The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Cordwainers were workers in fine leather; the Company gets its name from "cordwain" (cordovan), the white leather produced from goatskin in Cordova, Spain. All fine leather makers, including Girdlers and Glovers, were originally classified as cordwainers; however, the term eventually came to refer only to fine leather footwear, including boots.
The Cordwainers' Company, which received the right to regulate City trade in 1272 (the same year as the Curriers), obtained a Royal Charter of incorporation in 1439. The status of the Company as a trade association has lessened over the years; the Company is now, as are most other Livery Companies, a charitable body. Other leathery Livery Companies, which enjoy close relations with the Cordwainers include not only the Curriers, but the Leathersellers, Saddlers and Tallow Chandlers Companies too.
The Company ranks twenty-seventh in the order of precedence of Livery Companies and is the highest ranked one without its own Livery Hall. The Company's motto is Corio et Arte, Latin for Leather and Art.
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“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.”
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