In Causton’s introduction to “Mildmay on City Elections,” we are told that in a few years after the accession of Edward III. a silent revolution had been accomplished—the gildated crafts by the enrolment of the special freemen, householders of the wards each in his mystery, had obtained an exclusively civic importance, paramount to the mixed character of the inhabitants of the wards as civic divisions, and the reconstruction of the City from a territorial to a trading classification had become complete. Thus, in the twenty-fifth year of Edward III., 1351, a precept was directed to the wardens of the City Guilds by the Mayor (which precept formerly had been directed to the men of each ward), and in this precept each of the thirty-three mysteries was directed to select from their number four persons, who were to join the others of the Companies in a consultation with the Mayor and Sheriffs on the business of the City. The Ironmongers accordingly selected their two wardens and two others to represent them, and from this date they claim their existence as a Guild. In 1363 (37 Edward III.), when these Companies were called upon for “an offering” to the King to enable him to carry on the war in France, the then large sum of 452_l._ 16_s._ was contributed, and the Ironmongers supplied 6_l._ 18_s._ 4_d._ It is worthy of note that upon this occasion in precedency on the list it stood eleventh, while to-day, some 500 years later, its precedency on the list of City Companies is the tenth. Of this precedency, which was a serious question in olden time, we shall have to say a few words later on in our history. We have now to mention a most interesting circumstance, which has only recently been discovered. Among the enrolled letters at Guildhall which between 1350 and 1370 were sent from the Corporation to many persons, and which Dr. Sharpe, the Records Clerk, so ably edited for the City four years ago, there is one written in French, and dated the 18th of October, the 38th Edward III. (1364), and directed to some persons whose names have not been preserved, but then residents at Bury—probably Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk—“desiring them to assist Thomas de Mildenhale, citizen and ironmonger of London, to recover his runaway apprentice, Andrew, the son of William Bruwere, who is understood to be staying in the town of Bury, in such manner as they would wish their folk to be treated in like case or weightier. The Lord have them ever in his keeping.” We are not told, and are not likely to know now, whether this runaway “merry” Andrew was brought back, and, if so, how the Chamberlain received him. In subsequent days a runaway apprentice would have “little ease” at the hands of the Guildhall caretaker of a citizen’s conscience.