bequeathed to them some tenements in Southwark on condition that they
should distribute £4 among the poor prisoners in Newgate and other
jails. He was the biographer of Sir Thomas More, and died in 1577.

In 1610 the clerks applied for a new charter, and obtained it from James
I, under the title of "The Parish Clerks of the Parishes and Parish
Churches of the City of London, the liberties thereof and seven out of
nine out-parishes adjoining." They were required to make returns for the
bills of mortality and of the deaths of freemen. The masters and wardens
had power granted to them to examine clerks as to whether they could
sing the Psalms of David according to the usual tunes used in the parish
churches, and whether they were sufficiently qualified to make their
weekly returns. In 1636 a new charter was granted by Charles I, and
again in 1640, this last charter being that by which the company is now
governed. By this instrument their jurisdiction was extended so as to
include Hackney and the other fifteen out-parishes, and they gained the
right of collecting their own wages, and of suing for it in the
ecclesiastical courts, and of printing the bills of mortality.

Soon after the company lost their hall through the high-handed
proceedings of Sir Robert Chester, they purchased or leased a new hall,
which was situated at the north-east corner of Brode Lane, Vintry, where
they lived from 1562, until the Great Fire in 1666 again made them
homeless. The Sun Tavern in Leadenhall Street, the Green Dragon,
Queenhythe, the Quest House, Cripplegate, the Gun, near Aldgate, and the
Mitre in Fenchurch Street, afforded them temporary accommodation. In
1669 they began to arrange for a new hall to be built off Wood Street,
which was completed in 1671, and has since been their home. Various sums
of money have been voted at different times for its repair or
embellishment. It has once been damaged by fire, and on another occasion