It may here be mentioned that at a very early period we find members of the governing body of the Company, both wardens and assistants, who were not of the craft. Amongst others, the leading bankers, themselves the descendants in trade of the old goldsmiths, from the time of the Stuarts to the present time, have been some of the most conspicuous members of the body. Amongst them we find the names of Sir Martin Bowes, who was Master of the Mint in the reign of Elizabeth; Sir Hugh Myddelton, the enterprising founder of the New River; Sir Francis Child, of Temple Bar; Sir Charles Duncombe, Sir James Pemberton, Sir Robert Vyner; and in the 19th century, Robert Williams and Thomas Halifax, Henry Sykes Thornton, William Banbury, John Charles Salt, Herbert Barnard, William Newmarch, William Cunliffe Brooks, Robert Ruthven Pym, Arthur B. Twining, Charles Hoare, and Robert Williams, jun. It remains to mention the connection of the Company with the coinage of the realm in what is called the trial of the Pyx, an office which has been performed by the Company ever since the reign of Edward I. Its object is to ascertain that the metal of which the gold and silver money coined by the Mint is composed is standard, and that the coins themselves are of the prescribed weight. This duty was performed in ancient times at uncertain intervals, and usually had for its immediate object the giving an acquittance to the Mint Master, who was bound to the Crown by indentures to coin money of the prescribed fineness and weight. But the Coinage Act of 1870 provides for and establishes an annual trial, and since that date the Pyx has been brought to Goldsmiths’ Hall and tried annually. In 1900, for the first time, at the request of H.M.’s Treasury, a Pyx from each of the Colonial Mints coining Imperial Coinage was tried. Formerly a jury of competent freemen, summoned by the wardens, was charged by the Lord Chancellor, who subsequently received their verdict. The jury is sworn by the Crown Remembrancer, who, the trial having been made and the verdict of the jury reduced to writing, attends at the Hall and receives them; after which their names are published in the _Gazette_. The number of the livery is 150. The Hall is in Foster Lane. Privileges of membership: A freeman of the Company has no advantages as such, except that if he be a deserving man and in need of pecuniary assistance he is eligible to receive, and would certainly receive, aid from the Company, either by pension or donation. When the Guild first had a Hall we know not, but the Hall has stood on its present site for upwards of 550 years.