The City Companies, as we have shown in the history of the Ironmongers, had a terribly uphill battle to fight with early monarchy. Whenever there was a chance to rob the citizens, down pounced the Government or Royalty. Henry VIII. commenced by dissolving the religious houses, and the good King Edward VI. seized the properties left to the Companies by the wills of benefactors on the plea that they were for superstitious uses. Having taken possession he was glad enough to sell the property back to them, so that he made a very profitable business of the transaction. The result of this “clever” and “sharp” practice was that the Ironmongers had to sell their private property to buy back the trust estate. Having done this, is it not creditable to a City Company to be still administering that trust of which the King himself had originally deprived them? Coming down to more modern times, Thomas Betton, Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, left the Ironmongers’ Company, in 1723, the residue of his estate for the purpose of redeeming slaves in Barbary. Other notable citizens had done a similar good deed before then, for so long previous as 1641 Roger Abdy, merchant, had left 120_l._ “for or towards the ransoming and redeeming of sixe poore English Protestant captives out of the bondage and slavery of the Turks.” Thomas Betton’s bequest was a noble one, for just about the date of it all the world was suffering from the terrors of slavery. Between 1734 and 1825 the Company appears to have paid away in redemption money something like 21,000_l._, or as much as the whole estate had been originally worth, but the Ironmongers, having been good trustees, had “improved” the estate, and the result was that after Lord Exmouth’s great victory, no more slaves being likely to be redeemable, and there being a large balance at the bank, the Company desired to utilise the surplus for the benefit of charity, reserving a certain sum per annum for future redemptions and contingencies. This was serious, so down came the Government and popped the whole into Chancery. The Company believed they were right, and did not want the interference; but they had to fight against the Crown, and from 1829 to 1845 did the battle last. Several thousands of pounds did Government law cost the charity, but that the Company was right is evident, because the highest tribunal, the House of Lords, decided that what the Company had proposed so many years before should now be carried out—bequests to the poor of the company and to every national school in the kingdom.