.jpg){kind=link}
The story
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.
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.
From 1210 to 1214, the first two Mayors of London, Henry FitzAlwyn and Robert FitzAlwyn were claimed to be members, and a branch of the company was established at this time as the Company of Merchant Adventurers at Antwerp, the centre of the cloth trade.
Serlo le Mercer was a member of the Company and was one of the negotiators of Magna Carta.
Although of even older origin, the Company was incorporated under a Royal Charter in 1394, its 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).
From the 14th century onwards the Company held its meetings in the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon on Cheapside.
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.
Between 1517 and 1524, the Company built the Mercers' Chapel on this land, with the first Mercers' Hall above it, fronting Cheapside.
Read the full text
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 bibles from beyond sea and it is thought this may be connected to the murder. 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 protégé and heir (via his niece) Sir Thomas Leigh. Hill is associated with the publication of the Geneva Bible, and is considered a possible inspiration for the character Old Sir Rowland in Shakespeare's As You Like It.
There are accounts of the Mercers' buildings being the focus of London civic 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 from the loggia of the Hall. Around this time Francis Wren, grandfather of Christopher Wren was a member of the company
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.
Inigo Jones was admitted as a member in 1620.
The building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
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 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.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Mercers' Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3