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220 triumpHant setting up of the great shaft in Leadenhall-street before the church of St. Andrew, were never afterwards so commonly used as had been customary before.

In connexion with this affair we may mention an act of parliament, which was passed in 1525 (14 and 15 Hen. VIII. c. 2), for regulating the taking of apprentices by "strangers born out of the king's obeisance using any manner of handicraft within the realm." No such stranger, it was enacted, should in future, under a penalty of 10l. for each offence, take any apprentice who was not a native of the country, or should keep any more than two foreign journeymen at the same time. By a subsequent clause, also, all aliens exercising any handicraft in London or the suburbs were placed each under the superintendence—or "the search and reformation," as it is expressed—of the fellowship of his particular craft in the city of London, to which was to be associated for that purpose one alien householder of the same craft, to be chosen by the wardens of the company; and every such foreign artificer, being a smith, joiner, or cooper, was to receive a proper mark from his craft, which he was to stamp upon every article he fabricated. This clause is curious as giving us a list of the places that were then considered to form the suburbs of London; which are enumerated as being, besides the town of Westminster, the parishes of St. Martin's in the Field, of our Lady of the Strand, of St. Clement of Danes without Temple Bar, of St. Giles in the Field, and of St. Andrew's in Holborn, the town and borough of Southwark, Shoreditch, Whitechapel parish, St, John's-street, the parish of Clerkenwell, St. Botolph's parish without Aldgate, St. Catherine's, and Bermondsey-street. Most of these places, all of which are now included within the metropolis, were then separated from the city by fields, gardens, or other open spaces.

Some indications of a disposition on the part of the English to engage in the new branches of foreign trade, which had sprung out of the late nautical discoveries, begin about this time to present themselves. According to Lord Herbert, a proposition was even made, in 1527,