Guild organisation and the instrument-making trade, 1550–1830: the Grocers' and Clockmakers' Companies

Summary

When mathematical instrument-makers brought the craft to London from the continent in the mid-sixteenth century, the severity of the legislation obliged them to join a guild company. As there was no company specialising in their craft, they joined the company of their choice, a practice allowed by the so-called ‘custom of London’. Research has revealed many in the Grocers' Company, and their position there is compared with that of instrument-makers who joined the Clockmakers' Company after its incorporation in 1631. While the Grocers' Company steadily declined from this date in its industrial function, the Clock-makers' Company strove to exert a tight trade control over its members, and this continued until the end of the eighteenth century. Numbers of apprentices bound in each company are compared, and instrument-makers in the Clockmakers' Company listed. Much of interest to our understanding of the origins and organisation of the instrument-making trade can be discovered through the examination of guild company records.