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THE CUTLERS' COMPANY is in Sheffield a corporate body, founded nearly three hundred years ago, exercising vast power and possessing much wealth, which is, amongst all similar corporations of the world, almost if not absolutely unique. The Cutlers' Company makes and unmakes itself, it determines what persons shall belong to it, what persons shall go out of it, what persons shall come into it. Holding absolute sway over certain matters relating to the cutlery trade, it gives no right of choice or election to those whom it controls. Mr. R. B. Leader, in his monumental ”History of the Cutlers' Company," sums up the position of this corporate body and the folk over whose work it exercises what is virtually an autocracy, in this way: “The Commonalty [i.e. the workers and producers of cutlery goods] as a body had one duty only to obey decrees in whose making they had no share. They were absolutely subject to the thirty-three, and only by favour of that select body could any one emerge from the ranks. The Act [of 1624] was said to be obtained in the interests of the poor workmen. True to the ideas of the time, their superiors, and not themselves, were regarded as alone knowing what those interests were." This position somewhat curious in the light of modern ideas still exists.
In 1624 the cutlers of Sheffield, released from their obligations to the Shrewsbury lordship by the death of the eighth earl in 1617, took steps towards the management of their own affairs by applying to Parliament for an Act of Incorporation. The Bill embodying their desires was presented to the House of Commons in the first-named year, soon afterwards considered by a Select Committee of the House, and speedily passed into law. It was entitled "An Act for the good order and government of the makers of knives, sickles, shears, scissors, and other cutlery wares in Hallamshire, in the county of York, and other parts adjoining," and provided for the setting-up, by charter, of a Cutlers' Company, incorporate and perpetual, of all persons engaged in making cutlery ware within the liberties of Hallamshire, such company to be governed by a master, two wardens, six searchers, and twenty-four assistants thirty-three officials in all. The thirty-three were to remain in office for one year, and were themselves to appoint their successors (who have usually been themselves) on each succeeding Feast of St. Bartholomew August 24th. The Charter conferred powers on the Company to make laws and regulations for the government of all masters, workmen, and apprentices in the Sheffield cutlery trade and to inflict penalties on all disobedient members. The first master was Robert Sorby (a name which, under one spelling or another, frequently appears in the Burgery Rolls); the first two assistants, Godfrey Bisley and John Rawson, names also well known in the town; and the first membership roll included 360 names, a proof that the trade was then firmly established. Fourteen years later the Cutlers' Company built its first Hall, on a site adjacent to the Parish Church.
When did Sheffield folk first begin the making of the knives with which the name of their town is so closely associated? There had been smelting of iron in various parts of Yorkshire from very early times - there seems to be no doubt that the Romans smelted it during their occupation; later on the Cistercians had forges in use at more than one of their eight houses, and notably at Kirkstall, while the Augustinian Canons had a celebrated forge at Bolton Priory. Iron working doubtless began in the Sheffield - Masborough - Rotherham district at a period not far removed from the Norman Conquest, but the references to it previous to the fourteenth century are few and obscure. But in the Inquisition of 1332, to which reference has already been made, there is a clear indication that iron had been worked in the Manor of Sheffield for some time. "They say," runs the sentence, "that the underwood of the said Park and several pastures might suffice for maintaining two forges each year if tenants could be found." Mr. Curtis (Hunter Arch. Soc. Transactions, I i) points out in connection with this that in 1160 Richard de Busli made a grant to the Cistercians of Kirkstead in Lincolnshire (one of the many houses founded from Fountains Abbey) of "sufficient land in Hallamshire for the erection of four iron-works (forgia), two for smelting ore, and two ad fabricandum, i.e. forming into bars." Whatever the reason of inability to find tenants for the forges mentioned in the Inquisition of 1332, there seems little doubt that by the beginning of the fifteenth century the iron-workers and knife-makers of Sheffield were increasing considerably in number. We are all familiar with the much-quoted line of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," which refers to the Centerbury pilgrim who carried a Sheffield "thwytel" in his hose - it proves that Sheffield ware of this description was well known at the time Chaucer wrote. But there is another, more satisfactory proof that Sheffield cutlery was beginning to be sold widely, and especially in London.
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