Archaeologists at Barbers' Hall : Mr. Sidney Young, F.S.A., on the Medieval Company.

Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Archaeologists at Barbers' Hall : Mr. Sidney Young, F.S.A., on the Medieval Company. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    money. I did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1,000 (laughter) ; but it is so spoiled that I have not a mind to it, and is not a pleasant, though a good picture. Monfocd, King’s surgeon, one of the personages in the picture, presented them with a hammer for keeping order (produced) in ebony and mounted in silver, of which a replica had been made for use at the Court meetings in order to preserve the original. Both James I. and Charles I. borrowed the picture to get it copie 1, and fortunately the Company got it back again. It would be impossible for him to refer to the pageants, of which they had many accounts, but there was placed on the table the silver badge worn by their bargemast^r. Nor was there time to touch on the charities of the Company ; or to refer to ship money, corn customs and extortions by our kings, of whom the Tudors did some- what in that direction, but the Stuarts were something awful. (Laughter.) He might mention in passing that over the decay of old St. Paul's, on a letter from Archbishop Laud, the Company con- tributed for nine years to the fund, notwithstanding the poverty to which they had been reduced through the grievous impositions made upon them by the authorities in the shape of forced loans and other unconstitutional demands. Coming to the hall, or court-room, he pointed out that it was built in 1636 from designs by Inigo Jones, whose portrait adorns the walls ; and he also built the lecture and demonstrating theatre, the site of which is now covered by a warehouse, there being no further use for the structure. Hogarth depicted the interior in his picture of “ Cruelty,” illustrating the dissection of a criminal’s body there. Mr. Young having given some other details of the original con- struction, and doorheads and other features still retained, mentioned that the books contain numerous references to the plagues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the court did not sit, except to appoint surgeons to assist, without charge, in endeavouring to heal the sick ; and quoted instances of fines, and sometimes com- mittal to the compter, of unqualified people in setting up shop, not being free, for irreverent behaviour, mostly on the Sabbath, and so forth, including the committal of a surgeon for reproachful and slanderous speeches against two of the assistants of the Company, as they sat in the court, in contempt of the said court ; and, in 1610, of the widow Byers for practising surgery. The court had also great trouble with apprentices. The old London apprentice was known to be—or at least had the repute of having been—a swaggering and lawless young blade, and the books showed that he was frequently flogged in the ante-room there. Among other quotations, both suggestive and curious, was one that “Mr. Heydon, complaining of the evil and stubborn behaviour of his apprentice, his absence by day and his keeping late hours at night, the said apprentice most irreverently behaving himself towards his said master and the whole court, the court did therefore cause the hair of the said apprentice, being undecently long, to be cut shorter.’’