[7] _Calendars of State Papers: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII._ vol. xiii. part i., 1538, No. 1454, p. 537. Compare the ephemeral combinations cited by Fagniez, _Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris_ (Paris, 1877), pp. 76, 82, etc. [8] It has been assumed that, in the company of “Bachelors” or “Yeomen Tailors” connected with the Merchant Taylors’ Company of London between 1446 and 1661, we have “for the first time revealed to us the existence, and something of the constitution, of a journeyman’s society which succeeded in maintaining itself for a prolonged period.” More careful examination of the materials from which this vivid picture of this supposed journeyman’s society has been drawn leads us to believe that it was not composed of journeymen at all, but of masters. This might, in the first place, have been inferred from the fact that in the ranks of the supposed journeymen were to be found opulent leaders like Richard Hilles, the friend of Cranmer and Bullinger, who “became a Bachelor in Budge of the Yeoman Company” in 1535 (Clode, _Early History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company_, vol. ii. p. 64), and Sir Leonard Halliday, afterwards Lord Mayor, who was in the Bachelors’ Company from 1572 to 1594, when “he was elected a member of the higher hierarchy of the Corporation” (_ibid._ p. 237). The Bachelors’ Company, indeed, far from being composed of needy wage-earners, bore the greater part of the expense of the pageant in connection with the mayoralty, and managed the whole proceedings. The Bachelors “in Foynes” and those “in Budge” are all named as marching in the procession in “gownes to be welted with velvet, and there jackyttes, cassockes, and doublettes to be either of satten damaske, taffataye” (_ibid._ pp. 262-6). And when, in 1609, the Company was assessed to contribute to the Plantation of Ulster, the Bachelors contributed nearly as much as the merchants (£155, 10s. from ten members as compared with £187, 10s. from nine members (_ibid._ vol. i. pp. 327-9)). Whether the Bachelors’ Company ever included any large proportion of hired journeymen appears extremely doubtful, though its object was clearly the regulation of the trade. The members, according to the Ordinance of 1613, paid a contribution of 2s. 2d. a quarter “for the poor of the fraternity.” This may be contrasted with the quarterage of 8d. a year or 2d. per quarter, levied, according to order of August 1578, on every servant or journeyman free of the City. The funds of the two companies were kept distinct, but frequent donations were made from one to the other, and not only from the inferior to the superior (_ibid._ vol. i. pp. 67-9). That the Bachelors’ Company was by no means confined to journeymen is clear. Sir Leonard Halliday, for instance, became a freeman in April 1564 on completing his apprenticeship, and at once set up in business for himself, obtaining a charitable loan for the purpose.