In the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VI. the first charter was granted to the Brewers’ Company. It empowered the freemen of the Mystery of Brewers of the City of London thenceforward to be a corporate body, with a common seal and powers of taking and holding land. The Company was yearly to elect four of their number as wardens, who were to have power to regulate the members of the Mystery and their brewing operations, and also to govern and rule all men employed in, and all processes connected with, the brewing of _any kind of liquor from malt_ within the City and suburbs for ever. This last provision was probably intended to extend the power of the Company to the Fellowship of the Beer-brewers, then beginning to come into existence. Some years afterwards a coat-of-arms was granted to the Company by William Hawkeslowe, Clarencieux King of Arms of the South Marches of Ingelond. It is thus described in the grant: {140} “They beren asure thre barly sheues gold, bound of the same, a cheveron, gowles, in the cheveron thre barels, Sylvir, garnyshed with sable.” [Illustration: The Ancient Arms.] The Brewers had taken for their patron saints St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr, and bore the arms of Thomas à Becket impaled with their own, until Henry VIII., discovering that St. Thomas was no saint after all, desecrated his tomb, scattered his dust to the four winds of heaven, and compelled the Brewers to adopt another escutcheon. The new coat, discarding the obnoxious saint’s insignia, was a good deal like the old one, and is borne by the Company to this day. It is described in the grant as follows: “Geules on a Cheueron engrailed silver three kilderkyns sable hoped golde between syx barly sheues in saultre of the same, upon the Helme on a torse siluer and asur a demy Morien in her proper couler, vestid asur, fretid siluer, the here golde, holding in either hande thre barley eres of the same manteled sable, dobled siluer.” [Illustration: The Arms of the Brewers’ Company.] With regard to the old Hall of the Brewers’ Company, it occupied the site of the present Hall, and is described by Stowe as a “faire house;” it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Of the present edifice, which sprang Phœnix-like from the ashes of the yet smoking City—it bears date 1666—suffice it to say that it is a fine building, characteristic of the architectural style of the period, and that for lovers of old oak carvings its interior is worthy a visit. This notice of the Brewers’ Company, its foundation, its feasts, and {141} its troubles has taken us rather in advance of our tale, and we must hark back to the middle of the fifteenth century.