ir meetings.

The chief portraits in the hall are those of Sir Thomas Gresham
(original), a fanciful portrait of Sir Richard Whittington, a likeness
of Count Tekeli (the hero of the old opera), Count Panington; Dean Colet
(the illustrious friend of Erasmus, and the founder of St. Paul's
school); Thomas Papillon, Master of the Company in 1698, who left L1,000
to the Company, to relieve any of his family that ever came to want; and
Rowland Wynne, Master of the Company in 1675. Wynne gave L400 towards
the repairing of the hall after the Great Fire.

In Strype's time (1720), the Mercers' Company gave away L3,000 a year in
charity. In 1745 the Company's money legacies amounted to L21,699 5s.
9d., out of which the Company paid annually L573 17s. 4d. In 1832, the
lapsed legacies of the Company became the subject of a Chancery suit;
the result was that money is now lent to liverymen or freemen of the
Company requiring assistance in sums of L100, and not exceeding L500,
for a term, without interest, but only upon approved security.

The present Mercers' School, which is but lately finished, is a very
elegant stone structure, adjoining St. Michael's Church, College Hill,
on the site of Whittington's Almshouses, which had been removed to
Highgate to make room for it.

The school scholarship is in the gift of the Mercers' Company, and it
must not be forgotten that Caxton, the first great English printer, was
a member of this livery.

Subsequently to the Great Fire, says Herbert, there was some discussion
with Parliament on rebuilding the Mercers' School on the former site of
St. Mary Colechurch. That site, however, was ultimately rejected, and by
the Rebuilding Act, 22 Charles II. (1670), it was expressly provided
that there should be a plot of ground, on the western side of the Old
Jewry, "set apart for the Mercers' School." Persons who remember the
building, says Herbert, describe it whilst here as an old-fashioned
house for the masters' residence, with projecting upper storeys, a low,
spacious building by the side of it for the school-room, and an area
behind it for a playground, the whole being situate on the west side of
the Old Jewry, about forty yards from Cheapside.

The great value of ground on the above spot, and a desire to widen, as
at present, the entrance to the Old Jewry, occasioned the temporary
removal of the Mercers' School, in 1787, to No. 13, Budge Row, about
thirty yards from Dowgate Hill (a house of the