King James I. appears to have interested himself in the separation of the two bodies about the year 1614, and in spite of vigorous opposition by the grocers, a charter was granted on 6th December, 1617, making the apothecaries a distinct mystery, under the title of the Society of Apothecaries. This charter restrained the grocers and all other persons from keeping an apothecary’s shop in or near London, and it gave the Society a right which had been inherent in the Grocers’ Company, of paying domiciliary visits to the apothecaries’ shops to search for, to seize, and destroy bad drugs and medicines, a power at first limited to London and seven miles round, but afterwards extended throughout England and Wales. This was discontinued shortly after 1833. The first hall or council-house of the society consisted of a house and grounds known as Cobham House, in Water Lane, Blackfriars, immediately behind what is now the Ludgate Hill Station. It was purchased in 1633, mainly through the instrumentality of Gideon Delaune, chief apothecary to Anne of Denmark, who was one of the retinue sent to attend her from Norway when she became the wife of James I. This hall was destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666, and its site lay vacant for ten years before it was rebuilt. The second hall was enlarged and improved in 1786, and it still stands. In the reign of Queen Anne, Prince George of Denmark, who was then Lord High Admiral, applied to the society to know if they would undertake to supply the navy with drugs, as it was very badly served at that time. This the society agreed to do, and for so doing was drawn into a long series of quarrels with the College of Physicians, whose members thought it was the duty of an apothecary “to remember his office is only to be the physician’s cooke”. A knowledge of herbs and simples was soon found necessary to these early compounders of medicine, and as a means of instruction, botanical excursions or herborisings, as they were called in those days, soon formed a prominent feature of the society. This led eventually to the decision to rent a physic garden, for which purpose the gardens available near the hall were unsuitable, and in 1673 the Botanic Garden at Chelsea was leased to the apothecaries for a term of sixty-one years, by Charles Cheyne, Esq., lord of the manor. The custom of examination grew up within the society very gradually, the first examinations being found necessary to ascertain whether the apprentices could decipher the very illegible handwriting in which the physicians wrote their prescriptions or bills, an accomplishment for which apparently they have been ever famous. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF AN APOTHECARY’S SHOP. From a drawing by Drapentier, 1670.]