was nearly cut in half by the enlargement of Princes Street. For ground which had cost the Grocers in 1433 only £31 7s. 8d., they subsequently received from the Bank of England more than £20,000. They have an elaborate coat of arms, with the motto, "God grant grace." The Drapers were incorporated in 1439, but they possess a charter granted them by Edward III to regulate the sale of cloths. They were originally makers, not merely, as now, dealers in cloth. The country drapers were called clothiers; the wool merchants, staplers. The Britons and Saxons were both familiar with the art of cloth-making, but the greater part of the English cloth from the earliest times was sent to the Netherlands, and from thence returned in the shape of fine cloth. King Ethelred, in 967, exacted from the Easterling merchants of the Steel Yard, tolls of cloth, which were paid at Billingsgate. The width of woollen cloth is also prescribed in Magna Charta. A Weavers' Guild existed in Henry I, and Drapers are mentioned soon after as flourishing in all the large provincial cities. It is supposed that the cloths sold by such drapers were red, green, and scarlet, made in Flanders. In the next reign, English cloths were made of Spanish wool. Drapers are recorded in Henry II as paying fines to the king for permission to sell dyed cloths. In the same reign, English cloths made of Spanish wool are further mentioned. In Edward I, the cloth of Candlewick Street (Cannon Street) was famous. The guild paid the king two marks of gold every year at the feast of Michaelmas. But Edward III, jealous of the Netherlands, set to work to establish the English cloth manufacture. He forbade the exportation of English wool, and invited seventy Walloon weaver families, who settled in Cannon Street. In 1361 the king removed the wool staple from Westminster to Staples Inn, Holborn, and in 1397 a weekly cloth market was established at Blackwell Hall, which gave them a monopoly of their trade. The London Drapers opposed the right of the country clothiers to sell wholesale, and several Acts directed that none should buy or sell cloth unless first brought to be sold at Blackwall Hall by the Drapers. For a long time they lingered about Cornhill, where they had first settled, living in Birchin Lane and Stock's Market, but in Henry VI they had all removed to Cannon Street. In this reign arms were given to the Company, and the grant is still preserved in the British Museum. Their books are full of curious details relating to dress observances, government, and trade. Edward IV, when he had invited the mayor and aldermen to a great hunt at Waltham Forest, sent them two harts, six bucks, and a tun of wine, with which noble present the lady mayoress (wife of Sir Bartholomew James, draper) entertained the aldermen's wives at Drapers' Hall. In 1476, forty of the Company rode to meet Edward IV on his return from France, at a cost of £20. In 1483 they sent six persons to welcome the unhappy Edward V, whom the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, preparatory to his murder, had brought to London. They also dispatched twenty-two of the livery, in many-coloured coats, to attend the Coronation procession of Edward's wicked hunchback uncle, Richard III. Again, they mustered 200 men on the rising of the Kentish rebels, and also in Finsbury Fields at "the coming of the Northern men." They paid 9s. for boat hire to Westminster to attend the funeral of Queen Anne (Richard's queen). In Henry VII we find the Drapers again boating to Westminster to present their bill for the reformation of cloth-making. The barge was well supplied with ribs of beef, wine, and pippins. They attended many other ceremonies, such as the coronation of kings and queens. In 1491 the Merchant Taylors came to a conference at Drapers' Hall, about some disputes in the cloth trade, and were hospitably entertained with bread and wine. In the great riots at the Steel Yard, when the London 'prentices tried to sack the Flemish warehouses, the Drapers helped to guard the depôt with weapons, cressets, and banners. They mustered for the king at Blackheath against the Cornish insurgents, as also at the procession that welcomed Princess Katherine of Spain, who married Prince Arthur. Then in the Lady Chapel at St. Paul's, listening to Prince Arthur's requiem, and again bearing twelve enormous torches of wax at the burial of Henry VII, the Prince's father. Their ordinances are of great interest. Every apprentice on being enrolled paid fees, which went to a fund called "Spoon Silver." Spoon Silver." The mode of correcting these wayward youths was singular. One of them on court day was flogged by two tall men disguised in canvas frocks, hoods, and vizors, twopennyworth of birchen rods being expended on his moral improvement. They had a special ordinance in the reign of Henry IV to visit the fairs of Westminster, St. Bartholomew, Spitalfields, and Southwark, to make a trade search and to measure doubtful goods by the "Drapers' ell," a standard said to have been granted them by Edward III. Bread, wine, and pears was the frugal entertainment of the searchers. Howell, in his Letters, has the following anecdote about Drapers' Hall:-"When I went," he says, "to bind my brother Ned apprentice in Drapers' Hall, casting my eyes upon the chimney piece of the great room, I spied a picture of an ancient gentleman, and underneath Thomas Howell.' I asked the clerk about him, and he told me he had been a Spanish merchant in Henry VIII's time, and coming home rich and dying a bachelor, he gave that hall to the Company of Drapers, with other things, so that he is accounted one of the chiefest benefactors. I told the clerk that one of the sons of Thomas Howell came now thither to be bound; he answered that if he be a right Howell he may have when he is free £300 to help to set him up, and pay no interest for five years." The Vintners.-It is probable that the Vintners, or, as they were first called, the Wine Tunners of Gascoigne, existed from time immemorial. The contentions between the citizens of London and the Gascon wine merchants in Edward I infer that the Vintners had long before acted as a fraternity, though not formally incorporated until Henry VI. Edward I granted them Botolph Wharf, near Billingsgate, in the mayoralty of Henry de Valois, on their paying a silver penny annually at the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Towards the French wars they contributed £23 6s. 8d., a greater sum than that given by the majority of the companies, and in Edward III they sent six members to the Common Council, which showed their wealth and importance. The Saxons had vineyards, and in the Norman times there was a vineyard in the Tower precincts. It is supposed that home-made wine was discarded when Gascony fell into English hands. Some writers, who disbelieve in English wines, declare that the Saxons used the English word "vineyard" for 66 orchard," and that the wine was merely cider. At Bath and other old towns, however, there are streets still called the vineyard. The traffic in Bordeaux wines commenced about 1154, when Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Normans were great carriers, and from Guienne most of the English wines came. Those enumerated are Muscadell, a rich wine; Malmsey; Rhenish; Dale wine, a sort of Rhenish; Stam, strong new wine; Gascony wine; Alicant, a Spanish wine, made of mulberries; Canary wine, or sweet sack (the grape of which was brought from the Canaries); Sherry, the original sack, not sweet; and Bummey, a species of Spanish wine. Sack was a term loosely applied at first to all white wines. It was probably those that Fitzstephen, in Henry II, mentions having been sold in the ships and wine cellars near the public places of cookery on the Thames bank. Their charter, confirmed by Henry VI, forbids any but such as are enfranchised by the craft of Vintners to trade in wines from Gascony, and Gascoigners were forbidden to sell wine, except by the tun or pipe. The right of search in taverns, and the regulation of prices, was given to four members of the Company, annually chosen. It also permitted Merchant Vintners to buy cloth, and the merchants of Gascoigne to purchase dried fish in Cornwall and Devon, and herrings and cloth in any other part of the kingdom they pleased. All wines coming to London were unloaded above London Bridge, at the Vintry, so that the king's bottlers and gaugers might there take custom. A famous song occurs at the end of the only known printed pageant of the Vintners. No subsequent one has since been publicly performed. This is therefore the last song of the last city poet, at the last city pageant, and is a good example of his powers: "Come, come, let us drink the Vintners' good health, |