CORDWAINERS' HALL
"The dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! And the old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old master of the old company, on which it drips. His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out."
The Salters, who have anchored in Cannon Street, have had at least four halls before the present one. The first was in Bread Street, to be near their kinsmen, the Fishmongers, in the old fish market of London, Knightrider Street. It is noticed, apparently, as a new building, in the will of Thomas Beamond, Salter, 1451, who devised to "Henry Bell and Robert Bassett, wardens of the fraternity and gild of the Salters, of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Church of All Saints, of Bread Street, London, and to the brothers and sisters of the same fraternity and gild, and their successors for ever, the land and ground where there was then lately erected a hall called Salters' Hall, and six mansions by him then newly erected upon the same ground, in Bread Street, in the parish of All Saints." The last named were the Company's almshouses.
This hall was destroyed by fire in 1533. The second hall, in Bread Street, had an almshouse adjoining, as Stow tells us, "for poore decayed brethren." It was destroyed by fire in 1598. This hall was afterwards used by Parliamentary committees. There the means of raising new regiments was discussed, and there, in 1654, the judges for a time sat. The third hall (and these records furnish interesting facts to the London topographer) was a mansion of the prior of Tortington (Sussex), near the east end of St. Swithin's Church, London Stone. The Salters purchased it, in 1641, of Captain George Smith, and it was then called Oxford House, or Oxford Place. It had been the residence of Maister Stapylton, a wealthy alderman. The house is a marked one in history, as at the back of it, according to Stow, resided those bad guiding ministers of the miser king Henry VII., Empson and Dudley, who, having cut a door into Oxford House garden, used to meet there, like the two usurers in Quintin Matsys' picture, and suggest war taxes to each other under the leafy limes of the old garden. Sir Ambrose Nicholas and Sir John Hart, both Salters, kept their mayoralties here.
The fourth hall, built after the Great Fire had made clear work of Oxford House, was a small brick building, the entrance opening within an arcade of three arches springing from square fluted pillars. A large garden adjoined it, and next that was the Salters' Hall Meeting House. The parlour was handsome, and there were a few original portraits. This hall, the clerk's house, with another at the gate of St. Swithin's Lane, were pulled down and sold in 1821. The present hall was designed by Mr. Henry Carr, and completed in 1827.
As a chartered company there is no record of the Salters before the 37th year of Edward III., when liberties were granted them. In the 50th of Edward III. they sent members to the common council. Richard II. granted them a livery, but they were first incorporated in 1558 by Elizabeth. Henry VIII. had granted them arms, and Elizabeth a crest and supporters. The arms are:—Chevron azure and gules, three covered salts, or, springing salt proper. On a helmet and torse, issuing out of a cloud argent, a sinister arm proper, holding a salt as the former. Supporters, two otters argent plattée, gorged with ducal coronets, thereto a chain affixed and reflected, or; motto, "Sal sapit Omnia." "A Short Account of the Salters' Company," printed for private distribution, rejects the otters as supporters, in favour of ounces or small leopards, which latter, it states, have been adopted by the assistants, in the arms put up in their new hall; and it gives the following, "furnished by a London antiquary," as the Salters' real supporters:—Two ounces sable besante, gorged with crowns and chased gold. The Salters claim to have received eight charters.
The Romans worked salt-pits in England, and salt-works are frequently mentioned in Domesday Book. Rock or fossil salt, says Herbert, was never worked in England till 1670, when it was discovered in Cheshire. The enormous use of salt fish in the Catholic households of the Middle Ages brought wealth to the Salters.
In a pageant of 1591, written by the poet Peele, one clad like a sea-nymph presented the Salter mayor (Webb) with a rigged and manned pinnace, as he took barge to go to Westminster.
In the Drapers' pageant of 1684, when each of the twelve companies were represented by allegorical figures, the Salters were figured by Salina in a sky-coloured robe and coronation mantle, and crowned with white and yellow roses. Among the citizens nominated by the common council to attend the mayor as chief butler, at the coronation of Richard III., occurs the name of a Salter.