The manufacture of pins was introduced into several towns of Great Britain by individuals who, in some cases, are called the inventors of the article. The pin-makers of former days seem to have been a body somewhat difficult to please, of whom Guillim, in his _Display of Heraldry_, writes:--"The Society of Pinmen and Needlers, now ancient, or whether incorporated, I find not, but only that, in the year 1597, they petitioned the Lord Treasurer against the bringing in of foreign pins and needles, which did much prejudice to the calling." The Pinners' Company was incorporated by Charles I. in 1636; the Hall is on part of the ancient Priory of the Augustine, or Austin Friars; it has been, since the reign of Charles II., let as a Dissenting meeting-house: it is in Pinners'-hall-court, Old Broad-street.
The manufacture of pins formed early a lucrative branch of trade. Sixty thousand pounds, annually, is said to have been paid for them to foreign makers, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth; but, as we have seen, long before the decease of that princess, they were manufactured in this country in great quantities; and in the time of James I., the English artisan is regarded to have "exceeded every foreign competitor in the production of this diminutive, though useful article of dress."
Pennant, in his description of old London Bridge, states that "most of the houses were tenanted by pin or needle makers, and economical ladies were wont to drive from the St. James's end of the town to make cheap purchases." But Thomson, in his minute _Chronicles of London Bridge_, does not mention pin-makers among the trades common on the bridge; haberdashers, who came here _late_ from the Chepe, however, sold pins.
Yet vast quantities of early pins have been recovered from the Thames near the site of the old Bridge. In 1864, Mr. Burnell exhibited to the British Archæological Association fifteen brass pins, varying in length from one inch and three-eighths to five inches and a half, stated to have been found on the paper on which they now are, in a cellar on the northern bank of the Thames, in excavating for the foundations of the South-Eastern Railway bridge. Most, if not all, of these pins have solid globose heads. At the same meeting, Mr. Syer Cuming exhibited two brass pins recovered from the mud of the Thames some years since. One is little less than two inches and a half in length, the other full seven inches and three-quarters long. The heads of both are formed with spiral wire; the shortest being globose, the other somewhat flattened. Mr. Cuming stated that quantities of such early pins as those then produced have been found in and along the banks of the river, some of them measuring upwards of a foot in length. These great pins may have been employed in securing the wide-spreading head-dresses of the Middle Ages, and fastening the ends of the pillow-case, a use not quite obsolete in the time of Swift, who speaks of "corking pins," for this purpose, in his _Directions to Servants_.