Only one otherTyler and Bricklayer has so far held office as Alderman, and he was Charles Hammerton who himself was translated from the Paviors Company; he was Common Councillor for Bread Street 1779-87, Alderman for Bread Street 1787-1800, Sheriff 1793-94 and he died in 1800. The Court minutes describe two occasions on which the Court in the Autumn of 1793 accompanied their opposite numbers in the Goldsmiths Company to Guildhall, to witness the swearing in of the Sheriffs and later by the Goldsmiths barge to Westminster to present the Lord Mayor and he Sheriffs to the Court of Exchequer. On each occasion the Assistants of the two Companies returned to dine at Goldsmiths Hall. The explanation for the association between the two companies was that in that year, 1793-4, the Lord Mayor and Senior Sheriffs were Goldsmiths and the other Sheriff was Charles Hammerton. The Lord Mayor was Paul de Mesurier described by Valerie Hope in her book “My Lord Mayor” as son of the hereditary governor of Alderney – the City Biography describes him as the son of “an Alderney Smuggler” but perhaps the two descriptions are not necessarily inconsistent.

III. THE HALL

The Company’s second Hall in Leadenhall Street had remained in the occupation of the Company until 1761, but thereafter although the Hall, or its site, remained in the Company’s ownership for another century and a half, they were never again to have the use of it. During the middle years of the 18th century the Court minutes made occasional reference to the “question of the Hall”, from which one can conclude that having lost the battle to control the craft, and having a relatively modest income from investments, mainly property, with little prospect of implementing this to any great extent by contributions from the Livery, the burden of maintaining the Hall for what must have been only occasional use, had become too great. The solution to the problem which was eventually adopted was to retain the hall and the adjoining properties but to let the Hall to produce additional income. The Hall was … let for a term of 31 years from the 1st September 1762 at an annual rent of £40 and a “fine” (i.e. a premium) of £300. The identity of the lessees and the use to which they were to put the Hall at first sight may seem surprising: the lessees were described in the Minutes variously as “the Jews”, and as “the Churchwardens of the Synagogue”, and the use to which the Hall was to be put was indeed as a Synagogue. The Synagogue in question was to be called, with no great originality it may be thought, “The New Synagogue”, and since there was to be a Jewish connection with the property which would last for … years, the question of just who these Jews were, and how they came to be looking for premises suitable for a Synagogue in Leadenhall Street merits some consideration.

The first settlement of Jews in London, or indeed in England, is described by Stowe in the engaging style which is all his own in the following terms:

“There is the Old Juric, a street so called of Jews sometime dwelling there, and adjoining in the Parishes of St Olave, St Michael Basing Hall, St Martin Ironmongers Lane, St Lawrence called the Jury, and so west to Wood Street. Williams Duke of Normandy first brought them from Rouen to inhabit there.”