THE COOPERS COMPANY
The Coopers Company was incorporated in 1501 by charter of King Henry VII., dated 29th April, in the sixteenth year of his reign. There is no record, however, of any anterior charter. There is no doubt that the Coopers were one of the early mysteries or brotherhoods of the City of London, though it is difficult to assign a correct date of their origin. The Company’s archives, however, show that the Company had existed for a considerable period prior to the date of its incorporation. A subsequent charter was granted on the 30th August, in the thirteenth year of King Charles II. This is the governing charter, and its provisions regulate the management of the Company to the present day. Under the statute of 23 Henry VII. cap. 4, power is given to the wardens of the Company with one of the mayor’s officers to gauge all casks in the City of London and the suburbs, and within two miles’ compass without the suburbs, and to mark such barrels when gauged. By a subsequent Act, 31 Elizabeth, cap. 8, “for the true gauging of vessels brought from beyond the seas, converted by brewers for the utterance and sale of ale and beer,” brewers were prohibited from selling or putting to sale any ale or beer in any such vessels within the limits before mentioned before the same should be lawfully gauged and marked by the master and wardens of the Coopers Company. The Company do not now exercise, and have not for a considerable period exercised, any control over the trade of coopers.
It is quite certain that a craft so technical and so useful as that of the cooper must have been constituted as a guild as soon as craftsmen began to work together at all. In the year 1396 (Riley, p. 541), “the goodmen of the trade of Coopers” presented a code of ordinances for the regulation of the trade. They complained that certain persons of the trade were in the habit of making casks out of wood which had been used for oil and soap casks, so that ale or wine put into these casks was spoiled. Therefore it is certain that their guild did not possess authority over the trade at that time. This is shown again in 1413, when certain Master Coopers again complained to the mayor that one Richard Bartlot, fishmonger, had made 260 vessels called barrels and firkins of unseasoned wood and of false measure. These vessels were ordered to be destroyed. Perhaps in order to prevent similar practices, it was decreed that every cooper should mark his work by his own trade-mark.
The Corporate Income of the Company is given in 1898 as £2400; the Trust Income as £5000; the number of the livery as 200. Their Hall is 71 Basinghall Street, on the site of two previous halls.
Close by is the “Wool Exchange and Colonial Office” with an open entry supported by polished granite pillars, whose capitals are carved as rams’ heads. This is rather a fine building, with segmental windows set closely all across the frontage. Bevois House, just completed, takes a good line of curvage and is of white stone. Before Guildhall Chambers there is an old house built of narrow red bricks, with semicircular pillars on each side of the centre window frame, and above, on a slab of stone, the date 1660. The site of St. Michael’s Church is here. A row of straight ordinary business houses succeeds. On the east are Guildhall Chambers, plastered houses built round an asphalt court. The centre one has a small portico with Ionic columns; the rest of the court is plain and severe, but not ineffective.
The Church of St. Michael, Bassishaw, was situated on the west side of Basinghall Street. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but destroyed by the Great Fire, and again rebuilt, by Wren, between 1676 and 1679. In 1895 the church was closed, a commission having been issued in 1893 by the Bishop of London to inquire into the expediency of uniting this with the parishes of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Canons of St. Bartholomew’s about 1140, given by the Bishop of London; Henry III.; Thomas de Bassinges, 1246, who left it to his wife by will dated 1275; Henry Bodyk, 1327, who left it to Johanna his wife; Nicholas de Chaddesdon, who sold it in 1358 to Sir John de Beauchamp, brother to the Earl of Warwick; Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, 1435, in whose successors it continues.
Houseling people in 1548 were 500.
The present church measures 70 feet in length, 50 feet in breadth, and 42 feet in height, and includes a nave and two side aisles separated by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is divided into panels, and is pierced with openings to admit the light. The tower, which rises at the west, contains four stories concluded by a cornice and parapet; above this is a lead-covered octagonal lantern in two stages surmounted by a short spire with ball, finial, and vane. The total height is 140 feet.
Chantries were founded here: By John Hannem, citizen, before 1326; by John Asche, whose endowment, “called the bell on the hope,” fetched £3 : 6 : 8; by James Yardeford, Knt., whose endowment yielded £16 in 1548.
A considerable number of monuments are recorded by Stow, the most notable of which are those of Sir John Gresham (d. 1556), Lord Mayor of London, uncle to the more famous Sir Thomas Gresham; and Dr. Thomas Wharton (d. 1673), a physician who gained great glory from his labours during the Plague of 1665.
The parish received a large number of gifts and charities, some of which were as follows: £9 from Lady Anne Vaughan, for lectures; £10 from Sir Wolstan Dixey, for lectures; £20 from Lady Anne Bacon; £70 from Sir Robert and Lady Ducie.
George Gardiner (d. 1589), chaplain to Queen Elizabeth and Chancellor of Norwich, was rector here; also George Lavington (1684-1762), Bishop of Exeter 1746-47.
Drawn by G. Shepherd.
ST. MARY, ALDERMANBURY, IN 1814
Aldermanbury is another ancient City street. The name, according to Stow, is derived from the Court of Aldermen formerly held in the first Guildhall, the ruins of which, on the east side of the street, were standing in his day. They had then been converted into a carpenter’s shop. Here, in 1383, Sir Robert Tressilian, Lord Chief Justice, had his residence. At the north end of this street, before the memory of men living in 1415, a postern had been built leading from the City to the moor. In Riley’s Memorials there is a full account of a crowded meeting of citizens in the Guildhall, July 2, 1415, to consider the state of the moor and certain nuisances outside the postern and within Bishopsgate. It was resolved to lay out the moor, then a waste place, in gardens to be allotted to citizens at a certain rental. The street is frequently mentioned from the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century the street had become a place of residence for the better sort. “Here be divers fair houses on both sides meet for merchants and men of worship.”