Many of the ancient Guilds in local places which related to ironmongers will be mentioned further on, but we may mention that Walford, speaking of the Reading Cutlers’ and Bellfounders’ Guilds, tells us that one of their orders was:—“No smith may sell iron wares within the borough except a freeman, on forfeiture of two shillings each time.” Next to the Saddlers’ and Weavers’ Guilds of London in antiquity are the Glovers’ and the Blacksmiths’—the latter ordinances are dated 1434—and of this particular Company the writer of the present history will at some future time give some interesting and little known details. Suffice it to say now that one of the orders particularly ordained: “If eny of the seid bretheren or there wyves be absent fro oure comon dyner or elles fro oure quater dai schall paie as moche as if he or she ware present.” It is proved in this ordinance that dinners were common with the City Guilds four centuries ago, and that the wives of the members were of as much importance to the craft as the members themselves. At the present day, we regret to find that the ladies are not always considered with so brotherly an attention as the blacksmiths considered their ladies in King Henry’s day.
Another of the ancient Guilds was the Farriers’, whose orders, about the year 1324, included the charges to be made for shoeing horses, at the rate of a penny halfpenny for six nails, and twopence for eight nails.
In Buckingham there was a Guild called the Mercers’, which existed from early days. Even as late as the seventeenth century the minutes of this Company contained many very curious entries. For instance, in 1665, when Thomas Arnott, the eldest son of Walter Arnott, was made free upon the understanding that he was “to follow the trade of an ironmonger,” he paid “one gallon of good wyne for his freedom,” and when his brother Thomas was admitted in 1671 “to follow only ye trade of an ironmonger,” he also paid the like fee. Upon turning to the ordinances of the Company we find that the ironmongers of the borough were, with other trades, associated under the name of the Mercers’, and that the fifth clause particularly orders “noe strange pson or fforeigner inhabiting within the said borough or pish, and not ffree of the same, shall bee made ffree of the said Companies to the intent to sell or utter any kind of wares usually solde by any artificier, before such time as every such strange or forrein pson have paid for his freedome”—the sums specified in a schedule annexed, and which “for every ironmonger” was 20l., and “one good leather buckett for the use of the said Corporation,” and that the son of such person or freeman so admitted shall, upon being made free of the Company “whereunto he hath beene an apprentice in forme aforesaid,” pay to “the bayliffe and burgesses and his Company one gallon of good wyne.”
As we proceed with our history we shall find some curious facts connected with the London ironmongers, and that their ordinances, quaint and still in force, contain many very illustrative evidences of the trade-unions of centuries ago.
CHAPTER II.
IRON, IRONWORKS, AND IRONMONGERS.
Iron and its uses historically described should form no unimportant part to the history of the Ironmongers’ Company, but as it is not our intention now to give the thousand-and-one notes which would form a most interesting and valuable compendium to the general account of the City Guild, it is sufficient for us if we so condense our large store of material and give such an epitome as will assist the reader to comprehend the origin of the trade of which the company bears the name.
A well-known writer justly observes that no one should fail to consider the origin, history, and value of iron; that our instruments of cutlery, the tools of our mechanics, and the countless machines which we construct by the infinitely varied applications of iron are derived from ore for the most part coeval with or more ancient than the fuel by the aid of which we reduce it to its metallic state, and apply it to innumerable uses in the economy of human life. The use of iron is identified with the time of erecting the Egyptian monuments, the oldest in the world, and a very large number of the helmets dug up at Nineveh were made of iron, and some of copper inlaid. Readers of history have only to turn to the pages of Anderson, Fosbroke, Scrivenor, Layard, and others to learn that iron has ever been a most useful and valuable article of commerce.
The Romans proved their constructive ingenuity by the manufacture of those innumerable articles of iron which from time to time have been dug up throughout England, particularly in those districts where woods and forests at one time existed. In Gloucestershire the Forest of Dean for centuries had the extensive furnaces about which so many battles were fought in and out of Parliament, and in Sussex the sites of the ancient ironworks in the Weald can be traced to this day, and will be found described in Lower’s “Historical and Archæological Notices,” printed in the second volume of the Sussex Collections. In the reign of the Conqueror Gloucestershire possessed a large trade in the forging of iron for the King’s navy, and in Edward I.’s time seventy-two furnaces were kept employed. As we progressed, England discovered that the iron we manufactured was wanted for home use, consequently Edward III. prohibited its exportation.