In 1482 a grocer’s shop in Cheapside with a “hall” over it—perhaps a warehouse—was let for the rental of £4 : 6 : 8 per annum. The owner of the shop was Lord Howard, created Duke of Norfolk in 1483. References to Cheapside multiply as we approach more modern times. In 1522, when Charles V. came to England, lodgings were appointed for his retinue. Among them was a house in Cheapside, a goldsmith’s. It contained one parlour, one kitchen, one chamber, and one bed. The murder of Dr. Lambe in 1631, the execution of William Hacket in 1591, the burning of the Solemn Covenant in 1661,—these are incidents in the history of Cheapside. Many other events belonging either to the history of the City or of the realm have been mentioned elsewhere. In the sixteenth century one of the sights of London was the Goldsmiths’ Row, built in 1491 on the site of certain shops and selds. Stow calls the Row “a most beautiful frame of faire houses and shops consisting of ten faire dwellinghouses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, builded foure stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmith’s Arms and the likeness of woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts all richly painted and gilt.” Maitland, who certainly could not remember it, says that it was “beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of the Goldsmith’s shops in the South row of Cheapside, which in a course reached from the Old Change of Bucklersbury exclusive of four shops only, of three trades, in all that space.” Coming now to a description of Cheapside as it is at present, we find a statue of Sir Robert Peel standing on a block of granite. The whole is more than 20 feet in height. The statue was put up in 1855, and on the pedestal is the inscription of Peel’s birth and death. On the north of Cheapside is a large stone block of building in one uniform style with shops on the ground floor. This contains the Saddlers’ Hall, and in the middle is the great entrance way solidly carried out in stone. THE SADDLERS COMPANY The date of the formation of the Company, and the circumstances under which it was founded, are unknown. It existed at a very remote period. There is now preserved in the archives of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand a parchment containing a letter from that foundation, in which reference is made to the then ancient customs of the Guild. This document is believed to have been written about the time of Henry II., Richard I., or John, most probably in the first of these reigns. In this letter reference is made to “Ernaldus, the Alderman of the Guild.” This Ernaldus is stated by Mr. Alfred John Kempe, in his work _Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand_, to have lived before the Conquest, by which it may be inferred that the Company is of Anglo-Saxon origin.