When I was elected Yeomanry Warden at Easter, 1888, in commemoration of the fact that I was one of the Committee of the Spanish Armada Tercentenary (Plymouth and London) Commemoration, about which Armada I had published an essay in 1886, and that the Ironmongers’ Company had contributed towards the defence of the kingdom exactly three centuries previous; that the year 1889 was by a curious coincidence the 700th anniversary of the City Mayoralty; that several eminent Lord Mayors had been citizens and Ironmongers; that from my own personal knowledge a large percentage of the present members of the Yeomanry know very little of the history of their Guild, or about their ancient predecessors; and last, but not least, that the facilities afforded to me by the Editor of the well-known trade journal, THE IRONMONGER, for the publication in its columns during the past three months of this “brief history,” which has had a circulation not second to any other weekly throughout the world, prompted me to forward a long-cherished project of compiling for my brethren a short history, and thus commemorate their kindness for electing me their representative. The unexpected opportunity of holding a most enthusiastic meeting on St. Luke’s Day, 1888, at the London Tavern, opposite Ironmongers’ Hall (our Hall being temporarily closed), enabled me, as their Warden, to give to my brother Ironmongers the first historical discourse relating to the Company (see Chapter VI.), and it helped to comfort their disappointment in being unable to meet in their own Hall upon the anniversary of the day they had assembled therein for nearly three hundred years. Then, again, there are some personal reasons worth mentioning. A citizen born, the great-grandson of an eighteenth-century engineer and ironfounder, the grandson of a ship-owner, newspaper proprietor, and possessor of the historical property in the district which he named King’s Cross, and where to this day several of the great “iron roads” of England meet, and the son of a publisher and bookseller of Fleet Street, whose memory and that of my birthplace I commemorated in 1869 in the “Memorials” of the neighbourhood—in which year, too, by another remarkable coincidence, I was honoured by being admitted a member of the Ironmongers’ Company without the payment of fees—an honour only conferred on those who perform their duty to their fellow-citizens.