The Barbers’ Company is ranked the seventeenth in order of the City Companies, and is the fifth after the “Twelve great Companies,” the thirteenth being the Dyers, fourteenth Brewers, fifteenth Leathersellers, sixteenth Pewterers, seventeenth Barbers, eighteenth Cutlers, etc.

The question of precedency in former times gave rise to many contentions between the City Guilds, and the Barber-Surgeons seem to have had some experience in these quarrels: the City pageants, processions, and public attendances at church, were numerous in the days of the Tudors and Stuarts, and at most of these the Livery Companies attended, each guild jealously striving to keep its place, and no doubt to advance its position whenever opportunity arose.

There are extant, lists of the Companies in the City books, in which our Company takes various positions; and Stow, having incorporated one of these lists in his Survey, has given it an authority as a table of precedence which it was never intended to possess; he furnishes a list of the Companies attending the Lord Mayor’s feast, 23rd Henry VIII (1531), and places the Barbers as the thirty-second, whereas at that time they were undoubtedly the twenty-eighth.

1516. The first authentic reference to our Company’s standing is found in Letter-Book N. leaf 5 (January, 1516), where it is ordained that the Barbers, although they claimed of their ancient right to be the seventeenth Company, yet were adjudged to take the twenty-eighth place, following the Cordwainers, and preceding the Paynter-Stainers.

1532. This order was probably in force until February, 1532, when the Barbers got back their old position (Repertory 8, leaf 272) and an officer was directed to wait on the Pewterers to “shewe theym that the seyd Company of Barbours Surgeons be Restored ageyn to their olde Rowme.” Three months later (May, 1532), the Barbers were “taken down one,” and directed to occupy the eighteenth place.

1533. In February, 1533 (Letter-Book O. fo. 213), is a record which is somewhat puzzling, as, altogether ignoring the orders of February and May, 1532, it is stated that the Barber-Surgeons had petitioned to be restored to their old place of seventeenth Company, from which it is said they were dispossessed about sixteen years back (evidently alluding to the order of January, 1516), “so that they be nowe the xxix or xxx^th Companye yn thordre of such goynges,” etc.

Perhaps the orders of February and May, 1532, had been disregarded by the other guilds, and our Company forcibly ousted from their rightful position, so that this is in effect an application for a confirmatory order, which was granted, and thus they were again fixed as the seventeenth Company.

1534. The Barbers must have given some offence to the Civic authorities in 1534, for in October of that year (Repertory 9, leaf 79) the last-named order was repealed, and they were put back again to the twenty-eighth place, and further the Company were ordered that they “shall no more goo yn p?cessyons, standyng?, Rydyng?, goyng?, and other assembles from hensfurth, tyll it be otherwyse ordered by thys co?rte.”

1535. This vacillation on the part of the Court of Aldermen in settling our position, was not yet at an end, for in March, 1535, we were again placed seventeenth, to come before the Cutlers and after the Pewterers, and this order was confirmed no less than four times in 1535, and twice in 1536.

1604. At a Royal Procession on the 15th March, 1604, our Company got misplaced by some of the Marshals, and this led to another application to the Court of Aldermen, whereupon a peremptory order was made that the Barber-Surgeons should stand sixteenth in precedence. This order is set out in full elsewhere (see page 195); the sixteenth place was then accorded to us in consequence of the Stockfishmongers, who formerly held the twelfth place, having been dissolved, whereby the Barber-Surgeons went up one: the Clothworkers who, at that time were the thirteenth Company, then became the twelfth.

Some short time afterwards, the Dyers, who had been the eighteenth Company, got the thirteenth place, and we reverted to our old position of seventeenth Company in which we still continue.

1606. An attempt to misplace us was made in July, 1606, but this was successfully resisted. (See p.116.)