Today, the Company exists primarily as a charitable institution, supporting a variety of causes. The company's motto is Honor Deo, Latin for "Honour to God".
The Mercers' Company is based at Mercers' Hall, 6 Frederick's Place in the City of London. The city block upon which it stands contains the archaeology of a Roman-British temple known today as Gresham Temple.[2]
Its corporate existence began in the form of a fraternity at least by the reign of King Henry II, in the mid 1100s if not before.[3]
In 1210-1214, the first two Mayors of London, Henry FitzAlwyn and Robert FitzAlwyn were claimed to be members, and branch of the company was established at this time, the Company of Merchant Adventurers, who established themselves at Antwerp, the centre of the cloth trade.[4]
Magna Carta was negotiated by a member of the Mercers
Although of even older origin, the company was incorporated under a Royal Charter in 1394, the company's earliest extant Charter. The company's aim was to act as a trade association for general merchants, and especially for exporters of wool and importers of velvet, silk and other luxurious fabrics (mercers).
Around 1438 William Caxton was apprenticed into the Mercers, under Robert Large, becoming a full member in 1452: his work took him into the Low Countries.[7][8]
Between 1517 and 1524 the Company built the Mercer's Chapel on this land, with the first Mercers' Hall above it, fronting Cheapside.[9]
Sir Rowland Hill, convener of the Geneva Bible project was repeatedly master of the company in the mid 16th century
A member of the Mercers, Robert Packington, was murdered on 13 November 1536, the first recorded death by shooting with a handgun; Rose Hickman, a Protestant, recalled how he:
used to bring English bybles from beyond sea
and it is thought this may be connected to the murder.[10] The entrance appears to have been on to Ironmonger Lane, and an interconnecting mansion house was secured by Sir Rowland Hill in 1546, which he later put at the use of his protégée and heir (via his niece) Sir Thomas Leigh.[11] Hill is associated with the publication of the Geneva Bible,[12][13][14] and is considered a possible inspiration for the character Old Sir Rowland in Shakespeare'sAs You Like It.[15][16][17]
There are accounts of the Mercer's buildings being the focus of London state pageantry in the mid- 16th century. For instance Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Thomas Gresham together with Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, are recording as watching the Midsummer Marchers that would become the Lord Mayor's Show[18][19] from the loggia of the hall.[20][21] Around this time Francis Wren, grandfather of Christopher Wren was a member of the company[22]
Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, was a member of the mercers. He was admitted in 1543 aged 24 as a liveryman, and later that year he left England for the Low Countries, where, either on his own account or that of his father or uncle, he carried on business as a merchant whilst acting in various matters as agent for King Henry VIII.
The Dead Christ, one of the most important surviving works of late English Catholic sculpture prior to the iconoclasm of the Reformation was secretly preserved in a sand-filled pit under the chapel floor, only being found during repairs after the bomb damage of World War Two.[23][24][25]
The second Hall, designed by Edward Jarman and John Oliver, opened in May 1676.
Following the Napoleonic Wars the first Viscount Hill, the Peninsular general, a relative (via his uncle, Ralph Hill) of the Lord Mayor of the same name[27] was admitted to the company honouring his soldiering.
The Hall was extensively refurbished during the period 1877 to 1881 (the porch of the 1676 building is now incorporated into the facade of Swanage Town Hall).
The frontage was remodelled by George Barnes Williams and the interiors were redesigned by John Gregory Crace, the renowned Victorian designer. The Hall was destroyed by fire in 1941 during the Blitz. The third and present Mercers' Hall was opened in May 1958. The architect was E. Noel Clifton of Gunton and Gunton. The Hall incorporates fittings from the old Hall, including some 17th-century woodwork and Victorian stained glass.
The Mercers' Company is the only City Livery Company to have its own private chapel.
Membership
Children whose father or mother was a member of the Company at the time of their birth have an automatic right to become Mercers by 'patrimony'.
Most other members have a family connection to the company and obtain their Freedom by Redemption. Under this process applicants are recommended for membership after an interview and, if approved, they pay a sum of money called a 'fine'.
Other people can also become Members by Redemption. Membership is sometimes granted because the Company wishes to honour the individual. Notable Members who joined the company by Redemption are Thomas More and Winston Churchill.
One other route to membership is by apprenticeship, but this has not happened recently. In the early days this was a very usual route; an apprentice would be 'bound' to a Member for a term of about seven years but in exchange the member was required to teach the apprentice such that he was worthy of membership by the end of the term, when he became a 'Freeman', for he was no longer bound. Freemen of a Livery Company are also Freemen of the City of London, which used to carry certain privileges, such as the right to drive a flock of sheep without charge over London Bridge.
Etymology
The word "mercer" derives from the Latin merx, mercis, "merchandise"[28] from which root the word "merchant" is also derived.[29]
The words mercero and mercier, still used in Spanish and French respectively, have meanings similar to haberdasher, although the medieval mercers would not have recognised any relationship to that trade which was covered by the separate Worshipful Company of Haberdashers.
There was also a Mercers' School[31] which was granted its first charter in 1447, and closed in 1959 when pupil numbers fell. The school was most recently based in Barnard's Inn in Holborn, now the home of Gresham College.
Arms of the Mercers Company, published in 1633, confirmed with additional detail by the College of Arms in 1911
The origin of the "Mercers' Maiden", the heraldic emblem of the company, is not known. Unlike most of the City livery companies, the Mercers had no early grant of arms but the 1425 charter granted a common seal. A few impressions of the early seal survive showing a greatly simplified version of the present coat of arms. The fifteenth century Wardens' Accounts reveal that, even then, the Company required the device of the Maid's Head to be displayed on its property. In 1530 the Company stated to the College of Heralds that they had no arms but only a Maid's Head for their common seal and in 1568 the Heralds registered the seal as the company's arms.
In 1911 the College of Arms confirmed the arms and granted the company a crest and motto, 'Honor Deo' (Honour to God). The grant blazons the arms: Gules, issuant from a bank of clouds a figure of the Virgin couped at the shoulders proper vested in a crimson robe adorned with gold the neck encircled by a jeweled necklace crined or and wreathed about the temples with a chaplet of roses alternately argent and of the first and crowned with a celestial crown the whole within a bordure of clouds also proper.
Every year the Mercers' Company publishes an annual review of their activities. The property portfolio includes 90 residential flats in Covent Garden. In an average year they might give away £7 million, about one-sixth of the total charitable contributions of 111 livery companies.[1]
Sir Rowland Hill of Soulton (d.1561), "The First Protestant Lord Mayor of London", privy councillor, statesman, scholar, merchant and patron of art and philanthropist who coordinated the Geneva Bible translation and may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's play "As You Like It"
Kilrea, Mercers plantation settlement in Northern Ireland
Related Research Articles
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Sir Rowland Hill of Soulton, was the publisher of the Geneva Bible, thereby earning the title "The First Protestant Lord Mayor of London", having held that office in 1549. He was a statesman, polymath, merchant and patron of art and philanthropist active through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. He is associated with the recovery and development of Tudor English drama a generation before Shakespeare, and events that Hill was involved in may have shaped one or more Shakespearean characters.
Sir Richard Gresham was an English mercer, Merchant Adventurer, Lord Mayor of London, and Member of Parliament. He was the father of Sir Thomas Gresham.
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The Gresham Club was founded in 1843 and dissolved in 1991. It was named after Thomas Gresham. The Gresham Club's last site was located on Abchurch Lane off King William Street before it was sold to the London Capital Club, which in turn ceased operation in 2018. Following the closure of the London Capital Club, a number of the members relaunched The Gresham Club in 2018 and recreated the raison d'être of its original predecessor.
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Sir William Garrard (1518–1571), also Garrett, Gerrarde, etc., was a Tudor magnate of London, a merchant citizen in the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who became alderman, Sheriff (1552–1553) and Lord Mayor of London (1555–1556) and was returned as an MP for the City of London. He was a senior founding officer of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands in 1554/55, having been involved in its enterprises since the beginnings in King Edward VI's time, and for the last decade of his life was one of its permanent governors. He worked hard and invested largely to expand English overseas trade not only to Russia and the Levant but also to the Barbary Coast and to West Africa and Guinea.
Sir Henry Rowe was an English merchant who was Lord Mayor of London in 1607.
Sir Thomas Offley was a Sheriff of London and Lord Mayor of London during the reign of Queen Mary I of England. A long-serving alderman of London, he was a prominent member of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, thrice Mayor of the Staple, and a named founding Assistant of the Muscovy Company.
Sir William Hewett was a prominent merchant of Tudor London, a founding member and later Master of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers of London as incorporated in 1528, and the first of that Company to be Lord Mayor of London, which he became in the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His career arched across the first four decades of the Company's history, and drew him inexorably, if sometimes reluctantly, into the great public affairs of the age.
Sir George Barne was an English businessman in the City of London who was active in developing new trading links with Russia, West Africa and North America, far outside what had been traditional English trading patterns. Created a knight in 1553, he served as Sheriff of London and Lord Mayor of London. He was the father of Sir George Barne and grandfather of Sir William Barne. Nicholas Culverwell was probably a nephew.
↑ "Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs: 1188-1239" in Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London 1188-1274, ed. H.T. Riley. London: Trübner, 1863. pp. 1-8. British History Online. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
↑ Julian Roberts, ed. (2005). "A John Dee Chronology, 1509–1609". Renaissance Man: The Reconstructed Libraries of European Scholars: 1450–1700 Series One: The Books and Manuscripts of John Dee, 1527–1608. Adam Matthew Publications. Retrieved 27 October 2006.
Further reading
Sutton, Anne F., The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578, Aldershot, 2005
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