A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London A.D. 1351-1889. T. C. Noble
to the craft as the members themselves. At the present day, we regret to find that the ladies are not always considered with so brotherly an attention as the blacksmiths considered their ladies in King Henry’s day.
Another of the ancient Guilds was the Farriers’, whose orders, about the year 1324, included the charges to be made for shoeing horses, at the rate of a penny halfpenny for six nails, and twopence for eight nails.
In Buckingham there was a Guild called the Mercers’, which existed from early days. Even as late as the seventeenth century the minutes of this Company contained many very curious entries. For instance, in 1665, when Thomas Arnott, the eldest son of Walter Arnott, was made free upon the understanding that he was “to follow the trade of an ironmonger,” he paid “one gallon of good wyne for his freedom,” and when his brother Thomas was admitted in 1671 “to follow only ye trade of an ironmonger,” he also paid the like fee. Upon turning to the ordinances of the Company we find that the ironmongers of the borough were, with other trades, associated under the name of the Mercers’, and that the fifth clause particularly orders “noe strange pson or fforeigner inhabiting within the said borough or pish, and not ffree of the same, shall bee made ffree of the said Companies to the intent to sell or utter any kind of wares usually solde by any artificier, before such time as every such strange or forrein pson have paid for his freedome”—the sums specified in a schedule annexed, and which “for every ironmonger” was 20l., and “one good leather buckett for the use of the said Corporation,” and that the son of such person or freeman so admitted shall, upon being made free of the Company “whereunto he hath beene an apprentice in forme aforesaid,” pay to “the bayliffe and burgesses and his Company one gallon of good wyne.”
As we proceed with our history we shall find some curious facts connected with the London ironmongers, and that their ordinances, quaint and still in force, contain many very illustrative evidences of the trade-unions of centuries ago.
CHAPTER II.
IRON, IRONWORKS, AND IRONMONGERS.
Iron and its uses historically described should form no unimportant part to the history of the Ironmongers’ Company, but as it is not our intention now to give the thousand-and-one notes which would form a most interesting and valuable compendium to the general account of the City Guild, it is sufficient for us if we so condense our large store of material and give such an epitome as will assist the reader to comprehend the origin of the trade of which the company bears the name.
A well-known writer justly observes that no one should fail to consider the origin, history, and value of iron; that our instruments of cutlery, the tools of our mechanics, and the countless machines which we construct by the infinitely varied applications of iron are derived from ore for the most part coeval with or more ancient than the fuel by the aid of which we reduce it to its metallic state, and apply it to innumerable uses in the economy of human life. The use of iron is identified with the time of erecting the Egyptian monuments, the oldest in the world, and a very large number of the helmets dug up at Nineveh were made of iron, and some of copper inlaid. Readers of history have only to turn to the pages of Anderson, Fosbroke, Scrivenor, Layard, and others to learn that iron has ever been a most useful and valuable article of commerce.
The Romans proved their constructive ingenuity by the manufacture of those innumerable articles of iron which from time to time have been dug up throughout England, particularly in those districts where woods and forests at one time existed. In Gloucestershire the Forest of Dean for centuries had the extensive furnaces about which so many battles were fought in and out of Parliament, and in Sussex the sites of the ancient ironworks in the Weald can be traced to this day, and will be found described in Lower’s “Historical and Archæological Notices,” printed in the second volume of the Sussex Collections. In the reign of the Conqueror Gloucestershire possessed a large trade in the forging of iron for the King’s navy, and in Edward I.’s time seventy-two furnaces were kept employed. As we progressed, England discovered that the iron we manufactured was wanted for home use, consequently Edward III. prohibited its exportation.
In the accounts for carrying on the war in 1513 there is an item mentioning “nailes and yeran worke,” and just thirty years later (according to Holinshed) the first cast-iron cannon was made at Buxted, in Sussex, by Rafe Hoge and Peter Bawde. Among the State Papers there are a quantity relating to the casting of cannon not only in Sussex, but in other counties. The Lamberhurst furnace was a large foundry, for the woods of the Weald were plentiful, and here, at a cost of 11,202l., were produced the 2,500 fine iron railings and seven iron gates, weighing 200 tons and 81 lbs., for the enclosure of Wren’s Cathedral of St. Paul’s, London. It is worthy of note that as early as 1290 Master Henry of Lewes received a payment for the ironwork of the monument of Henry III. in Westminster Abbey. The parish of Mayfield was famous for its iron; at the palace were preserved many relics, and among these the hammer, anvil, and tongs of St. Dunstan. Lower says “they seem to refer as much to the iron trade, so famous in these parts, as to the alleged proficiency of the Saint in the craft of a blacksmith. The hammer and tongs are of no great antiquity, but the hammer with its iron handle may be considered a mediæval relic.” The old legend of St. Dunstan and his successful encounter with “the Evil one” must form part of the history of the blacksmiths, and will not be an uninteresting portion of their “mystery.” In 1559 the value of iron and ironwork brought into the port of London, “the excess of which is prejudicial to the realm,” is set down in a State Paper to be 19,559l. In 1622 Thomas Covell and others received a certificate permitting them to sell round iron shot at 11l. per ton.
In the reign of Elizabeth there are two most interesting notices in manuscript. The first of the year 1574, the second of the Armada year 1588. Nowadays we are used to “company promoting,” but three centuries ago there was as wild a scheme countenanced by Her Majesty’s Ministers as ever was floated to-day. Strype, in his “Annals” (quoting the original MSS.), says “a great project has been carrying on now for two or three years of alchymy, William Medley being the great undertaker to turn iron into copper. Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State, had by some experiments made before him a great opinion of it,” so had the great Lord Burleigh, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and others, each of whom speculated, with the result that Her Majesty (for certain royalties allowed her) granted them a patent in January, 1574, incorporating them as the “Governor and Society of the New Art” … “for making copper and quicksilver by the way of transmutation with the commodities growing of that mystery.” Twenty persons only were to form the company; to “dig open and work for any mines, owers, and things whatsoever.” Sundry sums of 100l. each were subscribed by Burleigh, Smith & Co., but “the concern” did not prosper. The assay master at the Tower mint was sent to “the works,” and so was Robert Denham, a relative, by the way, of the Sir Wm. Denham who had been seven times Master of the Ironmongers’ Company; but somehow or other we fail, as Strype failed with all the papers before him, to learn “the wind up” of what was thought to be “a most splendid investment.”
Now in 1588 there was the original certificate given by “John Colman, of the Kanc, gent,” of “Chardges belonging to a furnace for making a fowndry of iron for one whole weeke” at Canckwood (Cannock Wood?), co. Stafford. According to this document, for one ton the furnace cost 110s. 10½d., and the forge 69s. 2d.; total, 9l. 0s. 0½d. Seven years previous to this, the Act of Elizabeth, “Touching yron milles neere unto the Cittie of London and the Ryver of Thames,” enacted that in consequence of the great consumption of wood as fuel for these mills, no woods within 22 miles of the City should be converted “to cole or other fewell for the making of iron or iron mettell in any iron milles furnes or hammer,” except the woods of the wealds of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, and the woods of Christopher Darrell, of Newdigate, Surrey, gent, and who had already preserved his woods for his own ironworks.
Speaking of patents and Acts of Parliament recalls a note or two which may as well be stated here. In 1676 Samuel Hutchinson, citizen and ironmonger of London, had a patent granted to him for his invention,