The Tailors – 17th & 18th Century
From the reign of Elizabeth I the Company’s archives begin to survive in ever increasing quantities. The earliest surviving Apprentice Register begins in 1605, and shows that during the following four years 165 boys were apprenticed within the Company, of whom about a fifth were born in the City,the remainder were nearly all immigrants from nearby Yorkshire villages. Such a pattern of recruitment remained usual for the next two centuries. Until the 1830s the Merchant Taylors’ Company, which included a few women among its members, was essentially a working body of master tailors, York freemen of some substance but rarely of outstanding status or wealth within their City. Only by leasing their Hall for a variety of purposes, mostly educational, theatrical or convivial, did they succeed – where most other once celebrated medieval English guilds eventually failed – in preserving their buildings into the early nineteenth century.