The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London

Transcriber’s notes :
Much of the text in this book was first written centuries before English spelling and punctuation became standardised; it is presented here true to the original. It was common practice at the time to abbreviate handwritten text using superscripted letters, diacritics, and archaic symbols. These will not necessarily display correctly with commonly used screen fonts – and on small handheld devices they may not display at all, or may give rise to illegible fragmented text. Readers are strongly recommended to view the text on a full-sized screen with a browser using a Unicode-compliant font such as Free Serif, Cardo, Segoe UI Symbol, DejaVu, Arial Unicode MS or Lucida Sans Unicode, and even then the text might not display correctly with every browser.
In this transcription, hyperlinks (to a page, illustration or footnote) are indicated by a black dotted underline and by aqua highlighting when the mouse pointer hovers over them. A red dashed underline indicates the presence of a hidden comment which can be revealed by hovering the mouse pointer over the underlined text. Page numbers are shown in the right margin. Footnotes are located at the end of the book. Some illustrations have been repositioned closer to the relevant passage of text.
A title was added to the original plain book cover by the transcriber.
Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle, That hast so long walk’d hand in hand with time.
Shakespeare.
London: BLADES, EAST & BLADES, 23, Abchurch Lane, E.C.
A mery chylde he was, so god me saue Wel coude he let blood, clyppe, and shaue.
Chaucer.

That the foundation of the Commerce, and consequently of the Greatness, of London was laid by the old Livery Guilds—few will question. Much is already known, through the Histories of such of them as have been written—and an apology from me is not needed for a further contribution to so interesting a study. But whilst I make no apology for the contribution, I crave the indulgence of my readers for any shortcomings which, from a literary point of view, may appear in this work; I invite their attention to the matter, rather than to the style in which it is expressed.