mpany carries us back to the early days of
Henry III, when in the seventeenth year of that monarch's reign (A.D.
1233), according to Stow, they were incorporated and registered in the
books of the Guildhall. The patron saint of the company was St.
Nicholas, who also extended his patronage to robbers and mariners.
Thieves are dubbed by Shakespeare as St. Nicholas's clerks[51], and
Rowley calls highwaymen by the same title. Possibly this may be
accounted for by the association of the light-fingered fraternity with
Nicholas, or Old Nick, a cant name for the devil, or because _The
Golden Legend_ tells of the conversion of some thieves through the
saint's agency. At any rate, the good Bishop of Myra was the patron
saint of scholars, and therefore was naturally selected as tutelary
guardian of clerks.

[Footnote 51: _Henry IV_, act ii. sc. 1.]

In 1442 Henry VI granted a charter to "the Chief or Parish Clerks of the
City of London for the honour and glory of Almighty God and of the
undefiled and most glorious Virgin Mary, His Mother, and on account of
that special devotion, which they especially bore to Christ's glorious
confessor, St. Nicholas, on whose day or festival we were first
presented into this present world, at the hands of a mother of memory
ever to be revered." The charter states that they had maintained a poor
brotherhood of themselves, as well as a certain divine service, and
divine words of charity and piety, devised and exhibited by them year by
year, for forty years or more by part; and it conferred on them the
right of a perpetual corporate community, having two roasters and two
chaplains to celebrate divine offices every day, for the King's welfare
whether alive or dead, and for the souls of all faithful departed, for
ever. By special royal grace they were allowed, on petitioning His
Majesty, to have the charter without paying any fine or fee.

Seven years later a second charter was granted, wherein it is stated
that their services were held in the Chapel of Mary Magdalene by the
Guildhall. "Bretherne and Sisterne" were included in the fraternity. Bad
times and the Wars of the Roses brought distress to the community, and
they prayed Edward IV to refound their guild, allowing only the
maintenance of one chaplain instead of two in the chapel nigh the
Guildhall, together with the support of seven poor persons who daily
offered up their prayers for the welfare of the King and the repose of
the souls of the f