Samuel Pepys's Loving Cup.
In the possession of the Clothworkers' Company.

The Vintners have a very interesting hall, built partly on the foundations of the old hall destroyed in 1666, and very rich in its treasures: its beautiful carvings by Grinling Gibbons, its ancient tapestry, hearse-cloth, portraits, and valuable store of plate. Pepys tells of the destruction of Clothworkers' Hall. He wrote, "But strange it is to see Clothworkers' Hall on fire these three days and nights in one body of flame, it having two cellars full of oil." After that mighty destruction a new hall arose, worthy of the greatness of the company, the present great hall itself being added in 1859, a noble building lighted by fine windows containing the arms of distinguished members. Pepys was master of the company in 1677, and presented a loving cup, which is still amongst the company's treasures.

It is impossible in this brief survey of the Livery Companies to include a description of the halls of the minor companies, some of which are very fine and interesting. It has been my privilege to visit nearly all of these ancient edifices, and to inspect many of their records and valuable treasures. These I have tried to describe in my larger work on the history of the companies. No volume relating to London would, however, be complete without some reference to the ancient state and glories of these venerable institutions, which, in spite of many vicissitudes, much oppression, heavy losses and crushing calamities, have survived to the present day, and continue their useful careers for the benefit of the present generation of men. The story of the Livery Companies furnishes wonderful examples of the tenacity of the national character of Englishmen, of their firm determination to overcome difficulties, and of their resolution to hand down to their successors the traditions which they have received from a great and historic past.

LONDON AND THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE
By J. Tavenor-Perry

A remarkable episode in the early history of London, and an element in its making, which through the Middle Ages exercised an important and beneficial influence on its progress and growth, was the settlement of foreign merchants, who, at first as individuals, and later under the control of the Hanseatic League, made it one of the principal trading centres of Northern Europe; and no account of mediæval London would be complete which omitted a reference to the part played by these German and Flemish adventurers. Although it was not until the middle of the twelfth century that the League reached that complete organization which made it for some centuries a great northern power, the trading communities of Germany early acquired some sort of cohesion; and we find them established in London as early as the reign of Ethelred II. The encouragement this Saxon King afforded them was doubtless due to the fact that they were able to offer him the money of which he always stood in need, in return for the privileges he was able to confer on them; and he may have felt that he could always rely on their active support against their common enemy—the Danes. But these first merchants were few and unorganized, and although as time went on they increased in number and importance, it was not until the League itself had become a power that, in the reign of Henry III., they obtained a recognized corporate existence.

The foundations of this originally peaceful confederacy were, curiously enough, laid in war, and that of the baser sort—war for the sake of pillage. The Vikings, finding themselves unable to realize the spoil with which they were sometimes gorged, conceived the idea of founding a market-place to which, by assurances of safety and immunity from further theft, they could induce peaceful merchants to attend and receive, and pay for, the goods which they had stolen. Such was the now vanished town of Jomsborg which Pálnátoki, the Jarl of Fjon, founded about 950 in the country of the Wends, near the mouth of the Oder. This town was intended to be an abode of peace, where not only could the merchants reside in safety, but to which the Viking Jarls, fighting elsewhere between themselves, might resort to exchange the results of their raids. And this city gradually became not only the market for the goods which the sea-rovers gathered from sacked cities and ruined monasteries, but also the emporium of the merchandise of the East, which reached the Baltic from Byzantium by the Euxine and the Dnieper. It was in this Viking market town that the first German merchants established among themselves that association which eventually grew to be the most important trading community of the Middle Ages.

The name which the association took to itself was a Gothic word, and was not improbably conferred upon them by the Vikings themselves, since Hansa means—in the language of the Goths—"a company," or "a troop," and in that sense it occurs in the Gothic version of the Scriptures by Ulphilas, a copy of which is preserved in the library of Upsala. Some of the rules which Pálnátoki made for these merchants remained in force throughout the existence of the League, and formed the basis of the laws by which all the factories of the Hansa were governed. The Joms Vykinga Saga contains some of these rules:—"No man older than fifty years or younger than eighteen winters could be received." "Anyone who committed what had been forbidden was to be cast out, and driven from the community." "No one should have a woman within the burgh, or be absent from it for three nights." Governed by such rules, the Kontors of the League formed among the alien populations in which they were placed semi-monastic establishments, holding only such intercourse with their neighbours as their business required, much like the early British factories established in India.

Hamburg was founded in 809 by Charlemagne, and its merchants were among the first to take advantage of Jomsborg; and it was very shortly after that market was opened when they appeared in London. The growth of the League was, however, very gradual; and it was not until the foundation of Lübeck, which afterwards became its principal city, that it assumed its great importance. But the destruction of Jomsborg by the Danes transferred all the Eastern trade of the Baltic to this new town, which, as a consequence of its increasing importance, was made in 1226 a free city of the Empire; and by 1234 it had become so powerful as to be able to destroy for ever the naval supremacy of Denmark in the sea-fight of Travemünde. Its treaty with Hamburg for mutual defence was made soon afterwards, and this event is reckoned to be the formal establishment of the Hansa League, not only as a corporate body, but as an independent state to make treaties, and, when necessary, to levy war.