I would like to add my thanks as well for all the work done on the Whitney projects by Robert Ward, Tim Doyle, and others. Due to info I had seen on the whitneywiki, I recently started looking for info on the Merchant Tailors Company and was surprised to learn that it still exists. I see there was a Merchant Tailors School in Elizabethan London. Does anyone know if our John Whitney attended the school? I understand that he was a “Freeman” of the Company. In a book titled “Original Letters Illustrative of English History….” By Henry Ellis , on Google books, there is a letter from a Lady Elizabeth to the Merchant Tailors Company And the Lord Mayor of London: “The Lady Elizabeth to the Lord Mayor of London, and the Master, Wardens, and Court of Assistants of the Merchant Tailors' Company, upon the eve of her leaving England, in beha/f of her Man-Cook. A.D. 1613. [ PROM THE COURT BOOKS OF THE MERCHANT TAILORS* COMPANY.) ¿“ The great honor which this Company had long received in having Kings for brothers of its fraternity, may perhaps in part account for the Petition of the present Letter. Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, Edward the Fourth, Richard the Third, Henry the Seventh, and Henry Prince of Wales, had all been enrolled among Its members. ¿ Sir John Swynnerton the Lord Mayor of London in 1613, to whom the Letter is primarily addressed, was also a Merchant Tailor. Court interference upon vacancies in city places, at an earlier period than this, has been already noticed, and was continued somewhat later. Charles the Second's Letter is still extant recommending a Clerk to this Company. The Princess Elizabeth's application, however, as far as herself was concerned, was an attempt to pay a debt of gratitude. She was going to the Palatinate, and wished to secure the reversion of a new post for a faithful servant” I hadn’t realized how influential these “trade associations” were. It seems John Whitney was in very good company. T.E.Shirley