allowed to provide food also, whether in the city or in the Contado, either in a retail wine-shop or in his own house. Any one selling wine to citizens after the final stroke of the Compline bell incurred a penalty of one hundred lire. The sale of provisions was forbidden also within fifty arm's lengths of any wine-shop or wine-cellar.1

Wine-merchants and tavern-keepers were not allowed to have on the front of their premises bushes or signs, either of laurel, olive, or of any other tree.2 Wines both new and old were ordered to be transported in wooden barrels. Each barrel required the official seal of the Podesta.3

No victualler was permitted to make or to buy unfermented wine or crude wines fortified with spirit during the time of vintage and up to the feast of All Saints, under a penalty of ten lire; and no wine merchant or innkeeper could sell such beverages to the public before that festival.*

From the Registers of Matriculation of 1335 and 1415 may be learnt how that the following families of Wine-merchants, among many others, gave their sons to the membership of the guild :—Albizzi, Ricasoli, Strozzi, and Guicciardini, of Florence proper, Niccolini, of Carmignano,-Pucci, of Siena and also of Val d'Elsa, Salviati, of Pisa,-Toscanelli, of Pontedera, Cocconi, of Montepulciano,-and Caspelli, of Pontascieve. These names are interesting, not only in themselves, but as indicative of the wide diffusion of the members of the Guild. They were in truth landed gentry, who owned many acres of vineyards and olive orchards, and who engaged in the profitable and agreeable trade of Wine-merchants at the same time.

In the first List of Guilds, in 1236, we find vinadro, tabernarius, osste, all merged in the "Arte de' Vinattieri"-" The Guild of Wine-Merchants." This association continued for fifty years, for the nomenclature of the Guild remained the same in

1 Rub. xci., 1415.

3 Rub. cclxxi., 1415.

2 Rub. cclxiv., 1415.

Rub. clxxxiii., 1415.

that important year of reform, 1266,-and the Guild was reckoned the thirteenth in order in both lists.

Under the year 1267 there is a curious entry in the Archives, which indicates a sort of fusion of the Guilds of Bakers, WineMerchants, and Innkeepers. For some purpose, not distinctly stated, "Ciprianus Pane, son of Vincente, a Tavern-keeper of the sestiere of St Pancrazio, late Rector of the said Guilds, was appointed Syndic by the votes of twenty-three members of the Guilds, and in the name of the absent members, to negotiate a loan of forty-two pounds from Giovanni Alboni Bilicozi of the sestiere of Oltrarno.1

The first cleavage in the constitution of the "Guild of WineMerchants" took place in the year 1282, when the Order of the twenty-one Guilds was re-arranged. In the List of Guilds the thirteenth place was still occupied by the " Arte de Vinattieri,” but the fourteenth was occupied by a perfectly new Corporation with the title "Arte degli Albergatori Maggiori"-" Guild of the Greater Innkeepers." Probably the sale of victuals was proved to be inconvenient in the wine-shops, or possibly the influx of strangers required to be dealt with on a larger and more enterprising scale.

The order of 1282 was maintained at all the subsequent revisions of the Statutes until 1539, when in the fourth University established by the Grand Duke Cosimo I. were included the "Guilds of Retail-Drapers and Linen-Manufacturers," "WineMerchants," and "Innkeepers," under the style of "Universita e Arte de' Linaiuoli."

The Residence of the Consuls of the Guild was next the side-door of the Church of San Stefano, in Via de' Lamberteschi. Over the entrance was, as usual, stuck up a shield with the Guild arms a blue cup in a white field; and the same badge figured upon the Gonfalon confided to the Guild Standardbearer in 1266.

Sir Richard Dallington,-that most worthy traveller and most interesting historian,-records many matters dealing with the

1 Archivio Fiorentino, SS. Annunziata.