1. Mrs. Pearl's book was published in 1961 by the Oxford University Press. Cf. Williams, Dorothy Ann, “Puritanism in the City Government, 1610–1640,” The Guildhall Miscellany, London, Vol. I, No. 4, 02, 1955, pp. 3–14Google Scholar; “London Puritanism: The Parish of St. Stephen, Coleman Street,” The Church Quarterly Review, London, Vol. CLX, No. 337, october–December, 1959, pp. 464–482Google Scholar; “London Puritanism: The Parish of St. Botolph Without Aldgate,” The Guildhall Miscellany, London, Vol. II, No. 1, September, 1960, pp. 24–38Google Scholar. I am deeply indebted to the Social Science Research Council for the research grant which made possible the writing of the present article.

2. While the Mercer's Company held more ecclesiastical property than the Haberdashers, the latter company was more fortunate in its attempts to appoint Puritans to benefices and lectures. The Mercers failed to place a single Puritan in their London benefices, but occasionally a Puritan sermon could be heard at Mercers' Chapel. Until curtailed by the Crown in the late sixteen-thirties, however, Puritans did occupy the Mercers' lectureships at Huntingdon and Berwick-on-Tweed.

3. The Haberdashers' Company has no printed history, probably because of the scarcity of early manuscript records; the minutes of the Court of Assistants go back only to 1583 and the Wardens' Accounts only to 1633. The narrative of this article has been drawn from the Haberdashers' Company Court of Assistants Minutes, 1583–1652. Information on the Company's charities was obtained from the Company Manual and from the volume entitled State of the Charities 1597 (which has been continued to 1632). For general information on the Haberdashers, reference was made to Unwin's Industrial Organization and Guilds and Companies, and to Herbert's Twelve Great Livery Companies. A good short account of the livery companies was found in Kahl's, William F. essay on The Development of London Livery Companies (Boston, 1960).Google Scholar

4. Born of a prominent Cheshire family (his father was John Aldersey, gentleman, of Aldersey and Spurstow), in 1572 Thomas Aldersey, then just fifty, was City auditor and had entered upon the first of four terms as M.P. for London. Having no children, in the fifteen-nineties he named as his heir and executor his nephew John, also a Haberdasher. It is interesting to note that in the next generation John's son, Samuel Aldersey, Haberdasher, became an adventurer in the Massachusetts Bay Company, contributed to the Puritan society of feoffees, and was related by marriage to many individuals whose names figure prominently in the annals of Puritanism in England and New England.

5. Thomas Aldersey's will is at Somerset House, P.C.C. 10 Kidd. General information on the Bunbury impropriation has been taken from Ormerod, George, History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (London, 1882), II, 259–261.Google Scholar

6. C.S.P.D., 1633–1634, p. 444.

7. The Court of Assistants– minutes are si. lent on the Bunbury incident; in November, 1635, the Attorney General brought an information against the Company in the Star Chamber, but its purpose is not known. The Mercers were less fortunate than the Haberdashers in their dealings with the King, for in 1639 Charles demanded that they replace their Puritan lecturer at Berwick-on-Tweed with a royal appointee. The Mercers delayed for three months, but after receiving a second letter from the King t h e y finaily complied. (C.S.P.D., 1639–1640, p. 104; Mercers' Acts of Court, 1637–1641, ff. 132v, 141v, 145r.)

8. £19,900 of his estimated estate of £41,000. Cf. Jordan, W. K., The Charities of London, 1480–1 660 (London, 1960), p. 108Google Scholar. Although it is impossible to gauge accurately the value of the pound sterling in the seventeenth century, any sum would have to be multiplied by twenty-five or thirty in order to approximate its value today. Biographical details are taken from Jones' will, Somerset House, P.C.C. 117 Rudd, and from Warlow, W. A., A History of the Charities of William Jones at Mon. mouth & Newland (Bristol, 1899), pp. ii, 18–29, 40, 345Google Scholar. Muchinformation on Jones' bequests, including the diary extract and editor's comment which will be quoted in connection with the Monmouth lectureship, has been drawn from Warlow's book

9. Hughes had proceeded. B. D. at Oxford in 1611, and had become in the same year rector of Tredunnock and vicar of Trelleck ia Monmouthshire, as well as precentor of Llandaff. Ten years later he was to receive the D. D. degree.

10. Brook, Benjamin, The Lives of the Puntaas (London, 1813), II, 488.Google Scholar

11. Brabourne, who came from Southampton, had proceeded B. A. from St. John's College, Oxford, in 1612. In June, 1618, nearly a year after Brabourne's appointment, the Company petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, urging “the quick setliu” of the preacher's place at Monniouth. There is no evidence that the Bishop of Hereford had refused to license Brabourne; the appointment of a new bishop in 1617 may have been the cause of delay. (Letter from Vera G. Park, Secretary to the Diocesan Registrar, Hereford, February 25, 1960.)

12. Thomas Hall may have been a member of the prominent Roman Catholic famfly of that name in Newland; evidence has been found of the existence of Catholic and Puritan cliques in the Forest of Dean during the Interregnum. (Letter from Irvine Gray, Records Officer, Gloucestershire Records Office, February 26, 1960.) Sir William Throckmorton of Clearwell, who had been made a baronet in 1611, had taken part in the earlier attempt to transfer Potts to Monmouth. In 1613 he had offered to sell certain Gloucestershire lands to the Haberdashers for the support of Jones' Monmouth charity, but the offer had been refused.

13. P.R.O., S.P. Dom 16/190/45.

14. Jones'will bequeathed his house in St. Sithes Lane, London (then renting at £70 per annum) and the sum of £600 “to some learned & faithfull preacher as ye Company of Haberdashers shall appoint from tyme to tyme…” (Warlow, , History of the Charities of William Jones, p. 341Google Scholar, quoting Jones' will.)

15. Before the Revolution other Puritan lectures were established at St. Bartholomew's: in 1628 Richard Fishborne, Mercer, endowed a Friday evening lecture (the parish was to select the lecturer, but the Mercers' Company was to pay him); in 1634 Hugh Perry, Mercer, set up a monthly Saturday lecture (the Mercers were to select as well as pay the lecturer). On February 15, 1615/16 the Haberdashers' Court of Assistants ordered that Jones' lecture be held at St. Bartholomew's church on Thursday afternoons at four o'clock. The attitude of the parson and vestrymen had already been determined (Freshfield, Edwin, ed., The Vestry Minute Books of the Parish of St. Bartholomew Exchange in the City of London 1567–1676 [London, 1890], p. 74)Google Scholar, and representatives of the church were present to give their consent. It is significant that Francis Jones, a leading member of the Court of Assistants, and probably other Habberdashers, lived in St. Bartholomew's parish,

16. City of London, Livery Companies' Commission, Report and Appendix (London, 1884), II, 469, IV, 476Google ScholarPubMed. Lady Weld's will is at Somerset House, P.C.C. 28 Swann.

17. Grocers' Company, Orders of the Court of Assistants, 1616–1639, p. 155; Jordan, , Charities of London, pp. 272–273.Google Scholar

18. Between 1610 and 1640 the Company of Merchant Taylors exhibited considerable piety but little Puritanism. The Company's historian states that early in the seventeenth century “the same religious spirit pervad[ed] their assemblies as was noticeable in earlier days.” (Clode, C. M., Memorials of the Guild of Merchant Taylors [London, 1875], p. 17)Google Scholar. As patrons of the benefice of St. Martin Outwich, London, the Merchant Taylors presented four clergymen between 1600 and 1640, not one of whom was a Puritan; Rowland Juxon, in fact, was related to William Juon, Bishop of London after Laud. The administration of Merchant Paylors'School in London demonstrates the Company's loyalty to the Established Church. The headmaster appointed by the Company in 1625, who resigned in 1632 to become headmaster of Eton, was expelled from his fellowship at Eton during the Civil War. Again, in 1644 the headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School resigned after being summoned before a committee of Parliament “[to answer for his superstition and malignancy…]” (Clode, , Memorials, p. 662)Google Scholar. Some of those listed as “emijient scholars” of the school became leaders of the Arminian party: Lancelot Andrewes, William Juxon, Matthew Wren, and George Wilde (Laud's chaplain). Through their school the Company established a close relationship with Laud when he was president of St. John's College, Oxford, which had been founded by a Merchant Taylor. This friendship continued after Laud became Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury, for “no elevation in rank could estrange Laud from the school which had produced most of his academical friends;[he] [shewed that though his official connection had ceased, he was ready to prove himself…the friend and patron of Merhant Taylors’.” (Wilson, H. B., The History of lifer chant-Taylors' School [London, 1812], I, 209.)Google Scholar

19. A search at the Public Record Office for documents relating to the suit in Chancey brought by the Haberdashers' Company against Lady Weld's execu tors turned up only one manuscript, “The Repilcacion of the Master and fower wardens of the Art or mistery of Haberdashers in the Citty of London Complay-nants to the seuerall Answers of Sir Robert Brooke Knight Sir William Litton Knight and Peter Phesnnt Esquior Defendantes” (P.R.O., C. 2, Charles I, H 119/86). This, the Haberdashers' reply to the executors' answers to the bill of complaint, indicates that Lady Weld's executors, after offering the trust to the Haberdashers' Company, had decided to give it instead to a group of private individuals. The Haberdashers contended that, according to the will, if the Merchant Taylors refused the trust it had to be given to another company. Among the Haberdashers' records is an indenture (Weld MS. 40) dated June 11, 1630, made by the executors of Lady Weld, the Governors of Christ's Hospital, and the Haberdashers, entitled “Copy Decree under which the Haberdashers' Company became Trustees of Lady Weilds Charity Funds.”

20. Another member of the feoffees' society who can be linked to Lady Weld is Alderman Rowland Heylyn, Ironmonger; he and his wife are remembered in Lady Weld's will, where she de scribes them as “my lovinge friendes.” The society of feoffees had been formed in London in 1625 by a group of twelve prominent Londoners—four clergymen, four lawyers, and four merchants—for the purpose of aiding Puritan clergymen and supporting Puritan lectures. This they accomplished by the purchase and use of lay impropriations and advowsons. By 1633, when the feoffees' society was abolished by an Exchequer decree, over £6,300 had been collected from more than two hundred Puritan supporters, and seventeen impropriations and other types of real property had been purchased, as well as thirty-four advowsons and other ecclesiastical rights. It was estimated that if the feoffees had been permitted to continue their operations, in fifty years they might have bought up all the lay impropriations in England. See Calder, Isabel M., Activities of the Puritan Faction of the Church of England, 1625–33 (London, 1957).Google Scholar

21. According to the Haberdashers' minutes (second f. 318v), Elisha Bourne died before November 21, 1643. The “Mr. Bovrne” mentioned above in connection with Jones' lectureship at Monmouth was Colonel Horton's chaplain in 1647.

22. Quotations and other information on the Weld impropriations after 1640 have been taken from the following sources: Haberdashers' Company, Weld MSS. 15, 87/1, 88, and 101/,3; P.R.O., C 93–46–23; City of London, Livery Companies' Commission, Report and Appendix, IV, 477.Google Scholar