[2] Its corporate existence began in the form of a fraternity at least by the reign of King Henry II, in the mid 1100s if not before.

The company's aim was to act as a trade association for general merchants, and especially for exporters of wool and importers of velvet, silk and other luxurious fabrics (mercers).

Around 1438, William Caxton was apprenticed into the Mercers, under Robert Large, becoming a full member in 1452: his work took him into the Low Countries.

[8] A member of the Mercers, Robert Packington, was murdered on 13 November 1536, the first recorded death by shooting with a handgun; Rose Hickman, a Protestant, recalled how he used to bring English bybles from beyond sea.

[10] Hill is associated with the publication of the Geneva Bible,[11][12][13] and is considered a possible inspiration for the character Old Sir Rowland in Shakespeare's As You Like It.

He was admitted in 1543 aged 24 as a liveryman, and later that year he left England for the Low Countries, where, either on his own account or that of his father or uncle, he carried on business as a merchant whilst acting in various matters as agent for King Henry VIII.

The Dead Christ, one of the most important surviving works of late English Catholic sculpture prior to the iconoclasm of the Reformation was secretly preserved in a sand-filled pit under the chapel floor, only being found during repairs after the bomb damage of World War Two.

The frontage was remodelled by George Barnes Williams and the interiors were redesigned by John Gregory Crace, the renowned Victorian designer.

A few impressions of the early seal survive showing a greatly simplified version of the present coat of arms.

The fifteenth century Wardens' Accounts reveal that, even then, the Company required the device of the Maid's Head to be displayed on its property.

The grant blazons the arms: Gules, issuant from a bank of clouds a figure of the Virgin couped at the shoulders proper vested in a crimson robe adorned with gold the neck encircled by a jeweled necklace crined or and wreathed about the temples with a chaplet of roses alternately argent and of the first and crowned with a celestial crown the whole within a bordure of clouds also proper.

In an average year they might give away £7 million, about one-sixth of the total charitable contributions of 111 livery companies.