(See page 55.)] The earliest enrolment of a City apprentice was in the reign of Edward II., or five centuries and a half ago. There is a curious case recorded in the Guildhall Letter-book II, folio 42, of the year 1376, when William Grendone, _alias_ Credelle, a scrivener, was sent to Newgate and fined for making a false indenture between William Ayllesham, a goldsmith, and Nicholas, the son of William Flourman. The indenture was for nine years, and the surety, instead of the father of the boy, was named as “the Cross at the North Door.” This cross—Broken Cross, or the Stone Cross—was at the north door of St. Paul’s, and, having been erected in the reign of Henry III., remained there until 1390, and in those superstitious ages any transaction there was, as a rule, considered binding. Each cross in the City had certain stalls, or stands, or stations, and these from time to time were let to persons who thus became Stationers, and in course of time left these stations at the Cross, and took up their position in and about Paternoster Row. The Ironmongers’ ordinance for the year 1498 (confirmed by the Judges February 16, 1581) specially mentions the apprentice, as we have shown in our fourth chapter. The housing, the clothing, and the general welfare of the boy were fully set down, even to the command that the master “shall not suffre his (the apprentice’s) here to growe to long!” Again, “Every maister is sworne at the Guyldehall to make his prentice free wᵗʰout any cost or charge to the prentice”—a custom, we regret to say, long ago forgotten; and a century and a half after the making of the ordinance it was further ordered that any master putting in an appearance with the boy at the hall “before he have orderly cutt and barbed his hayre to the liking of the Mʳ and Wardens of the Company” was to be fined twenty shillings. One of the best City ordinances was that preventing the early marrying of artisans, in 1556—a custom which had produced “povertie, penurie, and lacke of livyng.” The Act recites:— That by reason of the over hastie marriges and over some setting up of housholdes of and by the youth and young folkes of the sayde citie wᶜʰ hath comonly used and yet do, to marry themselves as sone as ever thay come oute of theyr apprenticehode be thaye never so young and unskilful, yea and often tymes many of them so poore that they scantly have of theire proper goodeyes wherewith to buye theire marriage apparel, and to furnish ther houses with implements and other thinges necessary for the exercise of ther of ther occupacons whereby they should be able to sustayne themselves and theire family;