THE LEATHERSELLERS
A SHORT HISTORY
03
In common with other Livery Companies in the Tudor period, the Leathersellers found that their wealth made them a target for substantial financial demands from Crown and City. The Company was obliged to sell its treasured collection of plate to make its contribution to Henry VIII’s Scottish wars, and regular demands from the City authorities for money to purchase corn were met by unpopular levies on the Livery. AFTER A PROMISING START, THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROVED DIFFICULT FOR THE COMPANY, LONDON AND THE COUNTRY AT LARGE. With the succession of James I in 1603 the Leathersellers’ Company decided to renew its charter. Many clauses in the first charter, dealing with matters such as points-making and counterfeiting of roe leather, were now out of date, and the Company felt particularly vulnerable in the wake of the Statute of Leather which had opened the trade to non-freemen. The 1604 charter confirmed existing rights to search and inspect leather being sold, but is notably more concerned with the constitution of the Company, which is largely governed by its provisions to this day. After a promising start, the seventeenth century proved difficult for the Company, London and the country at large. The Leathersellers only reluctantly met royal demands to fund projects such as colonisation of Ulster, and a series of extortionate
Exterior of the second Hall in the mid-18th century, with St Helen’s Church on the far left.
‘loans’ to Charles I drove the Company and the City into the arms of Parliament for the duration of the Civil War. Despite the provisions of the new charter, the Company found its grip on the trade slipping, as craftsmen simply moved into London’s expanding suburbs, knowing that the guilds had neither the will nor the resources to search and exert their regulatory
influence there. Adding to the general gloom were the twin horrors of plague and fire: Court meetings were suspended while the plague raged, and although the Hall escaped the Great Fire, there was much loss of Company property elsewhere in the City. In the continuing power struggle between the City and the Crown, in 1684 Charles II revoked all existing charters
and issued restrictive new ones in their place. The Court of Assistants resigned en masse in protest, but the Company was able to do little about the unsatisfactory state of affairs until the more liberal reign of William and Mary when, according to legend, Court members repudiated the 1685 charter by grinding its royal seal under foot.
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator