The Worshipful Company of Skinners (known as The Skinners' Company) is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. It was originally an association of those engaged in the trade of skins and furs. It has evolved into an educational and charitable institution, supporting schools such as Tonbridge School in Tonbridge, Kent; The Skinners School in Tunbridge Wells Kent; The Judd School (also in Tonbridge) and Skinners' Academy in Hackney, London.
Under an order issued by the Lord Mayor of the City of London on 10 April 1484 (known as the Billesdon Award), the Company ranks in sixth or seventh place (making it one of the "Great Twelve City Livery Companies") in the order of precedence of the Livery Companies, alternating annually with the Merchant Taylors' Company. Although this cannot have been the origin of the phrase "At sixes and sevens", as the phrase appears in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer over one hundred years earlier, a connection between the event and the phrase is presumed to exist in some manner.
The Skinners are normally sixth in the order of precedence in even numbered years, and at seven in odd numbered years, but as the Lord Mayor for 2005/6 was a member of the Merchant Taylors' company they kept precedence. Merchant Taylors' kept precedence in 2006/7, their regular turn.
The Company's motto is To God Only Be All Glory.
Famous quotes containing the word company:
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)