A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Horners

by H. G. Rosedale

They are to elect one honest and discreet person as Clerk, and also appoint a Beadle.

Exercise of Rights, 1689.
Buying Horns, 1739.

The control continuously exercised by the Company over the trade, and finally secured to them in the Charter just mentioned, has never been abandoned, though at any rate for the present it is not exercised. In the first year of William III (1689) the Horners’ Company successfully prosecuted a Comb maker for pressing horns, he not being a “Horner.” Maitland, who published his work in 1739, tells us that the Company “had of late appointed diverse of their members to attend the market of Leadenhall & those of the neighbouring counties for the buying of horns” to be sent to their common warehouse in Wentworth Street, Spitalfields, where they were made up into lots and divided amongst the several members, not omitting the widows and orphans, who also received their several shares.

Last legal claim, 1745.
Ceases as a trading body.

The last occasion on which the Court exercised its rights against persons infringing its monopoly was in the year 1745. Having ascertained that certain persons not free of the Company had bought rough horns and pressed them into lantern leaves, and were disposing of them within the City of London and twenty-four miles distant, proceedings were ordered to be taken against them, and, as a result, the Company successfully established its right to the monopoly in the manufacture of horn work in the City of London and twenty-four miles round. From that time forward the trade in horn declined, and during the second half of the eighteenth century, the Company finally ceased to be a trading community. Thus ended the operative existence of a Craft Gild which from “time out of mind” until the present moment has had a useful and honourable career. The Horners’ Company has been practically contemporaneous with the history of England, and is, it may be believed, still destined to serve many a useful purpose.

Property.

In spite of legal incorporation the property of the Company has, from time to time, been vested in certain trustees, the last trust deed being dated 1756.

Minutes.
Annual Dinner.

The earliest Minute Book in the possession of the Company covers the period 1731 to 1796, and is extremely interesting as showing the care taken in the apprenticing of novices to the trade, in the appointment of its officers, and, perhaps most of all, in the unbroken continuity of the annual dinner held generally at some place outside the City, which though, at the time, partaken of only by the members of the Court, represented the annual feast of the mediæval Gilds, and finds its successor to-day in the Livery Dinner, which has become almost a matter of civic importance.

This ancient practice has long been associated with Trade Gilds, certainly as far back as 700 B.C. We may believe that the deipnon or feast of the hetairoi, or Greek Trade Gilds, must have had a long history before the time when such distinguished members as Lysymachus, son of Milesias, and the son of Thucydides, joined in them.