Page 9 - The Long Crendon Connection

The Long Crendon Connection Redditch Heritage

Basically the two sets of documents do not differ to any great degree. The Needle makers were
incorporated, they had the right of assembly and of electing annually a Master and two Wardens
from a Court of twelve Assistants drawn from the body of Freemen. There was to be a Clerk and
a Beadle to carry out the decisions of the Master and Wardens and of the Court, and both men
were to serve for life or during good behaviour. The former was to keep the Minutes of the Court
and to look after the records.
The craft was organised on very strict guild lines and a real effort was made to establish a firm
industrial structure. The Company was granted the right of search, within certain limits of the
City, for needles and materials of inferior workmanship and of destroying any such goods found.

The Freedom of the Company could be obtained in different ways:
· by servitude as an apprentice
· by redemption on payment of a larger fee or fine, or
· by patrimony, that is by right of a father who was a Freeman of the Company.

Apprentices were to be bound for seven years to a Freeman of the Company. Only the Master
and the Wardens could bind two apprentices at any one time, other Freemen were restricted to
one. The Freedom was open to both men and women but some restrictions were placed on the
latter.
There was to be no hawking of needles in the streets or in alehouses. Fines could be levied for
any breach of the regulations and all members were to pay quarterage, to be collected by the
Beadle. Both sets of the Byelaws have decorated margins on the first membrane or skin, and
both show the Arms of the company, a blue shield with the three crowned needles but without
the supporters.
Though the Company was given the right to have a Livery no attempt was made to take this up
until 1712 when the Company, on petitioning the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, was
allowed to have a Livery of 50 and the right for the Livery of voting for the City’s Members of
Parliament.
Though the Letters Patent of 1664 granted the Company these rights only in the City of London
and within a limit of 10 miles of its boundaries, the Company tried to exercise its jurisdiction in
the provinces. They had some success in Chichester and to a lesser extent in Redditch and Studley.
However, by the early 18th century the expanding needle industry of the Midlands had rejected
the Londoners' control.
While they prospered the industry in London declined and the Company's fortunes fell. The holding
of searches lapsed and the membership shrank. Surprisingly, in the last quarter of the century
the numbers began to grow again but the new liverymen were not drawn from the needle industry:
they came from many trades and crafts, men eager to gain the right to do business in the City
and to have the Parliamentary franchise.
This renewed prosperity of the Company did not last much beyond the 1820’s, and a new period
of decline and poverty set in. After the Reform Act of 1832 there was a devaluation of the Livery's
Parliamentary franchise. There was also a gradual removal of restrictions of trade and business
in the City and the Freedom was no longer necessary. Fewer people applied for admission and
when Assistants died their places on the Court were left vacant. Between 1856 and 1873 there
were three new freemen of whom only two became Liverymen and for several years there were
only three Assistants capable of holding offices.

In October 1873 the Company appeared to be on the verge of extinction, when the Clerk reported
that nineteen men had applied for admission to the Company. Politicians, professional men and
businessmen, they wished to take part in City matters. Many more followed and by June 1875
the Livery was granted an increase to 200. (Later it was further extended to 250, the current
number allowed.)

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