In 1516 the Company was back again before the Court of Aldermen having new Ordinances approved. These were the first such ordinances made after the passing of the Statute 19 Henry VII Cap 7 1503/4 which required the ordinances of companies to be approved not only by the appropriate local authority, in London the Court of Aldermen, but also by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, and the Chief Justices of the three Courts, or any three of them, which approval was exemplified by an engrossment on parchment , sealed by the three signatories. This would happen twice more in 1571 and in 1723 but only in the last case has the sealed and engrossed copy remained in the Company’s possession.

Official lists of Livery Companies, as they were now coming to be called, abound at this time, usually prepared for specific purposes. In 1501 a list contains the mane of 47 Companies with the following companies inter alia appearing in the following order, Carpenters 21, Tilers 30, Joiners 37 and Masons 41. In 1509 another list indicates the order in which the companies are to line the route taken by Henry VIII from the Tower to his coronation in Westminster Abbey, with the Carpenters at 21, the Tilers at 31, the Joiners at 38 and the Masons at 42. The only such list expressly prepared to establish the order of precedence is one of 1515 / 1517 which includes the Carpenters at 25, the Masons at 31, the Tilers at 38 and the Joiners at 42 which is almost the order as today when the numbers are 26, 30, 37 and 40 respectively.

As we have already noted the Company had acquired its first hall soon after 1468 at the latest and this had been disposed of by 1555. The circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the second hall while not entirely unknown as in the case of the first hall, are still somewhat obscure. The hall site formed part of the lands of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, which had no connection with the Fraternity of that name to which Thomas White had belonged, and to which we shall refer again. The Augustinian Priory had been founded by Matilda the wife of Henry I in 1108 in the triangle now formed by Dukes Place, Creechurch Lane, Leadenhall Street and Aldgate. Then and later more land was added by way of endowment, until the Priory became one of the largest landowners in Medieval London, perhaps the largest except for the Crown. By 1532 the Priory had got itself into debt and Henry VIII accepted a surrender of all its assets thus acquiring one of the largest monastic properties in the country in what looks like a trial run for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Almost at once Henry gave the Priory and its lands to his Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, who lived on the Priory site until he died in 1544 when the property passed to his daughter and thence to her husband the Duke of Norfolk from whom the name Duke’s Place is derived. Before his death Audley disposed of certain parts of the estate surplus to his requirements, and in 1538 entered into a contract for sale of the Hall site to Thomas Addleston, a carpenter. It may be that the latter was effectively a trustee for the Company, and in 1542 the site appears to have been transferred by Elizabeth Dyall, citizen and Tyler to certain members of the Company, who, or the survivors of whom, transferred it to the Company in 1582 after its incorporation. It is interesting to note that a tavern called the Cock and Hoop appears to have existed on the site before the Priory parted with it, and a tavern called the Cock remained on the site until the 19th century, on the Leadenhall Street frontage.