The preamble to the Letters Patent, 1 Edward IV., by which the Company were incorporated, recites that the Freemen of the Mystery of Barbers of the City of London, using the Mystery or Faculty of Surgery, had for a long time exercised and sustained and still continued to exercise and sustain great application and labour, as well about the curing and healing wounds, blows, and other infirmities as in the letting of blood and drawing of teeth, and that by the ignorance and unskilfulness of some of the said barbers, as well freemen of the said City as of others being foreign surgeons, many misfortunes had happened to divers people by the unskilfulness of such barbers and surgeons in healing and curing wounds, blows, hurts, and other infirmities, and that it was to be feared that the like or worse evils might thereafter ensue unless a suitable remedy was speedily provided in the premises. And it was thereby granted to the freemen of the said mystery of barbers in the said City of London, that the said mystery and all the men of the said mystery, should be one body, and one perpetual community, with power for electing two masters or governors, and that the said masters or governors and commonalty and their successors might make statutes and ordinances for the government of the said mysteries. And that the masters or governors for the time being, and their successors, should have the survey, search, correction, and government of all the freemen of the said City being surgeons, using the mystery of barbers in the said City, and other surgeons being foreigners practising the mystery of surgery within the said City and suburbs thereof, and the punishment of them for offences in not perfectly executing, performing, and using the said mystery, and should have the survey of all manner of instruments, plaisters, and other medicines, and the receipts used by the said barbers and surgeons for the curing and healing of sores, wounds, hurts, and such like infirmities. And that no barber using the said mystery of surgery within the said City or suburbs should be thereafter admitted to exercise the same mystery unless he had first been approved of as well instructed in that mystery by the said masters or governors, or their successors sufficiently qualified in that behalf.