GLASS SELLERS

Another little Company incorporated by Charles II., 1664, for a Master, 2 Wardens, 24 Assistants, and 44 Liverymen. The present number of Liverymen is 38; their Corporate Income is nil; and their Trust Income, the interest on a sum of £800.

THE GLAZIERS

Founded by Royal Charter of King Charles I., 1631, dated November 6, after stating that the ancient Fraternity of the Mystery or Art of Glaziers, London, had theretofore made many good orders for the regulating themselves and their trade which had from time to time been improved and enlarged in the reigns of several princes, but that they were not sufficiently incorporated: The said charter incorporated the then present freemen of that trade within the City of London and five miles compassing the same, into one body corporate or politic by the name of the Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery or Art of Glaziers and Painters of Glass, with power to make rules and orders for the good government of their society, and to impose punishment by fine, or otherwise, upon offenders.

The foregoing charter appears to have been surrendered in the first year of the reign of King James II., and thereupon a new charter was issued for the same purpose.

The present Livery numbers 60; its Corporate Income is about £260; its Trust Income is £46.

The Hall was situated before the Great Fire in Maiden Lane, then Kerion Lane. There is no difficulty in locating the site on the south side, next to the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Vintry, upon what is now in part the roadway of Queen Street. No. 11 Maiden Lane stands upon land once adjoining, if not actually part of, the old Hall site. The Glaziers did not rebuild their Hall after 1666, but met henceforth at the Hall of the Loriners in London Wall; also, according to Strype (1720), in a house at the Thames Street end of St. Peter’s Hill. When New Queen Street was cut, shortly after the Fire, part of the Glaziers’ ground became a corner site, having Thames Street on the south and the new road on the west. In 1671 the Company sold land in these two streets for £490. Four houses built upon land adjoining to St. Martin’s Churchyard remained in the Company’s possession until 1850, when they were taken by the Corporation for the widening of Queen Street. The Company has now no Hall.

THE GLOVERS

Incorporated by Charles I. in 1639 for a Master, 4 Wardens, and 30 Assistants, with a Livery of 130. The Company refused to give any return to the Royal Commission. The present Livery numbers 75. Hazlitt says that in 1881 the Income of the Company was derived from a small sum of £3800 in the stocks and the fines and fees of the freemen and the Livery. The Glovers presented their ordinances to the mayor and aldermen in 1349. It seems somewhat strange that a craft of such great importance as that of glove-making should have been always one of the poorest Companies in the City.