First Evidence for a Company of Curriers

In fifteenth-century London, it was increasingly common for misteries and craft fraternities, whose memberships and interests often overlapped, to combine together. As Elspeth Veale noted, the institutions which emerged from these unions derived their strength and authority from the ‘common economic interests’ of the mistery, and their ‘social cohesion’ from the bonds of the fraternity. These comprehensive institutions, which were second only to parishes in importance in the late medieval city, became known as livery companies because their members, or at least the senior ones, all wore a common livery.

The earliest appearance of a Curriers’ ‘company’ on those terms can be dated to 1488. In that year, the good men of the art or mistery of the curriers came before the city’s mayor and aldermen to ratify a second set of ordinances. The provisions were the usual sort of contemporary by-laws which, again, focused on the regulation of the craft. On this occasion, however, there is every indication that the institution was more than a trade guild.

Throughout the text, this body of curriers is described not just as an art, mistery or craft, but also as a ‘hoole fealisheppe’, or whole fellowship, which suggests that the mistery of curriers appears to have fused with, and thus absorbed, some of the social and charitable responsibilities of one or other of the contemporary curriers’ fraternities in London.