1611. In this year came a precept from the Lord Mayor, by authority of the King, complaining of “the abuse growing by excesse and straunge fashions of apparell, used by manye apprentises, and by the inordynate pryde of mayde servaunts and women servaunts in their excesse of apparell and follye in varietie of newe fashions, and to admonish them to have a due and speciall care to see a spedye reformac͠on had in everye one of their servaunts.” What effect this had upon the apprentices and servants of the Barber-Surgeons we are not told, but doubtless they were properly admonished.
1st July, 1614. A precept was received to the effect that the King had determined to borrow £100,000 of the City, and that the Barber-Surgeons were assessed at £600 towards this loan, which they were to lend, or which they were coolly informed they could compound for, by an absolute fine of £30! As the Court well knew that they would never again see a halfpenny of the £600 if lent, they quickly and wisely determined to pay the £30.
Profiting by past experience, the next extracts show that the Court proceeded warily in the matter of “adventuring” in the State Lottery.
29th April, 1614. Att this Court the Mr propounding how they had receaved Letters from the Lordꝭ of the privy Councell and from the lord Maior thereby exhorting & intreating them to call their assistauntes together and to admonishe the genˀall body to be adventurers in the great lottery wch is comyng forth, Whereupon the same lrẽs being considered on at this Court, it is thought fitt and ordered that the Mrs shall att their pleasures call together the body of the Company, and they being gathered together, to admonish & pˀswade them to be adventerers in the same Lottery.
17th October, 1614. The Court having collected a sum of money for the Lottery, it was ordered that it should not be paid to the Treasurer, Sir Thos. Smith, until the Company shall be “assured” by a Bill of Adventure under seal “for their adventure unto virgynia, as also that it shalbe published in print certeynelie when the lotterey shalbe drawen.”
The College of Physicians had been for many years very jealous as to the Barber-Surgeons trespassing on their preserves, and as far back as 12th November, 1595, wrote a long letter to their “verie loving freends” the Master and Wardens, cautioning the members of the Company against practising physic, and stating that no few of them were culpable in the matter, but that the College had hitherto forborne to molest or punish them; the letter continues, “but for that we now see by daily experience that upon our lenetie and sufferance this inconvenience more and more increaseth, insomuch that both in credit and otherwise, it seemeth to touch us more neere than well can be indured; We have therefore thought it good to put you in mynd thereof, and therewithal earnestly and freendlie to request you, that among yourselves some such discreet order may be taken heerin, that the like offence hereafter maie not be committed by them or any of theirs. Wherein if we shall perceave you as ready to fulfil our honest request, as we are willing to maintain good amytie and concord with you and your Companie, we wilbe very glad thereof and geve you thanks therefore. If not, then as we are fully minded to defend our privileges and to deal with the particular offendors therein, as order of law and our ordinances in that behalf requireth; so we trust the body of your Societie will not be offended therewith. And so we bid you most hartelie farewell.”
The above letter is taken from Dr. Goodall’s History of the College of Physicians. Dr. Goodall gives several instances of Barber-Surgeons and Apothecaries being fined or imprisoned for practising physic; and, indeed, there seems to have been a strife waging between the College and the Company for a long period.
1617. The Physicians in 15 James I obtained a Charter confirming their Charter of 10 Henry viij, with several additional privileges and clauses in restraint of the privileges of the Barber-Surgeons, who thereupon petitioned the King that that Charter might not be confirmed by Act of Parliament, as the Physicians were desirous that it should be. The King on 4th February, 1620, ordered that the petitioners should be left to seek any lawful remedy either in Parliament or otherwise, as they might be advised, and accordingly on 23rd April, 1624, they presented a petition to the House of Commons, who ordered that the Physicians’ Patent should be brought into the Committee of Grievances, and both parties heard by Counsel, the consequence of which was that the Physicians proceeded no further with their Bill.
1632. Later on the Physicians endeavoured again to obtain a supremacy over the Barber-Surgeons, and on 13th June, 1632, procured an Order in Council which made it incumbent upon Surgeons in certain serious and specified cases of Surgery, to call in a “learned Physitian,” and to enforce this order they procured the Attorney General to exhibit a Bill in the Star Chamber in which the obnoxious clause was inserted, but on a Petition of the Barber-Surgeons complaining of the injury that would thereby accrue not only to themselves, but to the public, the King, by an Order of Court dated 22nd July, 1635, directed the clause to be struck out.