The development of pharmacy as a separate organisation was later in
England than on the Continent, and was very gradual. In the Norman
period the retail trade in drugs and spices and most other commodities
was in the hands of the mercers. These were, in fact, general
shopkeepers, deriving their designation from merx, merchandise. They
attended fairs and markets, and in the few large towns had permanent
booths. Under the Plantagenets a part of the south side of “Chepe”
roughly extending from where is now Bow Church to Friday Street was
occupied by their stores, and was known as the Mercery. Behind these
booths were the meadows of Crownsild, sloping down to what it may be
hoped was then the silvery Thames. Probably sheep and cattle fed on the
pastures which Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street have since usurped.
But English traders were beginning to feel their feet, and other guilds
were pushing forward. The Easterlings (East Germans from the Baltic
coasts and the Hanse towns) brought goods from the East and placed
them on the English market, and the Pepperers and Spicers distributed
them to the public. The Easterlings, it may be mentioned, have left us
the word sterling to commemorate their sojourn among us. The Mercers
meanwhile were getting above the shop. They were becoming merchant
adventurers, and had no desire to contest the trade in small things
with the Pepperers of Sopers’ Lane, or the Spicers of Chepe. Their
other small wares fell into the hands of the Haberdashers.
There is evidence of a guild of Pepperers in London as early as 1180.
As a company they appear to have been ruined by the demands of Edward
III for subsidies for his French and Scottish campaigns. From their
ashes, including those of the Spicerers, arose the Grocers, the sellers
“en gros.” They are heard of in the fourteenth century, and were
apparently incorporated by letters patent from Edward III in 1345,
but their first known charter was granted by Henry VI in 1429, while
in 1453 that King conferred on them the charge of the King’s beam, by
which all imported merchandise was weighed, a charge of 1d. per 20 lbs.
being authorised for the service. In 1457 they were given the exclusive
power of garbling (cleansing and separating) drugs, spices, and other
imported merchandise, and they also had the duty of examining the drugs
and medicinal wares sold by the apothecaries. The law requiring certain
drugs to be officially “garbled” before they could be sold was repealed
by an Act passed in the sixth year of Queen Anne’s reign.
The earliest record of the exercise of their authority over
apothecaries is found in 1456, when the minutes of the Company show
that they imposed a fine on John Ashfield “for making untrue powder of
ginger, cinnamon, and saunders.” Other similar items appear from time
to time. In 1612 Mr. Lownes, apothecary to Prince Charles, complained
to the Company that Michael Easen, a grocer-apothecary, “had supplied
him with divers defective apothecaries’ wares,” and the offender was
committed to the Poultry Comptoir.