London City

by Walter Besant

In 1299 Edward I. granted them his licence to adopt the name of “Taylors and Linen Armourers of the Fraternity of St. John the Baptist.” Stow says that on St. John Baptist’s Day, 1300, a master (Henry de Ryall) and four wardens were chosen, the master being then called “the pilgrim,” as travelling for the whole Company, and the warders “the purveyors of alms or quarterages,” plainly showing that the gild was originally a charitable as well as a commercial fraternity.

In March 1326 the first charter was granted to the Company by Edward III.

In 1371 the Company, under this charter, made an ordinance to regulate their trade, with the special object of recovering damages from workmen miscutting the cloth entrusted to them.

The Company acquired that portion of their Threadneedle Street estate upon which their present hall stands in 1331.

In 1351 they enrolled their first honorary member; and about 1361 obtained a grant of a chapel at the north side of St. Paul’s, in honour of St. John the Baptist, for daily service and prayers for “the preservation of them that are or shall be of the fraternity.”

In 1480 the Company received their first grant of arms, taking religious emblems, viz. a holy lamb set within a sun, the crest being within the pavilion, Our Blessed Lady St. Mary the Virgin, Christ her Son standing naked before her, holding between His hands a vesture (tunica inconsutilis).

In 1484 the celebrated controversy for precedence in processions, etc., between the Taylors and Skinners arose, which was settled by the award of the Lord Mayor that each Company should have precedence in alternate years, and that each should invite the other to dine once in every year. This custom has been ever since kept up, the master and wardens of the Taylors dining with the Skinners on the first Thursday in December, the master and wardens of the Skinners with the Taylors on the 14th July.

It was not till 1502 that the Company attained to the full privileges which they afterwards enjoyed. Under Henry VII.’s charter, not only were the Company made “Merchant” Taylors, but they ceased to be exclusively Taylors, and were permitted to receive others into their fraternity.

The principal object of the guild was the preservation of the trade or calling of the fraternity, no one being permitted to work in London as a “tailor” unless a freeman of the Company. For the protection of the trade the right of search was vested in the guild, such search being a guarantee to the public that the honest usages of trade were observed, and to the fraternity that their monopoly was not infringed. Before a tailor’s shop was opened a licence had to be obtained from the master and wardens of the Company, and they granted the licence only when satisfied of the competency of the freeman. Until the abolition of Bartholomew Fair in 1854, after an existence of 700 years, the beadle of the Company used annually to attend the fair and to proceed to the drapers’ shops, taking with him the Company’s silver yard stick as the standard by which to test the measures used for selling cloth in the fair.

In 1555, anticipation of the foundation of Merchant Taylors’ School, Sir Thomas White, a member of the Court of the Merchant Taylors Company, founded St. John’s College, Oxford, reserving forty-three out of its fifty endowed fellowships for scholars from the school.