e seller to the pillory, the articles being burnt under him--a
peculiarly disagreeable penalty. The company existed in 1345, but was
not incorporated until 1504, and its history has been uneventful. The
Saddlers' Company is a very honourable and wealthy corporation, and
possesses records of unusual importance, dating back to Saxon times. The
early colony of saddlers settled near the church of St. Martin-le-Grand,
and they have never strayed far from there, their present hall being in
Foster Lane. They can boast of having received many charters, the
earliest having been granted by Edward I. In early days they were
associated with a collegiate brotherhood, the house of which was
situated where the General Post Office now stands. This religious
fraternity offered masses for the souls of deceased saddlers, and shared
with them a common graveyard. They disputed much with the joiners,
painters, and loriners, who were always trying to trespass upon the
rights of the saddlers. The introduction of coaches alarmed them as much
as the invention of railways frightened the coachmen, but with less
cause. The saddle trade prospered. The Civil War caused many saddles to
be made and many emptied. Their records tell of much old-time civic life
and customs. They had a barge on the river; they buried their deceased
members with much ceremony, and their old hearse-cloth still remains;
they can boast of having a Royal master, Frederick Prince of Wales, in
1751.

The Scriveners formerly discharged many of the duties now performed by
solicitors, such as making wills, drawing up charters, deeds relating to
lands, tenements, and inheritances, and other documents. They were known
as the "Scriveners, or writers of the Court Letter of the city of
London." Their earliest set of ordinances was granted to them in the
time of Adam de Bury, mayor, in the 38th year of Edward III., a document
couched in old law French. They complained bitterly against certain
chaplains and other men out of divers countries who called themselves
Scriveners, and took upon themselves to make testaments, charters, and
other things belonging to the mystery, to the great damage and slander
of all honest and true scriveners. Their apprentices caused them
trouble, because they had not their "perfect congruity of grammar, which
is the thing most necessary and expedient to every person exercising the
science and faculty of the mystery." Every apprentice found deficient
was ordered