stminster. In 1553 Queen Mary gave it to
the Bishop of London and his successors. One of the monuments here bears
the following inscription:--

"Peter Heiwood, younger son of Peter Heiwood, one of the counsellors
of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John Muddeford, Kt. and Bart.,
great-grandson to Peter Heiwood, of Heywood, in County Palatine of
Lancaster, who apprehended Guy Faux with his dark lanthorn, and for
his zealous prosecution of Papists, as Justice of the Peace, was
stabbed in Westminster Hall by John James, a Dominican Friar, An.
Dom. 1640. Obiit, Novr. 2, 1701.

"Reader, if not a Papist bred,
Upon such ashes gently tred."

The site of Haberdashers' Hall, in Maiden Lane, opposite Goldsmiths'
Hall, was bequeathed to the Company by William Baker, a London
haberdasher, in 1478 (Edward IV.). In the old hall, destroyed by the
Great Fire, the Parliament Commissioners held their meetings during the
Commonwealth, and many a stern decree of confiscation was there grimly
signed. In this hall there are some good portraits. The Haberdashers'
Company have many livings and exhibitions in their gift; and almhouses
at Hoxton, Monmouth, Newland (Gloucestershire), and Newport
(Shropshire); schools in Bunhill Row, Monmouth, and Newport; and they
lend sums of L50 or L100 to struggling young men of their own trade.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. MICHAEL'S, WOOD STREET (_see page 365_).]

The haberdashers were originally a branch of the mercers, dealing like
them in merceries or small wares. Lydgate, in his ballad, describes the
mercers' and haberdashers' stalls as side by side in the mercery in
Chepe. In the reign of Henry VI., when first incorporated, they divided
into two fraternities, St. Catherine and St. Nicholas. The one being
hurrers, cappers, or haberdashers of hats; the other, haberdashers of
ribands, laces, and small wares only. The latter were also called
milliners, from their selling such merchandise as brooches, agglets,
spurs, capes, glasses, and pins. "In the early part of Elizabeth's
reign," says Herbert, "upwards of L60,000 annually was paid to foreign
merchants for pins alone, but before her death pins were made in
England, and in the reign of James I. the pinmakers obtained a charter."

In the reign of Henry VII. the two societies united. Queen Elizabeth
granted them their arms: Barry nebule of six, argent and azure on a bend
gules, a lion passant gardant; crest or, a