Chief among the Merchant Gilds of Kingston-upon-Hull were the _Gild of the Merchant Adventurers_, originally known as the ‘Brotherhood of St. Thomas of Canterbury,’ and the _Hull Merchants’ Company_. During the reigns of the Tudor and Stuart Kings, these did much to foster the trade of Hull with the great ports on the other side of the North Sea. A charter was granted to the Hull Merchants’ Company by Queen Elizabeth, and King Charles II. renewed it on receipt of ‘fifty pounds of good and lawful money of England.’ The members of the Company met in the Merchants’ Hall—the upper story of the red-brick building on the south of the Market Place, now known as the Choir School—and a ‘merchant’s mark’ is still to be seen cut in three stone panels in the front wall of the building. They were a wealthy Company, and at one time had much power. Fines or ‘upsetts’ for the privilege of membership ranged from 6s. 8d. to £20. It is interesting to find that the Hull Merchants’ Company acted as a Post Office for foreign correspondence. ‘Masters of ships’—so ran one of the laws governing their Exchange—must hang up a bagg a week before their sailing, that merchants may putt their letters therein, and soe the masters to take the same away the night before they intend to saile. Equally interesting is it to find that the Hull merchants of the seventeenth century were, evidently, firm believers in the modern doctrine of ‘Protection.’ For, by one of the statutes regulating the trade of the port, all alien merchants must bring their goods to the Exchange and must pay one penny in the pound for the privilege of sale. * * * * * What an insight into the working-lives of the townspeople, whether traders or craftsmen, we have given us in the ancient documents of the Merchant Gilds and Trade Gilds! As Canon Lambert says in his _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_, they ‘bring back into view the everyday life of the town in the centuries of which they treat. As we study them we can mingle again in the vigorous life of the narrow streets. We can learn how it was that the men of that time built houses of which the mortar stands to-day as hard as stone; we can picture the barber looking askance at the upstart man who presumed as surgeon to molest his ancient right of letting the blood of his customers at the fall of the leaf; we can look into the mysteries of the brewing-vat as it was before tea had usurped the time-honoured place of the pewter at the breakfast tables of society; we can see the shipwrights who made the ships of Elizabeth at work; we can walk, as it were, along the small booths and shops, and judge of the quality of the goods which had come from Hamburg or Muscovy, or which had been fashioned with such care in the workshop behind the parlour.’