Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE COMPANY. " Not a wind upon the failor's compafs, But from one part or other was their fa£tor To bring them in the beft commodities Merchant e'er ventured for." Beggars Bujh, Ail i. Se. 2. ,HE Grocers' Hall and its contiguous offices having been deftroyed by the great fire of London in 1666, as before ftated, and, with them, all the property they contained, it is at once fortunate and extraordinary that the records of this venerable Company mould have been preferved entire. Singular care muft have been taken to place them in fafety, as the ieries of Ordinances and Remembrances is uninterrupted and complete from the commencement, and from them I have gathered a great portion of the matter embodied in the following narrative. The original founders of the Worjhipful Company of Grocers were known, at a very remote period of " The word Grocer was a term diftinguifhing merchants of this fociety, in oppofition to inferior retailers, for that they ufually fold in grofs quantities, by great weights. And in fome of our old books the word fignifies merchants that, in their merchandifing, dealt for the whole of any kind."—Ravenbill's Short Account of the Grocers. " Grocers, in libro ftatutorum noftrorum fignificat mercatores, qui aliquod mercium genus totum coemunt."—Skinner Etymologicon Lingua Angllcantc. Englifh hiftory, under the name of Pepperers and, although they bore this diftindlive appellation, they were recognifed as general traders, who bought and fold, or, according to the legal acceptation of the word, engrofjed all kinds of merchandife. At the early dawn of Commerce in this Country, they eftablimed the firft mercantile affociation on record, and, no doubt, fuggefted, at an after period, the firft idea of the Eaft- India and Levant Companies. " It is ...