COMMISSION. VICTORIA R. Victoria, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith: To Our right trusty and right well-beloved Cousin and Councillor, Edward Henry, Earl of Derby; Our right trusty and right entirely beloved Cousin, Francis Charles Hastings, Duke of Bedford; Our right trusty and well-beloved Cousin and Councillor Robert, Viscount Sherbrooke; Our right trusty and well-beloved Councillor, John Duke, Baron Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Division of Our High Court of Justice; Our right trusty and well-beloved Councillor Sir Richard Assheton Cross, Knight Grand Cross of Our Most Honourable Order of the Bath; Our trusty and well-beloved Sir Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild, Baronet; Our trusty and wellbeloved Sir Sydney Hedley Waterlow, Baronet; Our trusty and well-beloved William James Richmond Cotton, Esquire; Our trusty and well-beloved Albert Pell, Esquire ; Our trusty and well-beloved Walter Henry James, Esquire; Our trusty and wellbeloved Joseph Firth Bottomley Firth, Esquire; and Our trusty and well-beloved Thomas Burt, Esquire, Greeting. Whereas We have thought it expedient that inquiries should be made into the several matters herein-after mentioned. Now know ye, that We, reposing great trust and confidence in your zeal, discretion, and ability, have authorised and appointed, and do by these presents authorise and appoint you, the said Edward Henry, Earl of Derby; Francis Charles Hastings, Duke of Bedford; Robert Viscount Sherbrooke; John Duke, Baron Coleridge; Sir Richard Assheton Cross; Sir Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild; Sir Sydney Hedley Waterlow; William James Richmond Cotton; Albert Pell; Walter Henry James; Joseph Firth Bottomley Firth; and Thomas Burt to be our Commissioners for the purposes of these Presents. And we do hereby require and command you, or any three or more of you, to inquire into all the Companies to which these Presents apply, and into the circumstances and dates of their foundation, and the objects for which they were founded, and how far those objects are now being carried into effect, and into any Acts of Parliament, charters, trust deeds, decrees of Court, or other documents founding, regulating, or affecting the said Companies, or any of them. And we do hereby require and command you, or any three or more of you, to inquire into and ascertain the constitution and powers of the governing bodies of the said Companies, and the mode of admission of freemen, livery, and other members of the said Companies, and the number of freemen, livery, or other persons constituting the said Companies, and the gains, privileges, or emoluments to which all or any of such persons are entitled by reason of their being members of such Companies. And We do hereby require and command you, or any three or more of you, to inquire into and ascertain the officers and servants of such Companies, and the salaries or other emoluments to which such officers and servants are entitled, and the mode of appointment of such officers and servants, and the duties which they perform. And we do hereby require and command you, or any three or more of you, to inquire into and ascertain the property of, or held in trust for or by, such Companies, both real and personal, and where the same is situate, and of what it is composed, and the capital value of the several descriptions of such property, and the annual income of such property, and the mode in which the property is managed and the income is expended. And We do hereby require and command you, or any three or more of you, to report to us, under your hand and seal, what you shall find touching or concerning the premises upon such inquiry as aforesaid, and also to consider and report what measures (if any) are, in the judgment of you, or any three or more of you, expedient and necessary for improving or altering the constitution of such Companies, or the appropriation or administration of the property or revenues thereof. And we do hereby empower you to make separate reports in relation to any matter concerning the premises at such time and in such manner as you, or any three or more of you, may think expedient. And We do hereby declare that the Companies to which these Presents apply, are all the Companies named in the Second Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into Municipal Corporations in England and Wales. And for the better enabling you to form a sound judgment on the premises, We do hereby authorise and empower you, to call before you, or any three or more of you, all such persons as you may judge most competent by reason of their situation, knowledge and experience, to afford you correct information on the subjects of the inquiry; also to cause all persons to bring and produce before you, or any three or more of you, all and singular records, books, papers, and other documents touching the premises which may be in the custody or under the control of them or any of them; also to inquire of the premises, and every part thereof, by all lawful ways and means whatsoever. And We will, and command that, this Our Commission shall be in full force and virtue, and that you Our Commissioners, or any three or more of you, may from time to time proceed to the execution thereof, although the same be not continued from time to time by adjournment; And for your assistance in the due execution of this Our Commission, We do hereby appoint our trusty and well beloved Henry Denny Warr, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, to be your Secretary, whose services and assistance we require you to use from time to time as occasion may require. Given at Our Court at Saint James's the Twenty-ninth day of July One thousand eight hundred and eighty, in the Forty-fourth year of Our Reign. By Her Majesty's Command. W. V. HARCOURT. REPORT. TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. May it please Your Majesty, WE, the undersigned Commissioners appointed by Your Majesty to inquire into the Livery Companies of the City of London, humbly present to Your Majesty the following Report. We regret that our Report has not been presented to Your Majesty at an earlier Delay in the date; but the purview of the Commission with which we have been entrusted has presentation proved wide, and we have felt that we should best discharge our duty to Your Majesty of the report. by strictly following its terms. The following have been the steps which we have taken in order to satisfy the Stages of the requirements of Your Majesty's Commission. Commission. Upon receiving Your Majesty's Commission, we directed that a circular Circular should be communicated to the Companies into which we were directed to to the inquire, drawing the attention of the courts and officers of such Companies to the companies. terms of the Commission, and containing a number of interrogatories addressed to the tories. several heads of the inquiry. This circular was drawn up at a meeting which was convened by our chairman a few days after we had received Your Majesty's commands. Interroga tories. The interrogatories were framed (1) partly on the express terms of Your Majesty's Materials of Commission which, in some instances, we thought it best to employ word by word: interroga(2) partly on a somewhat similar circular which had been addressed to the Companies by the Municipal Commissioners appointed by Your Majesty's royal predecessor, King William IV., in 1833: (3) partly on the interrogatories which had been addressed to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and to the colleges therein, by the Commission recently appointed by Your Majesty to inquire into the property of these learned bodies. The last-mentioned series of questions we chiefly used for the purpose of conducting the part of the inquiry which relates to the real property held by the Companies. The inquiry as to income and expenditure we extended to the ten years preceding that in which we received Your Majesty's Commission. Circular. Of this circular we sent a copy to each of the members of the courts of the Companies, Proceedings and to each clerk. We then had forms of returns prepared, adapted to the several with referheads of the circular, and we sent a number of such forms to the hall or clerk's office ence to of each Company. This course seemed necessary, in order to secure, so far as might be possible, uniformity in the returns which were to be received. We named no precise date at which we should expect to receive the returns, because we felt that the preparation of them must involve considerable research, and because we desired so far as might be consistent with the punctual fulfilment of Your Majesty's commands, to consult the convenience of the courts and officers of the corporations into which we were directed by Your Majesty to inquire. The circular and forms having been sent out, we conceived that the interval Preliminary which must elapse before the returns could be received, might be usefully employed Report. in ascertaining what information already existed, with reference to the matters mentioned in Your Majesty's Commission, and we directed that a Preliminary Report on this subject should be prepared in the office of the Commission. This report showed that a large body of information already existed on the subject Large body of the Livery Companies of the City of London, and on the more general subject of the of existing mediæval guilds throughout England and throughout Europe. information. Inquiries The Livery Companies of the City of London appeared to have been several times into Livery inquired into by the State. Companies. Richard II. Edward VI. of 1833. In the reign of Richard II. not long after their incorporation, their affairs were examined by a Royal Commission. The Commission was directed to report upon all the guilds in England, their origin, their ordinances, and their property, and was armed with very ample powers of discovery. The text of the Commission is extant, but till recently all the returns of the guilds were supposed to have been lost. Mr. Toulmin Smith, a distinguished antiquary, while engaged in investigation at the Record Office some years ago, accidentally lighted on some of the returns. They were in a very damaged state, but he has deciphered and translated a number of them.(1) The returns met with have, however, been all those of provincial guilds. No record has as yet been discovered of the results of this early Commission as regards the Livery Companies of the City of London. In the first year of the reign of Edward VI. after the passing of the Act which vested all lands held to support chauntries, or obits, or for other superstitious purposes, in the Crown, the Companies of London were called upon to make returns "of any such "establishments existing within their bodies with particulars of the estates left to support them and of all other property to which the Crown became entitled" under the Act. The returns made by the Companies on this occasion are all extant. Municipal The "Municipal Commission" was appointed in 1833, "to inquire as to the existing Commission state of Municipal Corporations in England and Wales, and to collect information with respect to the defects in their constitution, to make inquiry also into their jurisdiction and powers, and the administration of justice, and in all other respects, and also into the mode of electing the members and officers of such Corporations, and into the privileges of the freemen and other members thereof and into the nature and management of the income, revenues, and funds of the said Corporations, and into the several jurisdictions within the limits of all corporate towns in England and Wales." The Commission was entrusted to a large number of persons. They prosecuted the inquiry in divisions, and five Commissioners, of whom the late Sir Francis Palgrave was one, inquired into London and Southwark. Sir F. Pal grave. Doubt as to legality of queries to Companies. But many of the Companies made returns. Charity 1818-1837. The report of these gentlemen, which is believed to have been drawn by Sir Francis Palgrave, is a long and careful one. It is obvious that a City Company is not a city or a borough, and it was not therefore clear that the Companies of London were within the scope of the Municipal Commission. The Commissioners, however, probably felt that as the Livery Companies were historically connected with the municipality of London, it was desirable to inquire into their constitution, and with this view they administered a number of queries to the Companies, and also sat at the Guildhall to receive information. Many of these bodies sent in answers to the queries of the Commissioners. These related not only to the constitution, but also to the corporate property of the Companies and their mode of expending their corporate income. No questions were asked as to the trust property of the Companies, for the reason that that part of the Companies' property was then undergoing an inquiry by a Charity Commission. The Charity Commissions which were appointed between 1818 and 1837, made a Commissions series of elaborate inquiries into the charities administered by the Companies. The results are to be found in scattered notices in the very numerous volumes of the reports of these Charity Commissions, and are thus not very accessible. They are, however, lengthy and have been prepared with great care. At the date when we received your Majesty's Commission, these notices were much the most valuable information which existed in print on the subject of the property of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Present The present Charity Commission has also inquired into the charities of nearly all the Companies. The reports drawn up by Your Majesty's Inspectors of Charities and particularly by Mr. Thomas Hare, Your Majesty's Senior Inspector of Charities, with respect to these charities are dated from 1860 to 1865. They were continued to the present time at our instance by the Department, and they are published as a part of the Appendix to this report. We have to thank Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, Your Majesty's 1860-5, con- Chief Commissioner of Charities, and his colleagues, for this act of courtesy, which must have added considerably to the work of the staff of the Charity Commission. We have also to thank the Charity Commissioners for having, as they were good enough to do, placed the MS. reports of Your Majesty's Inspectors of Charities, with the numerous appendices to them, at our disposal shortly after we had received Your tinued to the present time, and published as part of this Report. (1) Original ordinances of more than 100 English guilds. (Early English Text Society.) Majesty's Commission. These MSS. and appendices were found most useful for the purpose of the report in question. In the year 1868 Lord Robert Montagu moved in the House of Commons for a Lord R. return of the charities administered by the city Companies. This was promptly supplied Montagu's by the Charity Commission; but the return is not always accurate and is too condensed Return,1863. to be very useful. Between 1876 and 1879 the Educational Endowments Committee of the School School Board Board for London was engaged in an inquiry into the charities administered by the for London, 1876-9. Companies, and shortly after our appointment by Your Majesty we were furnished by the Board with copies of the report of the Committee. Licences in In the Record Office, duplicates of many of the charters and licences in Record Office mortmain granted to the Companies are preserved. Many judgments of the Courts Charters. of Law and decrees of the Courts of Chancery concerning the Companies are also mortmain. recorded there, and there can be no doubt that the office contains many other documents Decrees of relating to the Companies. Court. In the Hustings Court of the City, many of the acts of the Courts of Aldermen and Hustings Common Council concerning the Companies are enrolled, and many of the wills under Court. which the Companies hold property and many of their other title deeds are to be found in this ancient office. In the Guildhall library there is a considerable collection of books and pamphlets Guildhall relating to the Companies. Library. Shortly after the appointment of the Municipal Commission of 1834 the Great Herbert on Companies employed Mr. Herbert the librarian to the Corporation of London to write the Coman account of their history. Several of the great Companies had given little panies. information to the Commissioners, as they conceived the Commissioners' circular of queries to be ultra vires. They were willing, however, to give information to the public voluntarily of themselves without admitting the jurisdiction of the Commission, and for this purpose they placed their archives at Mr. Herbert's disposal. The result was Mr. Herbert's "History of the twelve Great Companies of London," which contains some information as to the trust estate of the Companies, but none as to their corporate estate. Mr. Riley's "Memorials of the City of London and of London Life," published by Mr. Riley's order of the Corporation of the City in 1868, and Mr. Riley's lengthy "Munimenta publications. "Gildhalla Londinensis, Liber Albus, Liber Custumarum, et Liber Horn," published in 1859, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, contain many allusions to the early history of the Companies, and the same is the case as regards another work by Mr. Riley "Chronicles of Old London." The Corporation of London has published an index to the records known as Remem"Remembrancia" which contains incidents in the history of the Companies. brancia. Serjeant Pulling's "Laws of London" and Mr. Norton's "Commentaries on the City Pulling. "of London" are treatises of some authority. (1) 66 Norton. The only work of authority in English on the early guilds of England is Mr. Early Toulmin Smith's collection of the " Original Ordinances of more than 100 English English guilds. guilds," published by the early English Text Society. It contains an introduction by the daughter of the editor, Miss Toulmin Smith, who is the author of the article on "Guilds" in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and a preliminary essay on the subject of these corporations by Dr. Brentano of the University of Aschaffenburg. The essay of Dr. Brentano is much relied upon by that very learned historian the Bishop of Chester in the passages of his "Constitutional History of England" which relate to the subject. These passages, some in the "Chronicles" of the same author, a number of allusions in the late Mr. J. R. Green's "History of the English People," and the brilliant description of the Companies with which Mr. Froude's history commences, constitute a summary of the history of the trade guilds of London from their foundation to the period of their decadence as industrial (1) Since the date of the Commission, the Bishop of Chester has compiled his "Annales Londinenses" and "Annales Paulini ;" Mr. Loftie has published a popular "History of London" (1883), based upon the works of Mr. Riley and the Bishop of Chester, but containing also the results of much original research at the Record Office, and in the preparation of which the author had the advantage of assistance from Mr. J. R. Green. The book contains two valuable chapters onthe Companies of London ;-Messrs. Besant and Rice have also published a popular "Life of Sir Richard Whittington" [London (Plutarch Series), 1882], based upon the same archælogical treatises, and containing a picturesque description of the state of the Companies at or about the time of their incorporation. |