hat they had been obliged to sell part of their rental (L180 per
annum); yet at the same date the generous Company seem to have given the
poet Ogilvy L13 6s. 8d., he having presented them with bound copies of
his translations of Virgil and AEsop into English metre. In 1664 the boys
of Merchant Taylors' School acted in the Company's hall Beaumont and
Fletcher's comedy of _Love's Pilgrimage_.

In 1679 the Duke of York, as Captain-general of the Artillery, was
entertained by the artillerymen at Merchant Taylors' Hall. It was
supposed that the banquet was given to test the duke's popularity and to
discomfit the Protestants and exclusionists. After a sermon at Bow
Church, the artillerymen (128) mustered at dinner. Many zealous
Protestants, rather than dine with a Popish duke, tore up their tickets
or gave them to porters and mechanics; and as the duke returned along
Cheapside, the people shouted, "No Pope, no Pope! No Papist, no Papist!"

In 1696 the Company ordered a portrait of Mr. Vernon, one of their
benefactors, to be hung up in St. Michael's Church, Cornhill. In 1702
they let their hall and rooms to the East India Company for a meeting;
and in 1721 they let a room to the South Sea Company for the same
purpose. In 1768, when the Lord Mayor visited the King of Denmark, the
Company's committee decided, "there should be no breakfast at the hall,
_nor pipes nor tobacco in the barge_ as usual, on Lord Mayor's Day." Mr.
Herbert thinks that this is the last instance of a Lord Mayor sending a
precept to a City company, though this is by no means certain. In 1778,
Mr. Clarkson, an assistant, for having given the Company the picture,
still extant, of Henry VII. delivering his charter to the Merchant
Taylors, was presented with a silver waiter, value L25.

For the searching and measuring cloth, the Company kept a "silver yard,"
that weighed thirty-six ounces, and was graven with the Company's arms.
With this measure they attended Bartholomew Fair yearly, and an annual
dinner took place on the occasion. The livery hoods seem finally, in
1568, to have settled down to scarlet and puce, the gowns to blue. The
Merchant Taylors' Company, though not the first in City precedence,
ranks more royal and noble personages amongst its members than any other
company. At King James's visit, before mentioned, no fewer than
twenty-two earls and lords, besides knights, esquires, and foreign
ambassadors, were enrolled. Before 1708, the Company had g