The one characteristic which has clung to them throughout is that of owners of property and managers of charitable trusts. The connexion between the companies and the municipality is shortly as follows. The ordinance of Edward II. required freemen of the city to be members of one or other of the companies. By the ordinance of 49 Edw. III. (1375), the trading companies were to nominate the members of common council, and the persons so nominated alone were to attend both at common councils and at elections. An ordinance in 7 Richard II. (1383) restored the elections of common councilmen to the wards, but corporate officers and representatives in parliament were elected by a convention summoned by the lord mayor from the nominees of the companies. An act of common council in 7 Edw. IV. (1467) appointed the election of mayor, sheriffs, &c., to be in the common council, together with the masters and wardens of the companies. By 15 Edw. IV. masters and wardens were ordered to associate with themselves the honest men of their mysteries, and come in their best liveries to the elections; that is to say, the franchise was restricted to the "liverymen" of the companies. At this time the corporation exercised supreme control over the companies, and the companies were still genuine associations of the traders and householders of the city. The delegation of the franchise to the liverymen was thus, in point of fact, the selection of a superior class of householders to represent the rest. When the corporation lost its control over the companies, and the members of the companies ceased to be traders and householders, the liverymen were no longer a representative class, and some change in the system became necessary. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 reformed the representation in several particulars. The liverymen of the companies, being freemen of the city, have still, however, the exclusive power of electing the lord mayor, sheriffs, chamberlain and other corporate officers.