THE MERCHANT TAYLORS COMPANY OF LONDON, 1580- 1645 OLtTIc WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TOOVERNMENT 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON THE MERCHANT TAYLORS COMPANY with special reference to gove and pol ics A dissertion submitted in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy BY NIGEL VICTOR SLEIGH-JOHNSON June, 1989 University College, London 3 ABSTRACT During the period 1580-1645, the Merchant Taylors Company, one of the twelve major livery companies of London, assumed a central place in the social, financial, and political affairs of the capital. The archives of the Company, more varied and extensive than is often assumed, have allowed a detailed study of the nature and organisation of one of early modern London's major social organisations. That organisation embraced two highly distinct and autonomous bodies. The livery was closely-knit, select and oligarchic in its government, dominated by an elite of leading citizens and merchants devoted to the affairs of the livery company. The yeomanry was an organisation of immense social and industrial importance, responsible for the regulation and representation of a high proportion of all of London's freemen. Its parallel government was dominated by members of the handicraft, and investigation into the yeomanry's role and the attitudes of the livery governors allows critical reappraisal of the phenomenon known as the "decline of the guilds", and an assessment of the role of the livery companies in promoting social stability in later Elizabethan and Early Stuart London. The sixty-six years to 1645 represent a period of increasing corporate wealth, membership and influence, and the detailed examination of Company government and structure, coupled with a portrait of the livery company leadership from 1630, facilitates a reappraisal of political and religious developments in the capital. The Merchant Taylors Company is shown to be closely-tied to the royal government and in particular to William Laud, a pattern of loyalties which survived the municipal revolution of 1642 and the outbreak of Civil War in England. 4 CONTENTS Page List of tables 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 8 I Government and Governors of the 22 Livery 1580-1645. II The Livery of the Merchant Taylors 101 Company 1580-1645 III Political and Religious Affairs 144 1580-1625 Iv Political and Religious Affairs 187 1625-1645 V The Bachelors Company 1580-1645. 235 VI Freemen Tailors and Industrial 295 Regulation. VII Some Organisational Features of The 352 Tailoring Trade in The City of London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Conclus ion 380 Appendix 1. Freemen admitted 1550-1750 - graph. 384 Appendix 2. Biographical information regarding 385 the 25 leading assistants 1630-1641. Appendix 3. The 33 assistants of 1640-1642 - 417 politics and religion. Appendix 4. The 414 freemen promoted to the 421 livery 1580-1645. Appendix 5. The 228 governors of the Merchant 434 Taylors Company 1580-1645. Appendix 6. The business and career of tailor and 437 liveryman Arthur Medlicott from 1565 to 1604. Bibliography and Sources. 439 5 TABLES Page 1. Common Clerks 1580-1645. 29 2. Co-option to the court of assistants 1580-1645. 42 3. Masters 1560-1645 - number of years as freemen 43 and liverymen. 4. Average attendance at meetings of the assistants 44 1580-1645. 5. Number of individuals attending meetings 44 1580-1645. 6. Number of assistants obtaining exemption or 50 discharged from the office of Master 1580-1645. 7. Average annual number of courts of assistants 66 1580-1645. 8. Beadles of the livery 1580-1645. 87 9. Precepts received from the Lord Mayor of 89 London. 10. Merchant Taylors elected as sheriff or Lord 92 Mayor 1580-1645. 11. New liverymen 1562-1645 - number of years as 107 freemen. 12. Career of Henry Webbe, 1559-1607. 116 13. Senior assistants attending one-third of 192 meetings in any year 1630-1641. 14. Entrance 'fines' of liverymen who had not acted 249 as yeomanry warden 1580-1680. 15. Clerks and beadles of the yeomanry 1580-1645. 255 16. Average annual expenditure of the yeomanry and 274 livery to 1645. 17. Wardens of the yeomanry becoming liverymen 312 1580-1645. 18. Liverymen admitted 1580-1645 who had served as 313 yeomanry warden. 19. The Sixteen Men of 1601. 323 20. Summary of numbers of apprentices and freemen 351 enrolled 1580-1680. 6 ABBREVIATIONS A &O Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnurn 1642-1660. AMB Ancient Manuscript Books of the Merchant Taylors Company. B. I .H.R Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research. BL British Library. CCC Calender of the Committee for Compounding. CFAOM Calender of the Committee for Advance of Money. CL RO Corporation of London Record Office. CM Court Minutes of the Merchant Taylors Company. Costume The Journal of the Costume Society. CSP Colonial Calender of State Papers, Colonial. CSPD Calender of State Papers, Domestic. Ec. H. R. Economic History Review. E.H.R. English Historical Review. GHL Guildhall Library (Printed Books). GH MSS Guildhall Library Manuscripts. History The Journal of the Historical Association, New Series. HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission. HOL MSS House of Lords Manuscripts. JBS Journal of British Studies. J CC Journal of Common Council. J.H.G. Journal of Historical Geography. .3 HOC Journal of the House of Commons. MF Microfilm in the Guildhall Library. 7 ABBREVIATIONS (continued) MSC.DOC. Miscellaneous Documents of the Merchant Taylors Company. MT Hall Merchant Taylors Hall Archives. PCC Prerogative Court of Canterbury. P&P Past and Present. P RO Public Record Office. Prob. 5 PRO Probate 5, PCC Paper Inventories 1661 - c.1725. Rep. Repertories of the Court of Aldermen. SOTR Statutes of the Realm. SP State Papers (Domestic). T.R.H.S. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Univ .Press University Press. 8 INTRODUCTION Research into the history of early modern London still requires perhaps little preliminary justification. The well-rehearsed arguments concerning the central importance of the capital in the political, social and economic life of a predominantly-rural kingdom between (1) 1500 and 1650 have not been seriously questioned, yet we know little about many aspects of London's history during (2) that period. New research has substantially modified the traditional view of a sprawling metropolis beset by administrative paralysis, disorder and social inequality, replacing it with a picture of a well-organised City with (3) a socially-mobile population. This new model London may pay insufficient attention to the degree of social • 'See for example V.Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution, Oxford, l96l,p.4; A.L. Beier and R. Finlay, "The Significance of the Metropolis", in their London 1500-1700. The Making of the Metropolis, 1986, pp.1-33; B. Coward, Social Change and Continuity in Early Modern England, 1550-1750, 1988, pp.75-78. 2 For this view see for example Beier and Finlay, op.cit., p.6 and S. Rappaport, "Social Structure and Mobility in Sixteenth-Century London: Part 1", The London Journal,9,(2),1983,pp.107,132. Rappaport's "Worlds within Worlds" (Cam.tiniv.Press, May 1989), was published too late for its ideas to be examined in this thesis. 3 V.Pearl,"Change and Stability in Seventeenth Century London",The London Journal,5,(1),1979,pp.3-34;Rappaport, Part l,pp.lO7-135, and idem,Part 2, The London Journal, 10, (2), 1984, pp. 107-134. 9 deprivation and the problems of crime and vagrancy (1) between 1570 and 1650, but the relative stability of the capital during the period certainly demands the fullest examination and explanation. (2) If much of the history of early modern London still waits to be written, some aspects have received their fair share of historical research. The demographic expansion of the metropolis has been investigated, with the most (3) significant growth placed between 1580 and 1645. The expansion in population brought with it grave social and administrative difficulties, and in no small measure underlies the contemporary development of the Merchant Taylors Company, which in the century to 1650 saw annual admissions of new members rise by 450 per cent against an estimated increase in metropolitan population of 312 per (4) cent. S P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England,1988, pp. 69-72, 95-95, 102; Beier and Finlay, op.cit., pp.17-21. 2 The terms 'municipality' 'City', 'capital' and 'London' are used inter-changeably to designate the City of London and the liberties. Where a wider geographical area is discussed this is made clear in the text or is signified by reference to the 'metropolis' (3) Beier and Finlay, "The Significance of the Metropolis", p.11; P. Finlay and B. Shearer, "Population Growth and Suburban Expansion", in Beier and Finlay, op.cit.,pp.37-59.Aspects of the methodology employed by Finlay and Shearer are controversialSee V.Pearl,review in J.H.G. ,13,(3) ,l987,pp.323-325. 4 Finlay and Shearer, "Population Growth", p.39. See appendix 1. 10 perhaps the most significant development in the study of early modern London has been the emphasis on the importance of local neighbourhood society and of smaller social organisations in London. This has resulted in particular in a major reappraisal of the role of the eighty or so guilds (or 'livery companies') in promoting stability in sixteenth century London, with emphasis laid on the opportunities for participation and social mobility. The guilds have been portrayed as "the most important form of social organisation in sixteenth (1) century London"; while Jeremy Boulton's evaluation of the social structure of Southwark in the early seventeenth century concentrated on the stabilising role of neighbourhood societies, he recognised that among Southwark's more well-to-do householders "company membership may have rivalled, or provided another social (2) dimension to, those bonds of neighbourhood".