Company fared no better than the rest.  Their hall was seized by the King, or rather by the infamous courtiers of Edward VI, and sold, together with the almshouses, to Sir Robert Chester in 1548.  He at once took possession of the property, but the clerks protested that they had been wrongfully despoiled, and again seized their rightful possessions.  In spite of the sympathy and support of the Lord Mayor, who “communed with the wardens of the Great Companies for their gentle aid to be granted to the parish clerks towards their charges in defence of their title to their Common Hall and lands,” the clerks lost their case, and were compelled to give up their home or submit to a heavy fine of 1000 marks besides imprisonment.  The poor dispossessed clerks were defeated, but not disheartened.  In the days of Queen Mary they renewed their suit, and “being likely to have prevailed, Sir Robert Chester pulled down the hall, sold the timber, stone and land, and thereupon the suit was ended”—­very summary conclusion truly!

The Lord Mayor and his colleagues again showed sympathy and compassion for the dispossessed clerks, and offered them the church of the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem in 1552 for their meetings.  They did not lack friends.  William Roper, whose picture still hangs in the hall of the company, the son-in-law of Sir Thomas More, was a great benefactor, who bequeathed to them some tenements in Southwark on condition that they should distribute L4 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