In 1441 (20th of Henry VI), we are told that “at the instance of ‘Sympkin horner of London,’ together with two others, the King directed letters to the Mayor and Bayliffs of Hampton Sandwys, asking how Englishmen repairing to ‘Pruce, Hanze and Danske’ are treated.”
Well might a learned legal luminary, delivering judgment in 1692, say:—“A Horner is a particular Trade and a very ancient Company in London!”
Horners take Bottlemakers under their protection.
In the year 1362 the Horners were in so flourishing a state that another Craft Gild, the Bottlemakers, who, as we read in the MS. book just referred to, dated back, like the Horners, to “time out of mind,” found it desirable to place themselves under the protection of the Horners’ Company, and, for a period of 115 years, remained under its protection, until, in the sixteenth year of Edward IV the two Companies became amalgamated. The interesting document which authorized the fusion of the two Companies is to be found in Letter Book L, fol. cxvi, of the City of London. It prays that the Company of “Bottell Makers,” which had been for some time intimately associated with the Horners, be united with it and become one and the same Company, and “that from hensfurth the saide persones of both the said Crafts may be as bretheren and accupie and Joyne together as well in all things to be borne and doone within the said Cettie. As in observing,” etc.
The petition to the Mayor and Aldermen was granted, and from that day forward the three bottles as well as three horns have emblazoned the arms of the Horners’ Company.
Important Record.
In the very ancient and interesting book belonging to the Horners’ Company there are two early entries relating to the period during which the two Companies were legally separated though in a certain close relation to each other. The entries, which are identical, are as follows:—“The bottellmakers have continued in the Company of the Horners a hundred fourscore nine yeres and nine monthes, wrytten the last daie of November Anno Dni One Thousand five hundred fiftie and seaven.”
Horners, the 26th City Gild in 1376.
Following upon this remarkable evidence of official recognition as a Craft Gild, carrying with it all the legal privileges which were later conferred by recorded Charters, we find as early as 1376 an entry of the fact that the Horners’ Gild was recognized as the twenty-sixth out of forty-eight “mysteries of the City of London,” and successively sent two of its members to the Court of Common Council, not only to represent the members of the Gild in the election of a Mayor and other officers of the City, but also to form a representative body to withstand all encroachments on their liberties and those of the City generally, which the claims and pretensions of Edward III seemed to threaten.
Petition to regularize Proceedings granted 1391.