The first Hall was burned in the Great Fire: it stood in Great Distaff Street; since this street was swallowed up by Cannon Street, the Hall, rebuilt after the Fire, and again in 1788, and greatly altered since then, has now a frontage in Cannon Street. The livery is now 100; the Corporate Income is £7700; the Trust Income £1600. Of the cordwainers, Stow speaks as follows: “In this Distar Lane, on the north side thereof, is the Cordwainers’, or Shoemakers’ hall, which company were made a brotherhood or fraternity, in the 11th of Henry IV. Of these cordwainers I read, that since the 5th of Richard II. (when he took to wife Anne, daughter of Vesalaus, King of Boheme), by her example, the English people had used piked shoes, tied to their knees with silken laces, or chains of silver or gilt, wherefore in the 4th of Edward IV. it was ordained and proclaimed, that beaks of shoone and boots should not pass the length of two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and by parliament to pay twenty shillings for every pair. And every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on the Sunday to pay thirty shillings.” Suffolk House, in =Suffolk Lane=, stands upon the site of the old Merchant Taylors’ School, and hence also upon the site of the =Manor of the Rose=. This was a famous mansion once called Poultney’s Inn, from Sir John Poultney, who dwelt here after his removal from Cold Harbour. This was probably in 1348, for in that year (the year after he founded his college of Corpus Christi, by the church of St. Lawrence Poultney (or Pountney) on Lawrence Poultney Hill) he gave the Cold Harbour to the Earl of Hereford and Essex, for “one Rose at Midsummer, to him and his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded” (Stow). It seems most probable that this light “service” is accountable for the name of the Manor of the Rose. Subsequently the Manor belonged to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, then to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, attainted and beheaded 1450. His son John, made Duke of Suffolk in 1463, does not appear to have possessed it, but his son John, Earl of Lincoln, owned it at the time of his attainder in 1487. It remained with the Crown until 1495, when it was restored to Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, on whose forfeiture of it by treason it was granted in 1506 to Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who kept possession of it until he was attainted and beheaded in 1521. Shakespeare (_Henry VIII._, Act i. Sc. 2) alludes to “The Rose within the parish of St. Lawrence Poultney,” in connection with the Duke of Buckingham. After remaining with the Crown for about four years it was granted in 1526 to Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had recently been created Marquis of Exeter. He was beheaded in 1539, when the property again fell to the Crown. In 1540 it was granted to Robert Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, Earl of Sussex, whose son and grandson held it in turn.