In the year 1830 the Corporation began to elect members of the Irish Society from the whole body of freemen. The first result was that the Companies lost the division of the surplus from the undivided estate. The Skinners’ Company brought an action in the Court of Chancery intended to force the Irish Society to become Trustees for the Companies of all the rents and profits of the undivided estate.
The case was decided against the Skinners; they appealed; again judgment went against them; they took the case up to the Lords. It was a third time given against them.
The judgment of Lord Langdale, Master of the Rolls, when the case came before him, contained the following strong opinions:—
“‘It is, I think, impossible to read and consider the charter without coming to the conclusion that the powers granted to the society were more extensive than, and very different from, any which in the ordinary course of affairs are vested, or would upon this occasion have been vested, in mere private Trustees for the benefit of particular undertakers. The powers indeed are, many of them, of a public and political nature, and ... were given for the public purposes of the Plantation.... The Companies of London were, with the burthen of undertaking the plantation of such lands as might be allotted to them, to receive such benefits as were offered to ... ordinary undertakers.... The Charter of Charles appears to me to be substantially, as it is avowedly, a restoration of the Charter of James. The property is part of that granted for the purposes of the Plantation, and the powers possessed by the Society, as well as the duties with which it is charged, have all of them reference to the Plantation. I am of opinion that the powers granted to the society, and the trusts reposed in them, were in part of a general and public nature, independent of the private benefit of the companies of london, and were intended by the crown to benefit ireland, and the city of london, by connecting the city of londonderry and the town of coleraine and a considerable irish district with the city of london, and to promote the general purposes of the plantation, not only by securing the performance of the conditions imposed on ordinary undertakers, but also by the exercise of powers and the performance of trusts not within the scope of those conditions ’” (pp. 44, 45).
Since this decision the Irish Society has remained untouched. After the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Livery Companies of London, a Bill was prepared on lines indicated by this Report, but the Bill did not pass into law.
THE GREAT PLAGUE AND FIRE
CHAPTER I
PLAGUE
The Plague of 1603, which is said to have swept away 30,578 persons, is one of the four great plagues of London of the seventeenth century. Historians, in their desire to account for these visitations, talk glibly about the sanitary arrangements of the City, the scant supply of good water, the crowded houses, and so forth as helping to spread the Plague. No doubt these things did help and encourage the visitation. Let us point out, however, that the City a hundred years after the plague of 1666—say, in 1766—was far more crowded than at that time, that its sanitary arrangements were no better, and that the people, though the New River water was laid on, continued to drink the water of the City wells (not, certainly, so many as before the fire), which received the filtrations and the pollutions of a hundred and fifty burial-grounds. They also continued their cess-pools, their narrow lanes, and their kennels filled with refuse of all kinds. Yet in the eighteenth century there was no plague. Let us also point out that parts of all great cities in Europe were, and are still, extremely crowded and filthy, yet no plague. In other words, it is dangerous to be unwashed, but not in itself a sufficient cause of plague. There must have been causes, of which one knows nothing, why the Plague should take hold of the City on four separate occasions in one century, and after devastating it on a grand scale, should go away for good. All the precautions observed in 1666 are recorded to have been taken in 1603. Women who had to do with the sick and the dead, if they went abroad, carried in their hands a red staff, so that people gave them a wide berth. Warnings were issued against attending funerals; dogs were killed; infected houses were marked with a red cross; streets were cleansed; bonfires were lit at street corners; the grave-diggers and the conductors of the dead carts did their work with the protection of tobacco; a thick cover of earth was laid upon the dead. The people, thrown out of work by thousands, were relieved and maintained by the Corporation and the City Companies.