the London Companies, including those which sprung up during the mania for incorporation that prevailed in the latter part of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, or just when, through a variety of concurring causes, but chiefly that the trade and commerce to be directed had become much too mighty a thing for the directors, the old faith in the necessity and value of the Companies was disappearing, and with that their faith their own energies. And thus when Charles II. sought to destroy their independence by frightening them into a resignation of their charters, that he might re-grant them with such restrictions as he saw fit, having neither strength within nor without, they succumbed at once, and almost licked the dust off the feet of the spoiler in so doing. That to these causes rather than to the King's arbitrary proceedings we may attribute the decline of the Companies is evident, from the circumstance that, although at the Revolution of 1688 these proceedings were finally reversed, the Companies, with the exception of those which possessed large charities, or of those who still from peculiar causes continued in close connexion with their respective trades, steadily continued to decline from that time. Of the eighty-nine enumerated in the list, eight are practically extinct, and a ninth, the Parish Clerks (the actors in the old miracle plays), has no connexion with the municipality of London. The others are divided by the Commissioners into three classes-1. Companies still exercising an efficient control over their trade, namely, the Goldsmiths and the Apothecaries. Both these also belong to class 2. Companies exercising the right of search, or marking wares, &c.; in which are included the Stationers' Company, at whose Hall all copyright books must be entered;" the Gunmakers, who prove all the guns made in the City; the Founders, who test and mark weights; the Saddlers, who examine the workmanship of saddles; and, in a lesser degree, the Painters, who issue a trade-price list of some authority; and the Pewterers and Plumbers, who make assays. 3. Companies, into which persons carrying on certain occupations in the City are compelled to enter: such are the Apothecaries, Brewers, Pewterers, Builders, Barbers, Bakers, Saddlers, Painter Stainers, Plumbers, Innholders, Founders, Poulterers, Cooks, Weavers, Scriveners, Farriers, Spectacle Makers, Clock Makers, Silk Throwers, Distillers, Tobacco Pipe Makers, and Carmen. This last-mentioned fraternity is the only one that exclusively consists of persons belonging to the trade, though the Stationers and the Apothecaries, with one or two others, have a majority of such members. Admission into the body of freemen is obtained by birth, apprenticeship, purchase, or gift; and thence into the livery, in most cases at the pleasure of the party, on payment of the fees, which are generally light where the claim arises from patrimony or servitude, but otherwise vary from a few pounds to as much as 200 guineas. The government of most of the companies is now intrusted to Courts of Assistants, formed from the senior members of the livery, and comprising Master, Senior and Junior Wardens, and a certain number of assistants, who succeed in rotation to the higher offices. Among the officers and classes who have disappeared from the Companies, or changed their designation, are the Pilgrim, the ancient head of the Merchant Tailors, so called from his travelling for them; the Master Bachelor and Budge Bachelor of the Drapers; the Bachelor in foins of the Skinners; with the Yeomanry of most of the companies, who seem to have been the old freemen. Recurring to the words of the Commissioners, in which they describe the ex

isting Companies as so many trusteeships for "charitable purposes" and "chartered festivals," it is worthy of observation that one of the earliest objects sought by the guild, in some instances apparently their primary one, was the foundation. of a common stock, for the relief of poor or decayed members. Large funds were established in course of time, and the charitable character thus attached to the Company led to their being chosen as trustees for the care and management of a variety of other charities founded by benevolent persons; who, in the earlier periods of metropolitan history, were so numerous, that Stow devotes some fiveand-twenty folio pages of his 'Survey' to the mere enumeration of their acts, under the appropriate and characteristic title of the Honour of Citizens and Worthiness of Men: a noble chapter in the history of London. The variety of these charities is as remarkable as their entire amount must be magnificent; comprising as they do pensions to decayed members, almshouses, innumerable gifts of money to the poor, funds for the support of hospitals, schools, exhibitions at the universities, prisoners in the city gaols, for lectures and sermons, donations to distressed clergymen, and so on through an interminable list. The most interesting, perhaps also the most valuable, of the charities has yet to be mentioned-the loans of different sums to young beginners in business, to an amount, and for a time, amply sufficient to start them fairly in life with every expectation of a prosperous career. Some idea of the magnitude of the Companies' charities, on the whole, may be derived from two illustrations. The Charity Commissioners stated that the Goldsmiths' Company's annual payments to their poor alone amounted to about 28367.; and we learn from the Corporation Commissioners that the Fishmongers, out of their princely income, averaging above 18,000l. a-year, disburse in all between 9000l. and 10,0001. in charities in England and Ireland: in which last-mentioned country this and some of the other Companies have large estates.

As to the "chartered festivals," that form the other distinguishing feature of the Companies in the present day, we have already noticed the election dinner; and have only to add, that, notwithstanding the magnificence of the feasts given by some of the Companies, as, for instance, the Merchant Tailors, they are not for a moment to be compared with their predecessors of the same locality. There may be eminent men among the guests, but no king sitting down "openly among them in a gown of crimson velvet of the fashion" as a member, which Henry VII. once did: there may be speakers to please with their eloquence, and statesmen to flatter with the expression of kindred political views, but no Ben Jonson to prepare such an entertainment as that which greeted James I. "with great and pleasant variety of music, of voices, and instruments, and ingenious speeches;" no Dr. Bull, to make the occasion still more memorable by the first production of such an air as God save the King.' The halls in which these festivals take place present many features of interest, but none of them are of very early date, the Great Fire having swept away most of those then in existence. The hall of the Barber Surgeons, described in a previous number,* and that of the Leathersellers engraved in this, may be taken as interesting examples of those which escaped. Of the halls recently rebuilt, the Goldsmiths',

*No. LXII.

one of the most sumptuous specimens of domestic architecture in the metropolis, has also been fully treated of.* The Fishmongers', with its fine statue of Walworth on the staircase, its stained glass windows, its elegant drawing-room with a splendid silver chandelier, and its grand banquetting hall, is built, decorated, and furnished on a similarly splendid scale. Of the remainder we can but briefly refer to Merchant Tailors' Hall, with its tabular lists of the kings, princes, dukes, and other distinguished personages, who have been members, making one wonder who is not included in it rather than who is; Drapers' Hall, on the site of the building erected by Henry VIII.'s vicar-general, Cromwell, with its public gardens, where was the house occupied by Stow's father, which Cromwell so unceremoniously removed upon rollers when making the said gardens out of his neighbours' land; Mercers' Hall, with its chapel, standing where, several centuries ago, stood the house of Gilbert Becket, father of the great archbishop, and husband of the fair Saracen who had followed him over the seas; the Clockmakers', with their library and museum, richly illustrative of the history of their trade; and lastly, the Painter Stainers, who not only claimed a supervision over the highest branches of art, but had their claims admitted by the enrolment of such men as Verrio, Kneller, and Reynolds among their members.

THE name of this well-known place is one of the many instances of popular corruption, which, should the original be once forgot, from thenceforth become both the trouble and the delight of bewildered but zealous antiquaries. We are, however, as yet spared their theories as to the origin of Covent Garden, seeing that we are told in many a bulky volume that there was on the spot, so early as 1222, a large garden belonging to the monks of Westminster Abbey, which was therefore known as the Convent Garden. And it is curious to note how the deities to whom the place was then dedicated have kept watch and ward over it through all the changes that have been experienced here: the only difference being that Flora, having grown more comprehensive and exotic, and, it must be acknowledged, artificial in her tastes, has changed her simple plat into a conservatory; and that Pomona, instead of having to superintend the supply of the Abbey table, now caters for no inconsiderable portion of mighty London.

We have spoken of changes; and perhaps no part of London forms a happier text for such a theme,-no part that more strikingly illustrates the growth of London in comparatively recent times. Let us look at Covent Garden in 1560, as it is exhibited to us in a large Map of the period,* or at the view of the Strand given in a frontispiece to our first volume. It forms there an oblong walled space, sprinkled over with trees and some three or four cottages, or, as

* Preserved in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and re-engraved in Maitland.

VOL. V.

K

Strype describes it, "fields, with some thatched houses, stables, and such like," bounded by open meadows with footpaths on the north, by the enclosed and gaylooking parterres of Bedford House on the south, by the road from St. Giles's into the Strand and to Temple Bar, with Drury House on the opposite side, embosomed in green foliage on the cast, and by St. Martin's Lane on the west, a fine leafy avenue carrying the eye onwards into the country, towards the beautiful hills of Hampstead and Highgate. That these features are correctly delineated in the map is evident from other proofs: Anderson, for instance, writing about the middle of the last century, refers to his having met persons in his youth who remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge. Towards the southern corner of the western side, St. Martin's church formed a portion of the boundary line, with the Mews beyond it, “so called of the King's falcons there kept by the King's falconer, which of old time was an office of great account, as appeareth by a record of Richard II. in the first year of his reign; [when] Sir Simon Burley, Knight, was made constable of the castles of Windsor, Wigmore, and Guilford, and of the manor of Kennington, and also master of the King's falconry at the Mews near unto Charing Cross.' "" * The Bedford family, to whom we are indebted in a great measure for the difference between the Covent Garden and precincts here described, and the same localities of the present day, is the one referred to in Malcolm's remark, Strange, that a fifth of London should have been erected by this family within two centuries!"

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But for the dissolution of the monasteries, all these as well as many other important metropolitan changes could hardly have taken place: then it was that the Convent Garden, with a field called Seven Acres, or more popularly, from its shape, Long Acre, was granted by Edward VI. to Edward Duke of Somerset, and again in 1552, after the attainder of that nobleman, to John Earl of Bedford, who immediately built himself a house at the bottom of the present Southampton Street, in the Strand (so called from the illustrious wife of the Lord William Russell, who was the daughter of the Earl of Southampton), and laid out the parterres before mentioned. The house was, it appears, but “ a mean wooden building, shut up from the street by an ordinary brick wall;" it was pulled down in 1704. In the early part of the reign of Charles I., Francis, fourth Earl of Bedford, looking with the eye of a man of business at the capacities of his newly-acquired property, and with that of a statesman at the desirableness and certainty of a continual increase of the progression which alarmed so many of his brother senators, and of their monarch, began the magnificent improvements which were to distinguish his name. How he appeased Charles I., or how he ventured to act in opposition to him, it is difficult to say, but that the Earl's proceedings were in direct violation of the laws which Elizabeth, James, and Charles had set down for the repression of fresh buildings in London is certain: perhaps, after all, he quietly submitted to be fined, as we shall find was the case with his successors, and then let the exaction-like such exactions generally—fall on that portion of the public who rented the houses. To the general energy in all departments of mental and social life exhibited in the reign of Elizabeth may be attributed the increase in the metropolis which so startled the sagacious

* Stow's Survey, p. 493.