The Royal Charter of Incorporation of the Company of Merchant Taylors of the City of York was issued by King Charles II on 26th April 1662, but the company traces its origins back to the three medieval guilds of tailors, drapers and hosiers. Tailors appear in the City's Freemen from 1273, the earliest references to guild organisation are the ordinances and register of members dating from 1387

The History of the Company

With a history that spans wars, political and economic upheavals, and plagues, the Company of Merchant Taylors of the City of York enjoys a unique connection to the City and the wider world.

Although tailors appear in the City's Freemen from 1273, the earliest references to guild organisation are the ordinances and register of members dating from 1387, which were entered in the city's memorandum book among the City Archives.

 

In medieval times, the tailors were closely associated with the religious and charitable confraternity of St. John the Baptist, the fraternity that built the present Hall. During this period, the York Tailors enjoyed a golden age, playing a major role in the social and economic life of the City. As one of the leading York City craft guilds, the tailors also played an important role in the famous sequence of York Corpus Christi mystery plays.

 

The Company’s archives survive in greater quantities from the reign of Elizabeth I. The earliest surviving Apprentice Register begins in 1605 and shows that during the following four years, 165 boys were apprenticed within the Company. About a fifth were born in the City, the remainder being nearly all immigrants from nearby Yorkshire villages. Such a pattern of recruitment remained usual for the next two centuries.

 

Until the 1830s the Merchant Taylors’ Company, which included a few women among its members, was essentially a working body of master tailors, York freemen of some substance but rarely of outstanding status or wealth within their City. Only by leasing their Hall for a variety of purposes, mostly educational, theatrical or convivial, did they succeed – where most other once celebrated medieval English guilds eventually failed – in preserving their buildings into the early nineteenth century.

 

When, in 1835, the Municipal Corporations Act formally removed all guild restrictions on industrial activity,the Company of the York Taylors – and their Hall – faced their greatest crisis by far. Indeed they were almost unknown to most residents as well as visitors to the City.

 

Until within living memory, the Hall itself stood in seclusion behind a row of unprepossessing cottages on the north side of Aldwark. Throughout the Victorian period the Hall provided a suitable site for elementary schooling and although the Company was continuously plagued by severe financial problems, the continuity of its membership was never allowed to lapse completely.

 

Thanks to the labours of Mr H E Harrowell, a well-known York solicitor, and many others, from the late 1930s onwards, the Great and Little Halls have gradually been restored to their former splendour. Now maintained by the Members of the Company, it stands as a memorial to six centuries of continuous, if ever-changing, guild history and to the endeavours of the many generations of Merchant Taylors who have preserved it from oblivion.

    • 1273 Taylors are first mentioned in the Freemen's rolls when they are described as Taylours and licensed to export wool

    • 1370 The Guild controlled its own admission and was administered rigorously by a Master and four Searchers

    • 1380 Tailors used Petre Hall (Pear Tree Hall/Peter Hall) for their communal business activities

    • 1415 First specific reference to the "the land and hall of the fraternity of St John the Baptist" (the earliest fabric of the present Great Hall dates from about this period)

    • 1446 First mention of an adjoining York Taylor's maisondieu or almshouse

    • 1453 Henry VI's charter incorporates a perpetual fraternity or guild of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, with a Master and four Wardens

    • 1446-1503 The Small Hall first built in timber framing

    • 1539 Last record of the Guilds of St John the Baptist, dissolved at the Reformation

    • 1551 Merged with Drapers and Hosiers

    • 1575 Great Hall fireplace constructed

    • By 1589 Tenements existed adjoining a Gatehouse on Aldwark

    • 1662 Royal Charter of Charles II

    • 1694 Waits' (Musicians) Gallery added to Great Hall

    • 1702 Henry Gyles paints Queen Anne Window in the Small Hall

    • 1703 Medieval maisondieu demolished

    • 1714-1715 Both Great and Little Halls faced in brick

    • C. 1730 New almshouses built

    • 1835 Municipal Reform Act abolishes craft guild restrictions on industry

    • 1961 Kitchens built adjacent to the Hall, providing catering facilities on site

    • 1963 Royal Grant of their own Arms to the Taylors' Company of York

    • 1994 New Reception Wing completed

    • 2015 Commissioning of new stained glass windows to replace those in the East to mark the 600th Anniversary of the Hall

  • The Company had no arms of its own until the Arms granted to the Company on 5th March 1963 by the Garter King of Arms.  Although the original Grant of Arms document is with the Company’s archives at the Borthwick Institute, a framed copy is on display in the entrance of the Hall.

    Arms

    Or a Pavilion Purpure Lined Ermine on a Chief Azure a Lion's head caboshed affronte Or over all two Robes of Estate Ermine lined Purpure.

    Crest

    Out of a Coronet composed of four Roses Argent barbed and seeded proper and as many Roseleaves Or set alternately on a Circlet Gold a Mount Vert thereon a Pashcal Lamb proper.

    Supporters

    On either side a Camel Erminois gorged with a Collar Azure charged with a Rose Argent barbed and seeded proper.

    Credo or Maxim

    "Concordia Parvae Res Crescunt" (With harmony small things flourish). These Arms are displayed over the fireplace in the Small Hall and on the Entrance Porch pediment, both carved by Dick Reid, York ’s distinguished wood and stone carver, in 1963 and 1998 respectively.

    Points of Interest:

    The Pascal Lamb is one of the symbols of the Company's Patron Saint, St John the Baptist (Saints Day 24th June). One theory why the supporters are camels is because St John the Baptist wore a garment of camel hair.  The tent depicted on the lower part of the Arms is a Pavilioners tent which were made by tailors for use in jousting sessions.

    As the Company did not have its own Arms until 1963, the arms of others are displayed in the Hall.  The oldest is over the Fireplace in the Great Hall and shows the Armorial Bearings of the London Drapers Company, painted on wood before 1668.  Frequently repainted, but restored in 1978 to its original by the removal of three complete layers of paint.

    The Arms of the London Company of Merchant Taylors are depicted in stained glass in the two windows in the Small Hall, both by Henry Gyles the famous York glass painter and also in the 1887 stone carvingnow set in the forecourt’s boundary wall to the left of the entrance door.

    High on the end wall of the Great Hall hangs the imposing Royal Coat of Arms, again carved by Dick Reid in 1964.  The blazon presents the Royal Arms of 1603 to 1688 and 1702 to 1707, current at the time that the Company’s Charter was granted in 1662.

  • On the 10th February 1453 the York Taylors at last received the constitutional privilege restricted to all but a very few of the craft organisations in medieval England - a Royal Charter of Incorporation.

     

    By his letters patent of that date, and at the request of fifteen York Taylors, King Henry VI formally called into existence "a perpetual fraternity or guild of St John the Baptist", with the right to hold property and to be administered by a Master and four Wardens to be elected every Midsummer; they were also to have the right to impose their own clothing or livery on themselves and servants.

     

    Gradually over the next century and more, and no doubt under increasing economic competition from the new woollen industrial centres of the West Riding, more and more of the York textile trades began to amalgamate with one another. King Charles II gave the united Company of Taylors and Drapers of York his Royal Charter of Incorporation on 26 April 1662 (a magnificent document, still in the Company's possession). The Company had no arms of its own until the Arms were granted in 1963 by the Garter King of Arms.  The Grant of Arms contains the three crests shown above.

     

    Framed copies of the 1662 Charter and the 1963 Grant of Arms are displayed in the Hall entrance area.

  • Company Archive

    The Company's ancient archive is held on loan by the Borthwick Institute at Heslington, part of the University of York, and is available for inspection upon request. Very little material survives from the medieval period beyond a small collection of property deeds and bonds from the 14th & 15th Centuries. Membership records exist from the mid-16th Century and apprenticeship material from the beginning of the 17th Century. Apart from stray survivals from an earlier date, the series of Court minutes and financial records begins in the 17th Century.

    The most important of the Company's surviving documents is the original Charter granted to the Company by King Charles II in 1662, incorporating the Tailors and Drapers of the City of York. Of a more recent date is the 1963 Grant of Arms to the Company by Garter King of Arms.

    Useful Publications

    • The Merchant Taylors of York: A History of the Craft and Company from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries - edited by R. B. Dobson & D. M. Smith (Borthwick Texts & Studies 33 2006)

    • The Merchant Taylors Hall, York - A. Michael Mennim (Sessions of York - ISBN 1 873834 90 X)

    • The Merchant Taylors of York - Bernard Johnson MA, FSA (Master of the Company 1946-48) (Ben Johnson & Company)