A special feature of the charter was the authorisation of one or more lottery or lotteries to be held for the benefit of the company,(144) by virtue of which a lottery was soon afterwards opened in London. The chief prize fell to one Thomas Sharplys, or Sharplisse, a tailor of London, who won "four thousand crowns in fair plate."(145) The lucky winner used the same motto on this occasion as was used by the Merchant Taylors’ Company in their venture in the lottery of 1569.(146) The City’s records are unaccountably silent on the matter of this lottery, but we learn from other sources that the Grocers’ Company adventured the sum of £62 10_s._ of their common goods and drew a prize of £13 10_s._ An offer being made to them to accept the prize subject to a rebate of £10, or in lieu thereof "a faire rounde salt with a cover of silver all gilt," weighing over 44 ozs. at 6_s._ 7_d._ per oz., amounting to the sum of £14 19_s._ 1_d._, the company resolved to accept the salt, "both in respect it would not be so much losse to the company ... and alsoe in regard this company wants salts." The balance of £1 9_s._ was ordered to be paid out of the common goods of the company.(147) Not only the companies but several of the city parishes had ventures in a small way in the lottery. Thus the vestry of St. Mary Colechurch agreed (7 June) to adventure the sum of £6 of the church stock, whereby the church was the gainer of "twoe spones, price twenty shillinge."(148) The parish of St. Mary Woolchurch adventured a less sum, taking only fifty lots at a shilling apiece, in return for which it got a prize of ten shillings.(149) That the lottery was not taken up in the way it was hoped it would be is shown by the fact that just before the drawing—which took place in a house at the west end of St. Paul’s, and lasted from the 29th June till the 20th July—no less than 60,000 blanks were taken out, in order to increase the number of chances in favour of the adventurers.(150) (M62)