The Plumbers’ Company in London appears to have been in existence early in the fourteenth century. In 1365 (39 Edward III.) ordinances were granted to the Company which had then been in existence some years. In 1588 (31 Elizabeth) arms and crest were granted; and in 1611 (9 James I.) a charter was given renewing all powers and privileges. Throughout the middle ages lead was more extensively used in England than elsewhere--our cathedral roofs, for instance, were all of lead, whereas abroad they are often of corrugated or flat tiles, stone or slate. The methods of conducting water from the roof by stone gutters and gargoyles was much further developed in France than here, where lead always came to hand. Lead pipes with ornamental heads were first introduced here in England for this purpose, and they reached a development without parallel abroad. During the eighteenth century there was, as we shall see, a large industry in lead statues, and the plumber’s art continued to the opening of the present century; indeed, cisterns decorated with the old devices may be seen as late as 1840, and some of the old methods have not yet passed entirely out of memory. The Exhibition of 1851 marked exactly the general eclipse of craft tradition. England was no longer to be saved by work, but by commerce. § III. OF LEAD COVERINGS TO BUILDINGS. Sheeting buildings with decorative plates of metal has been one of man’s architectural instincts. M. Chipiez, in his essay on the origins of Greek architecture, considers first:--“The temple, metallic or covered with metal, which obtained in Medea, Judaea, and in Asia Minor. Greek writers like Pausanias speak of edifices having been constructed of brass; such was the legendary temple of Apollo at Delphi, that of Athena Calkhioecos in Sparta, and the treasury of Myron, tyrant of Sicyon. In the _Eneid_ the temple erected at Carthage by the Phœnician Dido is also of brass.” From Homer to the _Arabian Nights_ and the mediæval romance writers, a metal-cased architecture, shining with gold, has been preeminently the architecture of the poets. It would almost seem as if in the Merovingian age Western Europe passed through the phase of a metal-cased architecture, but in this case it was lead that formed the external vestment--an architecture of lead. “Under the Merovingian kings,” says M. Viollet-le-Duc, “they covered entire edifices, churches, or palaces, in lead. St. Eloi is said to have so covered the church of St. Paul des Champs with sheets of lead artistically wrought.” In England Bede mentions a parallel instance. Finian the successor of St. Aidan in the See of Lindisfarne built a church after the manner of the Scots of hewn oak with a thatched roof; afterwards “Eadbert also bishop of that place (638) took off the thatch and covered it both roof and walls with lead.”