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 THE CORDWAINERS AND CORVESORS OF OXFORD. I'oo strongly of late years against all guilds and corporations, as being mere monopolies, that it may not be unnecessary to draw the reader's attention to the services which these officers rendered to the public, as well as to their own society. For, if, on behalf of the latter, they seized all prohibited and foreign goods, and prevented unlicensed persons from trading, they, at the same time, protected the former from imposition through indifferent work and bad leather. The duties of the garbcller of spices in the Grocers' Company of London seem to have been attended with corresponding beneficial results.^ 4. The Key-keepers, or " custodes clavium ciste," were two officers, who, although not acknowledged in the ordinances, appear always to have been annually elected with the rest.^ Their duties are found described in the Minutes of the Court of 4 Eliz.,"* " that they were to keep the boxeye, keyes, and boxyes and coffers, w''* other wr^^tyngs, charters, and ordy- nances ;" and they are called in those of 1575 and 1576, 17 & 18 Eliz.,^ keepers of the coffers, charters, orders, and other things, &c. Such officers appear even in the Gilda Theutonicorum ;^ and therefore it is probable these have existed very long in the Company. In 1613, 11 James I., and ever afterwards, their number was increased from two to four,^ the reason of which does not clearly appear, unless it was part of a measure of finance, which the Company were pursuing by suspending their dinners from that year. That the office was not considered as at all a sinecure, may be gathered from an entry under the year 1684, when Mr. Daniel Faulkner, one of the number, was fined five shilhngs for not being ready with his key, whereby the election of the Com- pany was delayed ; but, upon his acknowledgment, and desiring to be excused of his offence, the money, which had been paid, was returned to him again. ^ 5. As all these Companies were, in some degree, of a religious nature, and those which were rich enough had priests appointed to pray with them when living, and for them when dead ; so did these, out of their poverty, raise a small contribution to maintain a light burning before the image of the Virgin, upon her festival, and perhaps at other seasons, that, being thus reminded of their devotion, she ' Herbert, i., .30.0. 3 ggg from the Court of 1 Ricliard III. downwards. ■• B. 24. s B. 75, 82. ^ Herbert, i., 14. ' B. 120. X D.