THE GOLDSMITHS COMPANY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 May 1927, Page 11

THE GOLDSMITHS COMPANY

r JMIE Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths celebrated, by a banquet in their hall on March 28, the 600th anniversary of incorporation. Actually, the Goldsmiths can look back beyond 1327. (hey are mentioned as far back as 1180, and their origin disappears in the mists of the Middle Ages, but it was in 1327 that they obtained the earliest of their fifteen charters. The patent empowered the Goldsmiths to elect a properlyqualified governing body to look after their affairs, all members of the trade to have their Cheapside of the King's Exchange; no gold nor silver to be manufactured for export save such as had been bought either iit the Exchange or of the Trade openly.

As time went on it was necessary to restate and increase the jtowers of- the Company, and in 1504= King Henry VII vested in it the power of fining and imprisoning at discretion all defaulters in the trade of seizing, condemning. and breaking unlawful work without rendering account to the Crown, and of compelling makers to bring all articles to the Common Hall to be assayed and stamped before they could be sold. Further power* were obtained in 1739.

In 1627 an attempt was made by the Crown to reserve Cheapside, Lombardstreet and the neighbourhood exclusively to the' Goldsmiths’ and other “sumptuous” shops; the Corporation was threatened with pains and penalties if it permitted others to occupy shops there, and even demanded that shops

should be kept closed unless and until they could be let to goldsmiths.

The Company had St. Dunstan for its special saint and patron, maintained a chapel in his honour in St. Paul's and feasted yearly on his day. This brings us to the development of the goldsmiths into bankers. Other merchants dealt in paper, only the coin was to be obtained at the Goldsmiths' shops. It is true that -old-fashioned merchants eomplianed bitterly that the Goldsmiths were going beyond thenlegitimate trade and had become the treasurers , and were fast becoming the masters of the whole city. •;

But the advantages of the system by which money earned money were obvb ous, and by the Restoration the Goldsmiths were firmly established as bankers. It was sometimes a hazardous business. When Charles II closed the Exchequer in 1672 there was widespread ruin. Alderman Backwell alone was creditor to the State for nearly £300,000.

The hall of the Company, the last of a series going baek to 1407, was opened in 1835 with a great banquet.

Among its chief ceremonies is the Trial of the Pyx, undertaken every year for the testing of gold and silver coins issued by the Mint to ascertain whether they conform to the legal standard of weight and fineness. A curious ease was that of 1816, when a test was made of French “louig d’or” coined at the Mint “for the greater facility of paying the British troop* under Wellington in France.