ABSTRACT
The Merchant Taylor’s relationships with other livery companies and with the City Corporation are worth examining. Inevitably, the information to be found in the Court minutes is one-sided, and must be supplemented from the archives of other companies, from the Corporation records, and from government muniments. Now, many of the Merchant Taylors were cloth-workers by profession rather than tailors, and thus presented a threat to the more recently formed Clothworkers’ Company. The Company’s personal relationship with the Queen was most amiable. At each Court meeting, those assembled prayed for her health. Fyshe’s name disappears from the Wardrobe Warrants, but he continued to attend the Company’s Court almost until his death early in 1586; a quarter of a century’s service at the royal Court, to a Queen who could turn political indecisiveness into an art form, must have been enough.
