, which
was opened in 1428. The Friars' old chapel contained a buttery, pantry,
cellar, parlour, kitchen, turret, clerk's house, a garden, and a set of
almshouses in the front yard was added. The word "grocer," says
Ravenhill, in his "Short Account of the Company of Grocers" (1689), was
used to express a trader _en gros_ (wholesale). As early as 1373, the
first complement of twenty-one members of this guild was raised to 124;
and in 1583, sixteen grocers were aldermen. In 1347, Nicholas Chaucer, a
relation of the poet, was admitted as a grocer; and in 1383, John
Churchman (Richard II.) obtained for the Grocers the great privilege of
the custody, with the City, of the "King's Beam," in Woolwharf, for
weighing wool in the port of London, the first step to a London Custom
House. The Beam was afterwards removed to Bucklersbury. Henry VIII. took
away the keepership of the great Beam from the City, but afterwards
restored it. The Corporation still have their weights at the Weigh
House, Little Eastcheap, and the porters there are the tackle porters,
so called to distinguish them from the ticket porters. In 1450, the
Grocers obtained the important right of sharing the office of garbeller
of spices with the City. The garbeller had the right to enter any shop
or warehouse to view and search for drugs, and to garble and cleanse
them. The office gradually fell into desuetude, and is last mentioned in
the Company's books in July, 1687, when the City garbeller paid a fine
of L50, and 20s. per annum, for leave to hold his office for life. The
Grocers seem to have at one time dealt in whale-oil and wool.

During the Civil War the Grocers suffered, like all their brother
companies. In 1645, the Parliament exacted L50 per week from them
towards the support of troops, L6 for City defences, and L8 for wounded
soldiers. The Company had soon to sell L1,000 worth of plate. A further
demand for arms, and a sum of L4,500 for the defence of the City, drove
them to sell all the rest of their plate, except the value of L300. In
1645, the watchful Committee of Safety, sitting at Haberdashers' Hall,
finding the Company indebted L500 to one Richard Greenough, a Cavalier
delinquent, compelled them to pay that sum.

No wonder, then, that the Grocers shouted at the Restoration, spent L540
on the coronation pageant, and provided sixty riders at Charles's noisy
entrance into London. The same year, Sir John Frederick, being chosen
Mayor, and not being, as