Excerpt from The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors of the Fraternity of St. John the Baptist, London, Vol. 1 of 2: With Notices of the Lives of Some of Its Eminent Members The present work is an attempt to trace from the antient records, the history of the Merchant Taylors Company from initia tion, when trade in its infancy was nurtured by religion, to the full development of corporate life, when trade passed into other organizations. To Show also the position which the Company occupied, and the work that it did as a factor in the government of London, while it was the monopolist of the trade it protected, the patron of the craftsmen it enrolled, and the almoner of the poor it relieved. For the three centuries which come under our notice each citizen was governed by his Guild, and to estimate aright the value of that organisation we must bring under notice the lives of those members, interwoven with the growth of the Company, who living guided it by their counsel and afterwards endowed it by their wealth. But eminent as guildsmen they were something more, living as they did not only for their Guild but for their city, the offices Of the one leading not unfrequently to the dignities of the other. It would, therefore, be impossible to write effectively either the early history of a London Livery Com pany or the lives of its eminent members, without describing, at least in outline, those corporate offices in the civic Government which on election they were bound to fill. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.