The Company appear to have furnished a certain number of men with arms for the defence of the City, and to have kept at the Hall equipments for them—calyvers, corslets, bills, pikes, etc.—and to have appointed an armourer to preserve them in good condition.
The Company used to cast into bars such tin as was to be transported out of the realm, whereby the poor of the Company were wont to provide for part of their living; but after these bars were made by strangers beyond the sea, the poor were greatly “hindered.” A petition was presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1594, and after a delay of four years Letters Patent were granted to the Company, giving permission for a small charge to be made on the smelting and casting of bars of tin.
The fellowship of the craft and mystery of Pewterers of London and elsewhere represented, before Henry VIII.’s reign, one of the best handicrafts within the realm.
The master and wardens appear at the commencement of the seventeenth century to have exercised the right to nominate the casters of tin in London, and the Company received a small royalty on the casting, which was distributed to the poor of the Company. They also appear to have had from the Council of the Revenue of the Prince of Wales an allotment of certain proportions of the tin produced in Cornwall, and to have derived some profit from the privilege. In fact, the pewter trade in London was supplied with tin from Cornwall through the Company, and frequent disputations are recorded between the Company and the Prince’s Council as to the rate, which was sometimes said to be so high that the poor of the Company could not live thereby.
At a later period the Company, in order to prevent the public from imposition, and to sustain the credit of the pewterers’ trade, appointed the standard assays of the various wares and the weight of metal for each article.
The Hall stands upon a piece of ground presented to the Company by W. Smallwood, Master, 1487. The first building was destroyed in the Great Fire and the present one is that which replaced it.
The Company now have a livery of 103; a Corporate Income of £5400; and a Trust Income of £233.
The Ordinances of the Pewterers were submitted to the mayor and aldermen in 1348. They may be found in Riley (Memorials, 241). They contain clauses similar to those in the ordinances of other trades, including the power of appointing overseers of their own body. Two years later we find a Pewterer named John de Hiltone brought before the mayor on the charge of making “false” salt-cellars and “potels.” The “false” vessels were forfeited. The use of pewter for domestic purposes was universal. Dishes, plates, basins, drinking cups, measures were all made of pewter. There are luncheon-rooms in the City at the present day where steaks and chops are served on pewter: at Lincoln’s Inn the dishes are still of pewter; in the last century children and servants took their meals off pewter. These facts explain the flourishing condition of the Company and its large income.
St. Dionis Backchurch was situated at the south-west corner of Lime Street behind Fenchurch Street, from which position it probably derived its name of Backchurch. It was burnt down by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1674, and the steeple added in 1684. In 1878 this building was pulled down by an Order in Council. Part of the money obtained from the site was given to the foundation of a new church of St. Dionis at Parsons Green erected in 1885. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1288.