The site of Vintners’ Hall appears in reliable records of the fourteenth century. Strype has the account of it: That Sir John Stodeye, who held it of Edward III. in free burgage, gave it in 1329, under style of the Manor of the Vintry, to John Tuke, parson of St. Martin Vintry, as a feoffment; that Tuke’s successors claimed it as belonging absolutely to the church, whereas it really appertained to the Vintners’ Company; that an inquisition was held in relation thereto before Sir Ralph Joslyn, in 1477; that a trial in the Exchequer followed; and that finally Richard III. decided the ownership in favour of the Company,[9] reciting the above statements in his grant. It is difficult to harmonise this account with other known facts; therefore, leaving it on record, we pass to better authenticated matter. Now, Edmund de Sutton owned the site in the reign of Edward III.; upon the Thames bank lay his quay, towards the high street of the Vintry his houses, cellars, and solars. Upon the east stood Spital Lane and the tenements of the Abbess of St. Clare in Aldgate; on the west, Cressingham Lane and the tenement of John Cressingham; through the midst ran the boundary line between St. Martin Vintry parish and St. James-at-Garlickhithe. Sutton’s possession was disputed, trial followed, and Sutton “recovered it from Walter Turke by Writ of Novel disseisin.” Turke was alderman of the ward, and mayor, 1349. Then in 1352 Edmund de Sutton granted the whole to John de Stodeye who was sheriff that year. The Vintners Company had as yet no licence in mortmain; perhaps Stodeye was acting as feoffee for them, perhaps not. Stow relates that he gave Spital Lane, “with all the quadrant wherein Vintners’ Hall now standeth, with the tenements round about, to the Vintners”; but the statement proves nothing either way. Stodeye’s will is dated 1375; it makes no mention of the property. His heirs granted it to feoffees, and it passed from one to another as a feoffment, until finally vested in the Company by the wills of Guy Shuldham (1446) and John Porter (1496).[10] Shuldham’s will[11] conveys the impression that of his own bounty he added to the original property of which he was feoffee. To his foundation are attributed the Vintners’ almshouses. His will describes them as “thirteen little mansions lying together.” He directs that in them should dwell rent free thirteen poor and needy men and women of the Vintners’ craft, each to have a penny every week; any of them to be ejected for misconduct after three warnings. These “little mansions” were probably on the Spital Lane (at that time Stodeye’s Lane) side of the Hall; after the Great Fire they were removed to Mile End. Not much is known of the old premises, but Shuldham’s will tells us something. There was a great hall and a refectory, a parlour with a leaden roof, and adjoining it a counting-house with two rooms above;