The Steelyard, A.D. 1543, from a Drawing by Anthony Van den Wyngrerde, in the Sutherland Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
drawn by order of Edward the Sixth, and this circumstance seems to have escaped the precise discrimination of
West Door of the Chapel, Steelyard.
Lappenberg—“urkundliche Geschichte des Hannichen Stalhopes,” who gives a compendious history of their transactions. On the complaint of English merchants, called the “Merchant Adventurers,” sentence was given that they had forfeited their liberties, and were in like case with other strangers (King Edward’s Diary in Burnet, Feb. 23, 1551). Great interest was made to rescind this sentence, and ambassadors from Hamburgh and Lubeck came to the king, “to speak on behalf of the Stiliard merchants” (ibid. Feb. 28th). Their intercession was ineffectual. “The Stiliard men,” says the king, “received their answer, which was to confirm the former judgment of my council” (ibid. May 2nd). This sentence, though it broke up their monopoly, did not injure their Low Country trade in any great degree, and the merchants of the Steelyard still continued to export English woollen cloths, and to find as ample a market for their goods as the English merchants enjoyed. By this it would appear that their monopoly ceased in the reign of Edward the Sixth, and that by the order of Elizabeth they were further deprived of their factory in Thames Street. After this the Germans occupied only a portion of the premises for themselves, letting the remainder. They appointed a resident steelyard master, which office is continued to the present time. The buildings of the Steelyard succumbed to the great fire of 1666, after which calamity the Germans got involved in a string of legal suits, which,
Badge of the Hanse Towns, in the Screen of the All Hallows Church.
however, they contested stoutly, steadily maintaining their own as heretofore, and they were invested with a Royal Charter by King Charles II., with the right of erecting a church of their own close to the Steelyard, on the spot where a church had stood previous to the fire. This became the mother church of all the Lutheran churches and chapels in the metropolis. The name of the Steelyard may be deduced from Stapelhof or Staelhof, the house of the merchants of the Staple. In the Utrecht treaty of 1474 it is styled Staelhof. This seems a more likely definition than that of Stillyard, from the public beam and balance which was maintained there, and by which all goods were weighed on landing, in order to secure the king’s toll. The Aula Teutonicorum of the thirteenth century was situated on the Dowgate side of the premises. In the thirteenth century it was the Hall of the Merchants of Cologne previous to their incorporation with the Hanse Merchants. Some remains of masonry of
