In 1562 the Ironmongers were called upon to provide without delay nineteen “good appte and talle persones to be souldiers,” each of whom was to be provided with “corsletts and weaponed with pykes and billes.” This demand meant that if none of the Company’s members cared to serve, then they were to find some other men that would, and accordingly liverymen and yeomen had to assist out of their own pockets to meet the charge. Four years later three more soldiers were provided by the Company out of the 100 fully-armed ordered away from the City for service in Ireland; and, in 1569, no less than twenty-eight “men of honeste behaviour” had to be found “to march against the rebells in the north.” A few years later, in 1577, the demand increased, for an order came for 100 “able men, apprentices, journeymen, or others free of the City, of agilitie or honest behaviour,” between nineteen and forty years of age, and fully armed, for, says Malcolm in his quaint way, “the noble art of man-killing.” The instructions issued out to these “volunteers” are extremely curious to read, for nothing is said in them about evolutions, advancing, retreating, or formation into columns or squares or divisions; and, what is more notable, each man must have been in danger every moment of being blown into the air by his own powder! In 1579 the Ironmongers’ proportion of the 3,000 men wanted of the City for the defence of the realm was 110, of which 72 were to be provided with “shott, calvyʳ, flask, toche, murryn, sword, and dagger, and a pound of powder,” and 38 with “pikes, corslett, sword, and daggʳ.” The Armada year of 1588, and the call to arms upon that occasion will be found fully described in the “Historical Essay,” printed in 1886; but in 1591, in order to provide the 7,000_l._ required for manning the navy, the Ironmongers lent 344_l._, having two years previous received notice to have ready 1,920 lbs. of powder. In 1643, when the Committee at Guildhall sent a polite request to Ironmongers’ Hall desiring that fifty barrels of gunpowder should be stored there as “a place of safety,” the Company politely returned answer that they could not oblige, for not only want of room, but that their tenants next door, having Spaniards, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen lodging in the house, might be placed in danger of no ordinary kind.