The application of salt to the preservation of food, and particularly of fish for consumption in winter, must have given rise to a distinct trade for that purpose in the earliest times; and, as civilization advanced, the term “Salter” no doubt became more extended in its commercial interpretation, until it included, as in the present day, all persons trading wholly or partially in salt, such as oilmen, drysalters, and druggists.
Salt manufacturers and merchants, oilmen, druggists, and grocers (who made salt one of their trading commodities) have been and are largely represented on the guild.
The number of liverymen is given as 183; the Corporate Income is £20,000; the Trust Income is £2000.
The only advantage incident to the position of a freeman is a claim for relief, if in pecuniary distress.
Liverymen are entitled to vote at the election for the office of renter warden, of assistant, of master and of wardens; and, if free of the City of London, for candidates for the office of Lord Mayor, and for some officers of the corporation; also, if free of the City, and resident within a radius of twenty-five miles, for members of Parliament for the said City. All liverymen not in receipt of pecuniary assistance are invited to entertainments of the Company, and have a claim for relief should they fall into misfortune.
The present Salters’ Hall and garden, with some adjoining land, occupies the site of the “fair and large built house” which Sir Robert Aguylum devised in 1285-86 to the priors of Tortington in Sussex for their town inn or mansion. The Dissolution brought it to the Crown, and Henry VIII., in 1540, gave it to John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Then it became known as Oxford Place or House. Mary probably restored it; at all events Elizabeth regranted it in 1573 to the Earldom of Oxford, then held by Edward, grandson of John de Vere above named. The new tenant apparently resided here in good style. Stow quaintly tells of his pomp. “He hath been noted within these forty years to have ridden into this City, and so to his house by London Stone, with 80 gentlemen in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains but all having his cognisance of the blue boat embroidered on their left shoulder.” He appears not to have remained here long, for Sir Ambrose Nicholas, salter, kept his mayoralty here in 1575, and Sir John Hart dwelt here as Lord Mayor in 1589. Hart bought the place from the Earl, who was then dissipating his great estates from motives of pique and indignation against his father-in-law, Cecil, Lord Burleigh.
Drawn by Thos. H. Shepherd.
SALTERS’ HALL, 1822
The house was sold to the feofees of the Salters Company in 1641. The Great Fire of 1666 probably destroyed only a part of the great house (Wilkinson in Londina Illustrata goes too far in maintaining that the building wholly escaped, but is probably nearer right than those who say it was quite destroyed), statements to the contrary notwithstanding, for, at the request of the Bishop of London, the parishioners of St. Swithin’s assembled in the long parlour for worship whilst their church was building, and several of the companies held their courts here until their halls had risen from the ashes. The destroyed portion, perhaps indeed the whole, and the wall of the great garden, and some adjoining houses, were rebuilt about this time by the Company and their tenants. The history of the Salters’ Hall has already been told.
In 1687 a congregation of “protestant dissenters” took from the Company, on moderate terms, a lease of certain ground on which part of Oxford House had stood before the Fire. Here they built their meeting-house, where Mr. Mayo preached until his death in 1695, drawing, by his eloquence, congregations so large that it is said even the windows were crowded when he preached. William Long, writer for Matthew Henry’s Commentary, was minister in 1702. In 1716 he and Mr. John Newman, popular with the congregation, became co-pastors. In 1719 the general body of dissenting ministers met here to discuss means for stopping the spread of Arianism. “You that are against subscribing to a declaration as a test of orthodoxy, come upstairs,” cried the Arians and the private-judgment men of a stormy synod. “And you that are for declaring your faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, stay below,” replied Mr. Bradbury of New Court. A count showed fifty-seven to have gone up, and fifty-three to have remained down, giving the “scandalous majority” of four. Arianism meanwhile had become the coffee-house topic of the town. In March 1726 Long died, and Newman became sole pastor till his death in 1741. In the reign of William III., Robert Bragge started a “Lord’s Day evening lecture,” popular for many years, but afterwards removed by the originator to his meeting-house in Lime Street. The celebrated Thomas Bradbury shortly afterwards revived it at Salters’ Hall Chapel, and for more than twenty years delivered it to crowded audiences. Samuel Baker continued it on Bradbury’s resignation in 1725. Presbyterians of some eminence followed him, as Dr. William Prior, Dr. Abraham Rees, Dr. Philip Furneaux, and Hugh Farmer (1761), the writer of an exposition on demonology and miracles, which aroused sharp controversy. When the Salters determined to rebuild their hall, they gave the congregation notice to quit by Lady Day 1821. Whereupon the congregation acquired premises in Oxford Court, upon the site of which they erected a handsome new meeting-house completed in 1822. But the glory of the place as a dissenting centre was departing, and the Presbyterians abandoned it. Then came some erratic fanatics who called themselves “The Christian Evidence Society,” and their meeting-house was “Areopagus.” Their leader went bankrupt and the experiment collapsed. In 1827 the Baptists reopened the place, and remained there for some years, but, shortly before 1870, removed to Islington, where to this day the “Salters’ Hall” Chapel in the Baxter Road preserves the memory of the struggles, quarrels, and triumphs of the old City meeting-house. In Tom Brown’s Laconics (1709) is this allusion: “A man that keeps steady to one party, though he happens to be in the wrong, is still an honest man. He that goes to a Cathedral in the morning, and Salters’ Hall in the afternoon, is a rascal by his own confession.”