating to the coal meterage, which the Company had to superintend until the reign of James I. In 1557, when the rules of the newly-founded Bridewell at Blackfriars were made, and to which prison rogues and apprentices formerly, and of late years unmanageable City apprentices only, have been sent by the Chamberlain, it was specially provided in the governing of “the nail-house” that “to you is given authority to make sale of all such nayls as shall be made in this house, so the same be done according to the order taken with the Company of Ironmongers, which is, that (they giving to this house as the people of the same may by their travail reasonably live) shall before all men have all the nails that are made therein, and have one month’s day of payment for the same.” An inventory of all iron and nails, smithies, hammers, anvils, bellows, and tools to be truly kept, &c., and proper workmen appointed to oversee the idle apprentices’ work. In 1579 there were at Bridewell what in 1597 were called “art masters,” or those who had charge of trade apprentices, and among these were the naylors and pinmakers. In 1598 “Spanish needles” were made in the prison; in 1602 the pinners’ boys numbered fourteen, and in 1604 there were to be forty.

In the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1558, the new Timber Act received special consideration from the Company, for it concerned the ironworks. In 1561 they took action against one of the freemen, Clement Cornwall, about whom a complaint was lodged for selling inferior goods at Lewes Fair, and three years later, at the instance of the yeomanry, the Court ordered that at fairs or elsewhere their members must sell nails six score to the hundred, and not five score as formerly. In 1569 the Founders’ Company fell out with the wardens of the Ironmongers’, which was settled by the aldermen, and ten years later three members of each Company of Ironmongers and Grocers were ordered to attend between the hours of 7 A.M. and 6 P.M. at the Bishop Gate of the City, to inspect and search every person and see that their “apparil, swords, daggers, or bucklers, wᵗ long pikes, great ruffs or long cloakes, or carry thear swordes close under their armes or the poyntes upward” were as by the late proclamation provided. In 1612 the Ironmongers, Blacksmiths, and Carpenters had many meetings, and passed special resolutions jointly on the then serious question of the importation of rod iron and a newly granted patent, and it is interesting to note that the then senior warden of the Company was the young gentleman who misbehaved himself at Lewes Fair in 1561, as already mentioned. In 1623 the Cutlers joined the Ironmongers, and obtained from the Corporation the by-law that all strangers or others should be compelled, as heretofore, to bring cutlery and iron wares to Leadenhall to be examined. This new by-law caused the Corporation and Companies much trouble to carry out, but it continued a City ordinance down to the year 1665.

In 1636 another trouble arose. A petition to the King by the shipwrights complained of the making of nails “of the worst iron, of lesse weight, strength and goodnes then in former tyme.” As the petitioners stated the deceits were committed by “wholesale men who employed poor smiths,” there was evidently a case of “sweating” in those days. For this the Company were called upon to appear before the Privy Council, where, of course, they would plead that they had no power over the trade generally. Four years afterwards the old complaint of the strangers, Leadenhall, underselling, &c., the Ironmongers were brought before the Corporation, and it was ordered that the Company should, when necessary, take possession, &c. The same year, too, the Company had to take notice of a monopoly granted by the King to his gunfounder, of cast-iron goods, which the Company were fortunate enough to get “called in and overthrown.” In 1657 John Richardson, a pinmaker by trade and Ironmonger by Company, prayed to be translated to the newly-formed Company of Pinmakers; but as by his copy of freedom he was to hold chiefly of the fellowship of Ironmongers, the Court of the Company refused assent. This custom is a peculiar one to the Ironmongers, and has often proved a bar to progress to those desiring to join other Guilds where promotion is more rapid.

CHAPTER V.
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF THE IRONMONGERS’ HISTORY.—II.

It has been asserted by some of the most violent opposers to the Corporation of London and the City Guilds that the Companies are part and parcel of the Corporation, that they were incorporated for the special benefit of the trades the names of which they are known by, that they once were, and should still be, solely composed of such trades’ members, and their property devoted to the artisans of such trades. Now, with all due respect to such arguments and those who may argue on these grounds, we must at once point out what is always considered to be the most sensible view of the question—that circumstances alter cases, and the merits of each case deserve to be considered separately. Were it otherwise there would be at once an end of our freedom and birthright, Magna Charta, and everything else.

In our previous chapters we have shown that the Ironmongers’ charter makes no mention of the Guild as specially incorporated for trade purposes or for the trade’s sole benefit, and that the earliest by-laws simply conferred the right of search and inspecting all weights and measures “used in the same feloshippe,” and consequently did not apply to the trade in general. In fact there was, and still remains, no compulsion upon an ironmonger to join the Company, although in ancient times, by charter-rights, he would be compelled to become a freeman of the City, which, as we have already stated, did not constitute him free of a Company as well. The Ironmongers’ charter was confirmed by Philip and Mary, June 20, 1558; by Queen Elizabeth, November 12, 1560; by James I., June 25, 1604; and by James II., November 19, 1687. The grant of this last-mentioned letters patent was made to the Companies generally after the stormy events of the previous four years, and as some reparation for the gross injustice done to his subjects by Charles II., when, under the power of the writ of quo warranto, he seized the City charters and disfranchised the very men who had been his best friends. This act of the “Merry Monarch,” and the shutting up of the Exchequer, the ruin of the goldsmiths and bankers, and the continuous oppression of the citizens by his brother James brought about sooner than royalty expected the destruction of the King, “the glorious Revolution of 1688,” and the accession of William III. on December 12 of that year, from which time, and by special Act in his second year, the Companies have been restored to their ancient position and privileges. And we firmly believe the lessons then learnt by the partisans of Charles and James, and handed down to their descendants, have not been forgotten by those still living in the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. In addition to these special charters there was yet another grant made, which, as regards their estates, is a complete answer to those who to-day say the Ironmongers’ property is not their own. It is “a perpetuitie” made to them and their successors for ever by James I., dated August 4, 1619.

Exactly 300 years ago the ancient City of Chester was represented in its Mayoralty chair by an ironmonger, whose son upset the good people of the City by retailing ironmongers’ wares, to the prejudice of the Citizens, who, by a grant from Queen Elizabeth in 1561, had been exempted from a duty of 2s. per ton upon iron imported there. And in the same year of 1589 one Peter Newall, or Newgall, an assistant to his father-in-law, Mr. Bavand, who appears to have enjoyed the distinction of being “an ironmonger, a vintner, a mercer, and a retayler of manye comodities,” complained that David Lloyd, “a retaylinge draper,” had “usurped the name of merchant,” for which wrongdoing the Privy Council, the Secretary of State, the Master of the Rolls, and all the machinery of the law was set in motion that “the drifte of the said Lloyd shalbe ripte upp and viewed into,” and the injury to the Citizens repaired. In Buckingham, both in 1691 and 1706, two members of the Blunt family were admitted into the Mercers’ Company “to follow the trade of an ironmonger,” and both gentlemen were subsequently Wardens of their Company. Others, too, were admitted to follow other trades.

Mr. Herbert, the Guildhall Librarian, in his Historical Essay on the City Companies, published fifty years ago, sums up the exactions on the Guilds by the reigning powers in these words:—“Contributions towards setting the poor to work, towards erecting the Royal Exchange, towards cleansing the City ditch, and towards projects of discovering new countries; money for furnishing military and naval armaments; for men, arms, and ammunition to protect the City; for State and City pageants and attendances; for provision of coal and corn, compulsory loans, State lotteries, monopolous patents, concealments, seditious publications and practices, and twenty other sponging expedients were among the more prominent of the engines by which that ‘mother of her people,’ Elizabeth, and afterwards James and Charles, contrived to screw from the Companies their wealth.” And J. P. Malcolm, in the second volume of his “Londinium Redivivum,” 1803, when giving his most valuable extracts from the Ironmongers’ books (and who speaks of Mr. Sumner, the then clerk of the Guild’s “politeness and attention worthy of an enlightened man,” and so totally different to some other of the Companies’ clerks), remarks “that specie in their hands possessed the faculty of attracting clouds of precepts, and that, if the Company were lavish, the Crown was always ready to receive.” Our last chapter proves the case, but a few more entries of another kind will confirm the views expressed.

In 1562 the Ironmongers were called upon to provide without delay nineteen “good appte and talle persones to be souldiers,” each of whom was to be provided with “corsletts and weaponed with pykes and billes.” This demand meant that if none of the Company’s members cared to serve, then they were to find some other men that would, and accordingly liverymen and yeomen had to assist out of their own pockets to meet the charge. Four years later three more soldiers were provided by the Company out of the 100 fully-armed ordered away from the City for service in Ireland; and, in 1569, no less than twenty-eight “men of honeste behaviour” had to be found “to march against the rebells in the north.” A few years later, in 1577, the demand increased, for an order came for 100 “able men, apprentices, journeymen, or others free of the City, of agilitie or honest behaviour,” between nineteen and forty years of age, and fully armed, for, says Malcolm in his quaint way, “the noble art of man-killing.” The instructions issued out to these “volunteers” are extremely curious to read, for nothing is said in them about evolutions, advancing, retreating, or formation into columns or squares or divisions; and, what is more notable, each man must have been in danger every moment of being blown into the air by his own powder! In 1579 the Ironmongers’ proportion of the 3,000 men wanted of the City for the defence of the realm was 110, of which 72 were to be provided with “shott, calvyʳ, flask, toche, murryn, sword, and dagger, and a pound of powder,” and 38 with “pikes, corslett, sword, and daggʳ.” The Armada year of 1588, and the call to arms upon that occasion will be found fully described in the “Historical Essay,” printed in 1886; but in 1591, in order to provide the 7,000l. required for manning the navy, the Ironmongers lent 344l., having two years previous received notice to have ready 1,920 lbs. of powder. In 1643, when the Committee at Guildhall sent a polite request to Ironmongers’ Hall desiring that fifty barrels of gunpowder should be stored there as “a place of safety,” the Company politely returned answer that they could not oblige, for not only want of room, but that their tenants next door, having Spaniards, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen lodging in the house, might be placed in danger of no ordinary kind.

In 1596 the Companies were charged with 3,500l. for providing twelve ships, two pinnaces, and 1,200 men, and the Ironmongers lent 172l. The next demand made for ships or men was in the year 1639, when 1,000l. was raised. Readers of history will recollect the case of John Hampden and the “Ship Money” impost, and the Companies’ books prove too truly the repeated extortions. The demand on the Ironmongers’ for men alone in the forty years previous to 1600 was something like 300, besides their full equipments, and when we reckon the money lent, the powder provided the other calls upon their purse, it will be fully understood that the good old times with this Company were none of the happiest.

We will now mention another branch of the City Companies’ “business”—the coal and corn custom. The object was twofold: to supply the poor in times of scarcity at a cheap rate, and to defeat the combinations of dealers. And yet, laudable as the custom was, it is astonishing to find from the results that much imposition was inflicted upon the Companies, and that the demands for storage poured in as fast as the money precepts did. As early as 1605 the Ironmongers agreed “to provide a shipp to fetch sea coles from Newcastle, as other of the twelve Companies intende”; and in 1665 (the Plague year) they laid up 255 chaldrons, all the other Companies laying in quantities in proportion. And here we cannot omit to mention one of the bequests made by a worthy benefactor to the Ironmongers’ Company. Margaret Dane, the wife of Alderman William Dane (Sheriff 1569, and twice Master of his Company), by her will, dated in 1579, left in trust to the Company (among other munificent bequests) sufficient money to provide every year 12,000 faggots to be distributed among the poor of each of the twenty-four City Wards, to be used by such poor persons “as fuel to keep them warm.” To this day this bequest of three centuries ago is carried out by the company, a certain sum being distributed to each ward. But it will hardly be believed when we state that the opponents to the City Companies have gone out of their way to magnify this praiseworthy bequest into the horrible tale that this good lady left 12,000 faggots yearly to be used for the burning of heretics!

The provision of corn commenced as early as 1521, and continued until the period of the Great Fire in 1666, when, the Companies’ mills and granaries being destroyed, the custom ceased, and was not afterwards renewed. In 1579 eight ironmongers were deputed to go to all the City markets and “set the price of meale”; in 1608 the Company was assessed at 88l. towards erecting the granaries at Bridewell, and another 88l. the following year. Yearly provisioning the markets at Leadenhall, at Queenhithe, and elsewhere continued until 1649, when the Company pleaded that, through being “disabled in their estate,” they really were unable to meet the Lord Mayor’s demand. A complete summary of this City corn custom will be found in Herbert’s “History of the Companies,” vol. i., pp. 132-150.

We will mention a few of the “Miscellaneous” precepts which the company were favoured with from time to time. In 1565-66 they subscribed among themselves 100l. towards “the building of the new Burse”—the first Royal Exchange. They made loans to Yarmouth (1577), Bury St. Edmunds (1637), and Gloucester (1643) to help those places in their difficulties. They made a benevolence in 1604 of 40s. to Messrs. Chandler & Parkhurst, for having procured the passing in Parliament of the Bankruptcy Act, “a matter verie beneficiall to yᵉ comonwealth.” In 1631 they agreed to subscribe 20l. a year for five years towards the repairing of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and again on the rebuilding, after the fire of London, in 1666, they, as individual members, were benefactors. In 1694 they gave 40s. to a Greek presbyter of Larissa to help him to get back to his country; in fact, such donations frequently occur in the books. Mr. Nicholl remarks: “Not only are the City Companies called upon to relieve the necessities of private indigence, but there is scarcely any public charity whatever whose petitions for aid are not laid before them.”

In the beginning of the reign of James I. (1608-14) the Company, with others, adventured in the New Virginia Plantation Scheme, “to ease the Cittie and suburbs of a swarme of unnecessarie inmates as a continuall cause of dearth and famine, and the verie origenall of all plagues.” In 1609 the King offered to the City of London the waste lands in Ulster as another plantation scheme. This, the wisest act of His Majesty, was accepted, and the Ironmongers (among other City Companies) became thus possessed by actual purchase (as shall be shown hereafter) of their Irish estate—the Manor of Lizard. In 1625-27 the Company lent, or advanced, money to the East India Company, and in 1633 to the Greenland Company. It must be mentioned here that, having subscribed to the Virginia Lottery, Captain John Smith subsequently presented to the Company copies of four of his books, all of which, unfortunately, are now missing. As the copies contained dedications (in MS.?) the loss is to be much deplored.

We now turn to more joyful matters—pageantry. The Ironmongers were not behind in any of these. So long ago as 1483 ten of the Company (with proportions from other companies), dressed in murrey-coloured coats, rode to meet the King on his entering the City, and at the subsequent coronation, when the Lord Mayor (Sir Edmund Shaa, goldsmith, and Alderman of Cheap Ward, the same ward over which the present Lord Mayor in 1889 presides) acted as chief butler at the feast, and received from the King and Queen the wine-cups used by them as his fee, Alderman Thomas Breten, Ironmonger, assisted his lordship in his duties. At most of the Royal visits and coronations, and such like festivities, the Company, with others, always had their “standing” and precedency, and in this respect the “place” was much contested. A proof occurs in the history of the dispute between the Skinners and Merchant Taylors in 1484. Upon appeal to the Lord Mayor “for norishing of peas and love,” he decreed that from henceforth the Skinners should dine with the Merchant Taylors at their hall one year, and the Merchant Taylors at Skinners’ Hall the next year, and so yearly alternately for ever should each company have precedence. And for 400 years has this most excellent decree been celebrated yearly, each Company toasting in the other’s hall their “root and branch,” and wishing them “to flourish for ever.”

In 1541, when Queen Anne Bullen came from Greenwich by water to Westminster, the Company of Ironmongers spent no less than 9l. on the festivity. Their barge cost 26s. 8d., and their provisions included gurnets, fresh salmon, eels, bread and cheese, wine, claret, and a kilderkin of ale. A reference to Nichols’s “London Pageants,” or his “Progresses” of Queen Elizabeth and James I., will tell in full the interesting character of these City shows, and the gorgeous displays made by the citizens, who then, as now, never were niggardly in their tokens of welcome. One of the most curious of these outdoor scenes was “the setting of the marching watch,” when 2,000 persons, apparelled in holiday costume, with 700 lighted cressets, borne aloft, paraded the City. A description of a visit by Henry VIII., dressed in the costume of one of his own guards, will be found in the first volume of Knight’s “London.” The last entry in the Ironmongers’ books is dated 1567, but an account of expenses a quarter of a century earlier shows that 800 cresset lights cost 2s. 4d. per 100; a dozen straw hats, 12d.; armourer, 6s. The Company’s banquet cost 36s. Among the items of the feast were: A peece of beef, 4d.; a breast of veel, 7d.; a neck and breast of mutton, 6d.; a goose, 9d.; four rabbits, 1s.; bread, 6d.; butter, 1½d.; water, 1d. The cook and two assistants, 7d.; six gallons of wine, 7s.; and a gallon of ale, 2d.

Lord Mayor’s Day and the Lord Mayor’s Show was another City festival red letter day from early times. Until the year 1752, when the Act for altering the calendar came into force, the presentation of the Lord Mayor took place on October 29, but since that year it has been November 9. Sir John Norman, “Draper,” in 1452, was the first chief magistrate to go to Westminster by water; Lord Mayor Finnis, in 1856, the last. Most of the Lord Mayors have had their shows, the pageantry at which has been most elaborate, especially during the seventeenth century. The following is a complete list of the “Ironmonger” Lord Mayors:—

As we have already stated, some of the early Lord Mayor’s Shows were elaborate, and illustrative of the Company’s trade name. They will be found chronicled in Nichols’s “Pageants” and in Fairholt’s “Lord Mayor’s Day Pageants” (Percy Society, 1843-45). The Guildhall Banquet tickets during the past 100 years have been exceedingly interesting as specimens of design and printing, the early ones being by Bartolozzi and his school. A nearly complete set is in our own collection, those at Guildhall, strangely enough, only dating back some fifty years, the reason being that the show and banquet has always been the private and personal festival of the Lord Mayor and two Sheriffs, the former paying a moiety of the expenses, the total generally ranging from 2,000l. to 3,000l. It is, therefore, a vulgar error to suppose that the Citizens and ratepayers are taxed a penny.

The earliest notice of the Pageantry in the Ironmongers’ books is 1566, but the most complete account is that at the inauguration of Sir James Cambell, 1629, which was compiled by Thomas Dekker, and entitled “London’s Tempe.” It cost the Company 180l. There were six elaborately “got up” pageants representing: for the water a sea lion and two sea horses, and for the land an estridge, Lemnion’s Forge, Tempe or the Field of Hapines, and Apollo’s Palace representing the seven liberal sciences. The fourth or trade pageant is worth quoting. It is described as “The Lemnion Forge.” In it are Vulcan the Smith of Lemnos, with his servants (the Cyclopes), whose names are Pyracmon, Brontes, and Sceropes, working at the anvile. “Their habite are wastcoates and leather aprons, their hair black and shaggy, in knotted curles. A fire is seene in the forge, bellowes blowing, some filing, some at other workes; thunder and lightning on occasion. As the smithes are at worke they singe in praise of iron, the anvile, and hammer, by the concordant stroakes and soundes of which Tuball Cayne became the first inventor of musicke.”