It appears that from time immemorial this Company also enjoyed the exclusive right of loading and landing, rolling, pitching and turning all wines and spirits imported to, or exported from the City of London, and all places within three miles of the same. From this franchise which was, and still is exercised by its tackle porters, the Company derived a very considerable emolument till in the years 1799, 1800, 1804, and 1805, several Acts of Parliament were passed, by which this privilege was in a great measure curtailed. The Company indemnifies those persons employing its tackle porters against all losses of wines and spirits caused through their negligence or accident.
The number of liverymen called during ten years is 206. The Corporate Income is £9500; the Trust Income is £1500.
1. A freeman or his widow has a claim to relief. When admitted by patrimony or servitude, a freeman, or his widow, enjoys the privilege of a “Free Vintner,” and, if exercising such privilege, is exempt from “Billeting,” i.e. having soldiers or sailors quartered in his or her house.
2. The average annual sum distributed amongst the members of the court of assistants has amounted, during the last ten years, to £886 : 11s., being about £50 each per annum (income tax free).
Members of the court receive no pensions or donations.
No fees are paid to liverymen or freemen.
The average annual sum paid to liverymen and freemen, and their widows, in pensions and donations during the last ten years has amounted to £2503.
3. The qualifications for a pension are: being a member or widow of a member in reduced circumstances, between the ages of fifty and sixty, or, if younger, being in ill-health. For a donation: membership, or being the widow or child of a member.
The site of Vintners’ Hall appears in reliable records of the fourteenth century. Strype has the account of it: That Sir John Stodeye, who held it of Edward III. in free burgage, gave it in 1329, under style of the Manor of the Vintry, to John Tuke, parson of St. Martin Vintry, as a feoffment; that Tuke’s successors claimed it as belonging absolutely to the church, whereas it really appertained to the Vintners’ Company; that an inquisition was held in relation thereto before Sir Ralph Joslyn, in 1477; that a trial in the Exchequer followed; and that finally Richard III. decided the ownership in favour of the Company,[[9]] reciting the above statements in his grant. It is difficult to harmonise this account with other known facts; therefore, leaving it on record, we pass to better authenticated matter. Now, Edmund de Sutton owned the site in the reign of Edward III.; upon the Thames bank lay his quay, towards the high street of the Vintry his houses, cellars, and solars. Upon the east stood Spital Lane and the tenements of the Abbess of St. Clare in Aldgate; on the west, Cressingham Lane and the tenement of John Cressingham; through the midst ran the boundary line between St. Martin Vintry parish and St. James-at-Garlickhithe. Sutton’s possession was disputed, trial followed, and Sutton “recovered it from Walter Turke by Writ of Novel disseisin.” Turke was alderman of the ward, and mayor, 1349. Then in 1352 Edmund de Sutton granted the whole to John de Stodeye who was sheriff that year. The Vintners Company had as yet no licence in mortmain; perhaps Stodeye was acting as feoffee for them, perhaps not. Stow relates that he gave Spital Lane, “with all the quadrant wherein Vintners’ Hall now standeth, with the tenements round about, to the Vintners”; but the statement proves nothing either way. Stodeye’s will is dated 1375; it makes no mention of the property. His heirs granted it to feoffees, and it passed from one to another as a feoffment, until finally vested in the Company by the wills of Guy Shuldham (1446) and John Porter (1496).[[10]] Shuldham’s will[[11]] conveys the impression that of his own bounty he added to the original property of which he was feoffee. To his foundation are attributed the Vintners’ almshouses. His will describes them as “thirteen little mansions lying together.” He directs that in them should dwell rent free thirteen poor and needy men and women of the Vintners’ craft, each to have a penny every week; any of them to be ejected for misconduct after three warnings. These “little mansions” were probably on the Spital Lane (at that time Stodeye’s Lane) side of the Hall; after the Great Fire they were removed to Mile End. Not much is known of the old premises, but Shuldham’s will tells us something. There was a great hall and a refectory, a parlour with a leaden roof, and adjoining it a counting-house with two rooms above; a kitchen, pantry and buttery, a coal-house, and a “yard” with a well. No doubt the yard lay betwixt hall and river, and answered to what was the garden in later years. When the Vintners “built for themselves a fair hall and thirteen almshouses” (to quote John Stow), these miscellaneous and doubtless inconvenient buildings disappeared. In 1497 the premises were inspected for the purpose of assessing the fine for amortising them pursuant to the act.[[12]] Here a new pair of stocks was erected in 1609 for punishment of deserving members; here General Monk was feasted and entertained by special music on April 12, 1660, shortly after the Restoration. Six years later a restoration of a different sort was required; the Great Fire had wrought its work of woeful ruin, and the Vintners Company must needs rebuild. In 1823 the hall was almost entirely rebuilt again.
College Street.—The Walbrook stream, crossing the street, divided Vintry from Dowgate ward. It was spanned by a bridge called in the twelfth century Pont-le-Arch, also, but probably later, Stodum Bridge. The earliest style of the lane east of that bridge was “Les Arches Lane,” and that would be derived from the bridge. Later, just as St. Mary de Arcabus became St. Mary-le-Bowe, so this lane became “the lane called Le Bowe”; a will of 1307 so styles it. Quite possible Little College Street did not then exist, or existed only as a path on the east side of the brook; if the latter, there would thus be a bow-like passage from Dowgate Hill to Thomas Street, and both shape and name would be singularly in accord. West of the bridge the lane was probably, and in common with the present College Hill, “Paternoster Lane”; afterwards the hill became “the high street called le Riole,” but this lane seems to have retained the old title until Stow wrote of it. When Walbrook stream became arched over, the strict division between Paternoster Lane and Le Bowe Lane disappeared. The course of Walbrook so divided the lane that the north side from the church to Skinners’ Hall was included in Paternoster Lane, and the south side opposite was part of Bowe Lane; this distinction would naturally disappear on the covering of the brook. Before that event Le Bowe Lane would be all in the parish of Allhallows the Great; in 1307 reference is made to it in the parish of St. Michael’s (Wills in the Court of Hustings, pt. i. p. 190), so that the covering of the brook appears already to have taken place, at least in part, by that date. By Stow’s time Le Bowe Lane had become Elbow Lane, and ran by a crescent course from Dowgate Hill to Thames Street; Paternoster Lane continued as before. Stow makes an error in each case; he misses the true etymology of the former, implying that its elbow-like bending was the origin of its name, and he surmises that “Les Arches” was the old title for Paternoster Lane, which was not so. After the Great Fire the whole thoroughfare from College Hill to Dowgate Hill became Elbow Lane, and later Great Elbow Lane; the bend into Thames Street was renamed Little Elbow Lane. Subsequently the present styles were adopted, and, like College Hill, commemorate Whittington’s College. College Street is quaint: on the south side No. 24 has been rebuilt, and No. 27 refaced since the post-Fire rebuilding; otherwise the Vintry portion remains unaltered. The Skinners’ Hall and all the garden belonging to it are close by, though the entry is on Dowgate Hill (see p. [238]).