This power was recognised and confirmed by charters granted successively by Henry VIII., Philip and Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Queen Anne. An Act of Parliament confirming the Company’s powers to search for bad wares was passed in 1503-1504, 19 Henry VII. c. 6., confirmed by other Acts, 4 Henry VIII. c. 7., 1512-13; 25 Henry VIII. c. 9., 1533-34; and a statute 33 Henry VIII. c. 4., 1541-42, prohibited the hawking of pewter. The maintenance of the good faith of the trade appears to have been one of the primary considerations in the proceedings of the Company. In 1555 it was resolved that any member buying metal of tylors, labourers, boys, women, or suspected persons, or between six at night and six in the morning, if the metal should prove to have been stolen, should not only be dismissed the Company, but stand to such punishment as the Lord Mayor and aldermen might direct. The Company appear to have furnished a certain number of men with arms for the defence of the City, and to have kept at the Hall equipments for them—calyvers, corslets, bills, pikes, etc.—and to have appointed an armourer to preserve them in good condition. The Company used to cast into bars such tin as was to be transported out of the realm, whereby the poor of the Company were wont to provide for part of their living; but after these bars were made by strangers beyond the sea, the poor were greatly “hindered.” A petition was presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1594, and after a delay of four years Letters Patent were granted to the Company, giving permission for a small charge to be made on the smelting and casting of bars of tin. The fellowship of the craft and mystery of Pewterers of London and elsewhere represented, before Henry VIII.’s reign, one of the best handicrafts within the realm. The master and wardens appear at the commencement of the seventeenth century to have exercised the right to nominate the casters of tin in London, and the Company received a small royalty on the casting, which was distributed to the poor of the Company. They also appear to have had from the Council of the Revenue of the Prince of Wales an allotment of certain proportions of the tin produced in Cornwall, and to have derived some profit from the privilege. In fact, the pewter trade in London was supplied with tin from Cornwall through the Company, and frequent disputations are recorded between the Company and the Prince’s Council as to the rate, which was sometimes said to be so high that the poor of the Company could not live thereby. At a later period the Company, in order to prevent the public from imposition, and to sustain the credit of the pewterers’ trade, appointed the standard assays of the various wares and the weight of metal for each article.