i8o The Company and the Trade. 



tinued down to the present day. The Company 

 made repeated attempts to compel persons prac- 

 tising the business of a Saddler to join the 

 Company, and in 1695 endeavoured to procure 

 an Act of Common Council for that purpose. 

 Notwithstanding, however, that under a recent 

 Act of Parliament they succeeded, in 1703, in 

 compelling "foreign " Saddlers to pay quarterage 

 and to fine for "opening shop," they appear to 

 have shortly afterwards relinquished a systematic 

 exaction of the obligation. This is not inex- 

 plicable when we recollect that the Company 

 represented the leading interests of the trade, 

 while " foreign " Saddlers were probably for the 

 most part men who had not properly qualified 

 themselves to exercise the craft by serving the 

 prescribed course of apprenticeship and in other 

 ways, and who also not only in relation to the 

 circumstances of their trade, but in respect of the 

 privileges of citizenship, were at an immense dis- 

 advantage as compared with free Saddlers. Never 

 was a City Company more intimately connected 

 with its craft, never were its ordinances directed 

 more assuredly with a view to the promotion of 

 that particular trade which it was designed to 

 foster and protect. 



The Company's ordinances were of necessity 

 in strict conformity with the laws of the period, 

 which it must be stated were very stringent and 

 arbitrary so far as they afTected trade and artificers. 

 One of the most important statutes to which 

 reference is frequently made in the Company's 



