The Charter of Liberties was issued by Henry I of England during 1100, and bound the King of England to laws regarding the treatment of nobles and church officials. In 1199 King John granted the citizens of London the right to elect their own Sheriffs. This was a particularly significant right as the Sheriff was the King's representative through whom the City was governed. The citizens' right to elect a Mayor annually was granted by King John in a charter extracted from the King in May 1215 as a part of the sequence of events leading to Magna Carta a month later.

Henry FitzAilwin was the first elected Mayor of London,  holding office from 1189 until his death in 1212. He came to power at a time of unrest between Richard I and the City of London, when the King demanded increased taxes and took out loans from London's merchants to pay for his foreign wars. In return the London aldermen and merchants were granted a degree of autonomy which led to the creation of the post of Mayor. Previously the City had been governed by a portreeve - an officer of the Crown.

In the reign of Henry II (1154-89) workers skilled in dressing skins were described as 'pelliparii', 'peleters', or skinners. The early skinners did not own the skins, but in time the wealthier merchants bought stocks of raw skins, dressed them, made them up and sold them to customers in their own shops often located in particular areas. For example, there was a Skinners' Row in Lincoln as there still is close to Skinners' Hall in London.

A grant of the 'Copped Hall' by Edmund Earl of Cornwall gave the Skinners their first permanent home in the City, which it occupied until the Great Fire of London burnt down the building. Skinners' Hall was rebuilt on the same site after the Great Fire.

Edward I grants a charter to the Hanseatic League, a trading group of German and Baltic cities which provided monarchs with financial loans in return for valuable concessions.  Their London headquarters and bonded warehouse, known as the Steelyard, was located opposite Skinners' Hall on the site of the modern Cannon Street station.  In London, the Hansa came into conflict with the Company of Merchant Adventurers whose 1505 charter from Henry VII gave a monopoly of the cloth export trade.  For the Skinners' Company, on the other hand, they were a vital source of furs from the Baltic and Russia.

As the Skinners became wealthier, they became more powerful and part of the government of the City. Like other guilds, their power was enhanced by the grant of royal charters that gave them enhanced status, legal protection and the right and duty to control their craft and trade. The Skinners obtained their first charter from Edward III in 1327. This is a copy of the 1327 charter from the reign of Charles II.

Company Ordinances were made for pelterers and pelliperes, or furriers, and it was specially directed that "all the freemen of the said trade shall dwell in Walbrook, Cornhill, and Budge Row" and later it was ordered that "no man shall cause his furs to be scoured in the high streets in the day-time."

Sir Thomas Legge loaned Edward III a considerable amount of money towards the war with France. In 1343 he was made a Sheriff of the City of London, and in 1346 he became the first Skinner to serve as Lord Mayor - and served again in 1353.

Henry V (1413 to 1422) was one of the most illustrious medieval monarchs to be a member of the Skinners' Company.  Others include Edward III, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III. Some of their queens were also members of the Company, among them Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, Margaret of Anjou wife of Henry VI and Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV.

Longstanding rivalry with the Merchant Taylors over precedence erupted into violence in 1484 during the Lord Mayor's river procession.  Lord Mayor Billesdon resolved the dispute by ordering the Skinners and Merchant Taylors to take turns at going ahead of each other every year.  A fixed procession order for Livery Companies was ordained in 1516, and confirmed Skinners and Merchant Taylors as alternating between sixth and seventh in precedence.  The expression 'to be at sixes and sevens' almost certainly derives from the dispute. The Skinners and Merchant Taylors still invite each other's Master and Wardens to dine at their Hall every year, as ordered by Lord Mayor Billesdon.  

The Great St.Helens Almshouses in Bishopsgate Ward were built for the poor, to be maintained out of lands given to the Skinners' Company by Sir Andrew Judd. The money to build the almshouses was provided by Dame Elizabeth Hollys in her will of 1551.  The Almshouses were re-erected in 1729 by the Skinners' Company to the west of the original site - they were removed in about 1895.  

Tonbridge School was founded in 1553 by Sir Andrew Judde under Letters Patent of King Edward VI, together with the appointment of an examiner to be nominated by All Souls College, Oxford. The Charter ordained that after the death of the Founder, the Governors were to be the Worshipful Company of Skinners. Sir Andrew, a distinguished Skinner, left property in the City of London and in the parish of St. Pancras as an endowment for the School.

Sir Andrew Judde made provision in his will to fund an exhibition to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for boys from Tonbridge School.  

One of the Company's young apprentices attempted to leap the River Walbrook but was swept downstream and drowned by the force of the water.   Map of London - second edition Civitates Orbis Terrarum 1574

Lawrence Atwell, a Skinner from Exeter, endowed what is now the Company's largest grant making charity in 1588 to help: 'set poor people on work'.  Today the charity supports young people who need help with vocational education and training.

In 1610 James I ordered the Great Twelve Livery Companies to undertake the settlement, or plantation, of the Ulster counties of Derry and Tyrone.  The lands to be settled were divided into lots.  The Skinners' Company drew lot number 12.  Its lands came to be known as the Manor of Pellipar.  The formal conveyance was made after the King had granted the Charter that created the city and county of Londonderry in 1613.  The deed, dated 22 March 1617, granted the Manor of Pellipar, and all profits arising out of it, to the Skinners' Company, to hold "to the only use and behoof of the said maister, wardens, and comunaltie of the misterie of the Skinners of London, their successors and assigns for ever".  The Company finally sold its lands in Ireland in 1912.  

Elected to Common Council, Robert Tichborne was a supporter of Parliament and served on the Militia Committee. The New Model Army occupied London in 1647. General Fairfax made Tichborne Lieutenant of the Tower of London and colonel of a new regiment to guard it.  He was appointed to the organising committee for the King's trial and was a signatory of the death warrant in 1649. He was Master of the Skinners' Company in 1650.  In 1656 he was elected Lord Mayor of London and knighted by Cromwell.  At the Restoration in 1660 he was brought to trial as a regicide.  He was sentenced to death but reprieved as he had intervened to save condemned Royalists during the Protectorate.  Tichborne died in the Tower in July 1682.

Samuel Pepys, aboard a Parliamentary warship off Sandwich, writes on 11 April that "the Skinners' Company at their entertaining of General Monk had took down the Parliament Arms in their Hall and set up the King's".

Skinners' Hall, along with most of the City of London, was destroyed by fire.  Rebuilding began on the same site in 1667 and was finished in 1685.

Charles II grants a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, and English fur traders get organised to operate in North America.  

In 1656 members of the Company clubbed together to buy a barge for the Company's use on the river and in processions.  By 1728 it was in disrepair, and in 1738 the Company agreed to buy one in its own name.  It was used extensively until the Lord Mayor's Procession ceased to be by water in 1856.  It was sold shortly after, and was the boathouse for Queen's College, Oxford in the later 19th century.

Prompted by the Endowed Schools Commissioners, The Skinners' Company, as Governors of Tonbridge School, opened The Skinners' Company Middle School for Boys in Tunbridge Wells in 1887. The Skinners' School became a voluntary-aided grammar school under the 1944 Education Act.  

The Skinners' Company opened Sir Andrew Judd's Commercial School in East Street, Tonbridge, in 1888, using funds provided by the Sir Andrew Judde Foundation.  The School moved to its present site in 1896, became known as The Judd School in 1925, and was the first voluntary-aided grammar school under the 1944 Education Act.

The Company's only girls' school was opened at Stamford Hill.  Initially an independent school, it became a voluntary-aided grammar school, and then the first voluntary- aided comprehensive in London.  In just over a century a leafy suburb transformed into a vibrant, multi-cultural inner London borough. A succession of determined headmistresses worked closely with The Skinners' Company to produce an energetic and purposeful school.  The school closed in 2010 when the new Skinners' Academy opened half a mile away in Woodberry Down. More detailed information can be found here.  

The Skinners' Company was one of two livery companies involved in the establishment of the Northampton Institute in Clerkenwell, which has now become the flourishing and vibrant City University. The Sir John Cass Business School is the latest addition and was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 2003.

On 27 July 1944 a bomb exploded in nearby Upper Thames Street and damaged the Hall, in particular the Old Court Room.  The Company butler, George Styles, on fire watch duty at the time, is said to have saved the day by persuading the other fire fighters to give priority to the Hall by providing them with refreshments from the spirits cupboard.  The bomb blast destroyed the partition by the staircase in what was the Court Room, and the ceiling in the room above.

The Queen Mother visited Skinners' Hall during the 1958-59 Mastership of Dr. C.F.Hamilton-Turner (in the foreground).  R. A. Butler (in the background), familiarly known as Rab, served as Education Minister from 1941-45, overseeing the 1944 Education Act, and was made an Honorary Freeman of the Company in 1955.

A generous donation by the Percy Bilton Charity enabled a complex of thirty seven flats for the elderly to be opened in Hounslow.  The Percy Bilton Charity was founded in 1962 by Percy Bilton, an entrepreneur, who in the 1920s and 1930s built up a group of successful property companies which in the 1970s was listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The Livery October Group Vocational Education Committee was formed by Lord Mayor, Sir Francis McWilliams, to support schools in poorer boroughs. This led to the formation of the Livery Schools Link in 2003, now the main point of contact between the City livery companies and education.

Lord Malmesbury's Bounty was set up following a generous gift from the 6th Earl of Malmesbury to help fund the Company's schools and charities.  William James Harris, the only son of the 5th Earl of Malmesbury, was born on November 18 1907 and died aged 92.  He served as Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire from 1973 to 1982 and as Official Verderer of the New Forest from 1966 to 1974.

Rebuilt after a fire, the new Skinners' Court residential home was opened by HRH The Duke of Gloucester.  Located at 1 Pellipar Close in Palmers Green, it consists of 48 flats.  It is run by the Skinners' Almshouse Charity.  

Lord Coe, Chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, opened the Tonbridge School Sports Centre on 13th June 2008, in the presence of 1500 Tonbridge Friends including Governors, past and present parents, OTs, staff and current boys.

The Marsh Academy, sponsored by Tonbridge School, Kent County Council and Microsoft, opened in 2009 at New Romney in Kent in the buildings of its predecessor school. The Academy moved into its new building in 2012, and in September 2013 The Skinners' Company became the Principal Sponsor.

The Skinners' Academy at Woodberry Grove, Hackney, with the Skinners' Company as its sole sponsor, was opened by HRH The Duke of Gloucester.  The Master of The Skinners' Company, Mr Hugh Carson, the Chairman of Governors, Lord Malmesbury, and Mr Jules Pipe, the Mayor of Hackney, were present at the opening ceremony.

The City and Guilds of London Art School constructed and gilded the prow of the Royal Barge for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. The Company helped to support one of the students working on the project.  Court Members joined the Thames River Pageant on the 'Great Twelve' Barge.

The Skinners' Kent Academy was sponsored by The Skinners' School Foundation, Kent County Council and West Kent College, and began operating in the buildings of the predecessor school in 2009. The Academy moved into its new buildings in 2013, and was officially opened by HRH The Duke of Gloucester.