Crowns and courts, churches and orders, houses and guilds, companies and crews, as the volumes record them
Adventuring company 3
Coldharbour Men
The hangers and western belt · The High South Since c. 4580The standing company against which the belt measures others for conduct, though not the most capable company in the belt.
Companions of Saint Merrow's Wake
Candle Cape road · Britannia Since c. 4450An older company that takes the maritime relief and sacred sea work the contract halls decline to price.
Redwater Watch
Britannia Since c. 4450The Companions of Saint Merrow's Wake's arm for maritime relief nobody else will price.
Arcane studies 4
Ash House
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since 4608The Cambridge field house at Sarrum (founded 4608) where the Schola and White Walls examiners study green coal, deep and light iron, treated aerial materials and strange residues; it may condemn a process but cannot issue a final certificate.
Cambridge Retrieval Office
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4575Cambridge office to which Ash House is formally tied: material traces from deep workings are logged, stabilised and sent under seal for comparison, and an active manifestation may be moved only under a retrieval warrant with a Cambridge examiner and containment crew.
Conduction Rooms
Glassmere, Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4580Research rooms at Glassmere studying whether spirit presence can serve as conduit or catalyst in arcane work — initiating effects, stabilising transformations or permitting workings ordinary apparatus cannot sustain.
Schola Cantabrigiensis Artificii Arcani
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 3900The school at Cambridge that trains artificers, assayers and licensed alchemists in a nine-year course; no other institution in Britannia may teach the handling of the more difficult materials. It takes about thirty boys a year from some four hundred who sit its admission examination.
Arts & entertainment 14
Angel Yard House of Playing
London Since c. 4500A flexible theatre taking comedies, touring companies and popular dramas that may vanish within a fortnight.
Ash and Ivy
London · Britannia Since c. 4605The best-known Gloam touring band, combining road ballads with Cambridge harmonics and London stage melancholy, playing subscription rooms and coaching inns alike.
Black Curtain
London Since c. 4550A theatre trading in severe new drama and blood romances.
Black Ribbon Players
touring · Britannia Since c. 4575A travelling company carrying martyr dramas, winter comedies and ruin pieces from fair town to fair town, and the visual taste of the Gloam.
Copper Hall
Scholar's Reach, Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4500A Cambridge hall used for guild exhibitions, demonstration lectures, instrument trials and occasional performances; the Collegium insists it is not formally a theatre.
Glass Lantern Caravan
touring · Britannia Since c. 4580A travelling company selling portraits, lantern recitations and musical evenings from market halls to private houses.
Great Alianor Theatre
London · London Since c. 4400London's flagship theatre, a tall stone-and-brick house with a deep stage, four galleries and private boxes, playing serious drama, comedy and full opera under a city licence and Crown patent.
Hollow Lyre
London Since c. 4590A house of recitation, small music, whispered verse and black-taste pieces.
King's Symphonic Rooms
London Since c. 4500A venue between theatre and concert culture selling subscription evenings, smaller orchestral work and recitations.
Red Hart Rooms
Oxford · The High South Since c. 4450Oxford's principal secular concert and assembly hall, placing secular music, visiting players and shortened opera under the uneasy gaze of Chapter and council.
Red Shed
Fleecegate, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560Sarrum's best-known entertainment house, licensed as three adjoining public houses, holding close to a thousand standing for ballads, prize fights, players, speakers, betting and hiring.
Red Soot Stage
near the industrial belts · London Since c. 4575A rough, loud stage playing forbidden-technology melodramas, martyr distortions and labour satire.
Rose Court Garth
London Since c. 4500A respectable commercial stage for families, provincial visitors and patrons wanting fashion without the Great Alianor's expense.
Vexley Hall
London · London Since c. 4500London's principal concert hall, endowed by the Vexley family, hosting winter subscription concerts, foreign recitals, sacred works and public lectures.
Bank, finance & insurance 11
Ashdown's Bank
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450House Ashdown's bank, the largest of the eleven on the Bank Council and the house's principal instrument, managed by different hands from the house's land.
Bank Council
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450The council of Sarrum's eleven banks. It lends against the wool clip, against contracts for winter feed and against storage notes; it holds the minerals of the coal fields; and it decides matters by what it will and will not insure or finance. The source gives as its reason for being the gap between the June clip and the year that follows; which is to say that the county's wool money comes in once, at the shearing, and must carry the county until the next.
Blue Ledger Company
London river offices · Britannia Since c. 4400An insurer that underwrites cargoes whose owners are not named in the policy, converting contraband into an insurable asset.
Dover burial clubs
Dover quay streets (public houses) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4450Informal clubs taking a penny a week per head to pay for a coffin, a cart, a consecrated grave and the rite, so members avoid a pauper burial. Run by carpenters, publicans or lodging keepers, unaudited, and meeting in public houses.
Dover room
a room above a Dover counting house · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4300About fourteen local underwriters who insure hulls, cargo and the crossing, pricing the Narrow Sea from a book of losses that no London office matches.
Fleece Bank
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450The Weavers' own bank, one of the eleven on the Bank Council.
London underwriting rooms
the capital · London Since c. 4250The insurers of the capital, whose private claim files record losses by place, season and cause and so draw 'the true map of the known world'. They price every outer risk and thereby decide what may be shipped or flown.
Lyonnais lending houses
the colour cities · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The lenders who are the load-bearing leg of every banner court: a court that cannot borrow cannot arm, insure or keep its captains.
Rougeclair house
Over the Horizon Since c. 4450The underwriting house whose name gives the 'Rougeclair premium', a loading on a risk the underwriter cannot describe. It publishes its loadings for season, ground, reopened quays and cargo classes, revises them annually and states its grounds in writing when it declines a risk.
White banking houses
the White banner city (Blanchefleur) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400Banking houses of the White banner city that held British debt and have grown steadily more entangled with London paper since the Compacts of Saint Corin.
Wold Bank
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450One of the three principal banks on the Bank Council, holding most of the pit and estate paper.
Brigands & pirates 1
Charity & hospital 17
Bethlem House
London Since c. 4100The most famous and most feared London institution for the mentally broken, the deranged, the spiritually disturbed and the inconveniently ungovernable.
Breathing Room
Cambridge Guarantor Rooms · The High South Since c. 4470The hospital wing of the Guarantor Rooms, taking about sixty of the gravely Afflicted at a time; its physicians hold the realm's only real accumulated experience of the gravest afflictions.
Canterbury chapter almshouses
Canterbury precinct · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4000Two almshouses maintained by the chapter for the aged poor of the city and the chapter's parishes, holding forty-one people, allocated from a publicly posted list.
Canterbury county infirmary
Canterbury · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4400A subscription infirmary at Canterbury: a fortnight's stay is free to a subscriber's nominee and unobtainable to anyone else.
Cinders mission
the Cinders district, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4575The mission of the Cinders, whose women say office weekly at the nine acres, carry bread and light into the made ground on Tuesdays and Fridays, and keep a day book of children and complaints. It holds the city's only record of unquiet ground and of the 190 Cinders names taken to Cambridge in the fever years.
Dover quay mission
Dover quays · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4580A mission on the Dover quay run by four women from one room the corporation lets at a nominal rent. It gives relief in kind (bread, coal, clothing, loans) to a reviewed list of two hundred and forty households, paid for by subscription.
Gap burial clubs
the eleven gaps of the eastern shore · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4400The burial clubs every fishing gap runs, funded by a subscription taken off each boat's catch before shares are divided. They bury members, keep widows for a year and, in four gaps, keep children until they are old enough for a share.
Harrowgate infirmary
Harrowgate · The Northern Marches Since c. 3700The priory's infirmary at Harrowgate. It keeps four rooms behind the main ward for men who have come out of the deep ruins wrong, and it takes them in without question or charge.
Lambeth House of Quiet Minds
Lambeth, near Southbank · London Since c. 4300A sombre institution for convalescence, seclusion and pious supervision, taking cases too unstable for household life but not always criminal.
Ninefields surgical house
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560The Ninefields surgical house, seeing some nine thousand cases a year, whose senior surgeon Ellis Mow keeps the casebooks that are the nearest thing Sarrum has to a public record of itself.
Outskirts custody belt
Villages along the Cambridge carriage road and older settlements north of the town · The High South Since c. 4580Households, hostels and small establishments paid by the Guarantor Rooms to keep permitted Afflicted whom the town cannot lodge, now an institution with contracts and twice-yearly inspections.
Oxford almshouse
Oxford · The High South Since c. 3950The largest single charitable establishment in the belt, feeding daily, lodging some hundreds and administering outdoor relief that keeps valley families in their villages.
Saint Anne's Infirmary
London Since c. 4150An infirmary where charity, medicine, women's labour and church authority overlap; a stubborn institution meeting alms, nursing and urban fragility.
Saint Dymphna's Retreat
London Since c. 4400A respectable, church-coloured house of confinement for grief, melancholy and noble family embarrassment.
Saint Elric's Lantern
above a worked landing on the Dover side · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150A combined beacon and chapel on the Dover shore: its lamp is kept because masters use it, its chapel because the coast has buried so many men whose families watched that light. Contributions are entered as oil, chapel money or widow relief depending on the book.
Saint Odilia's Rooms for Afflicted Children
London · London Since c. 4450A Southwark charitable house and infirmary where malformed infants, disputed foundlings and some adult Afflicted cases are received under prayer, medicine and guarded documentation. Its sisters nurse and keep an infirmary register whose unnamed 'third column' outcome it refuses to explain.
Sarrum surgical houses
Fleecegate, Ninefields, Hollowgate and the Cinders · Sarrum and Its County Since 4551Four free public surgical houses created by the second article of the Bill of 4551, paid by a levy on the halls and banks. Each keeps two surgeons, four dressers and a midwife and gives setting, cutting, stitching and delivery to anyone, without fee and without enquiry.
Church & religious 40
Archbishopric of Oxford
Oxford · The High South Since 3949The Church province ruled from Oxford, whose authority reaches every tithe road in the valleys over rite, burial, marriage and preaching licences. The archbishop works through a large, mobile household of chaplains, secretaries, visitors, auditors and lettered servants.
Archdeacon's office (London)
London Since c. 4075The church office that has commissioned a company to gather evidence of burials by an unlicensed chapel off the Commons, stating in writing that it wants nothing about the chapel's doctrine.
Archivum Magnum Sacrae Sedis
Holy Seat · Over the Horizon Since c. 3550The archive of the Holy Seat, generally believed to hold the largest surviving body of knowledge from before the Apocalypse, including map vaults. Cardinals, archivists and emissaries decide case by case what may be copied, excerpted, read under watch or kept sealed.
Bishopric of Southwark
Southwark · London Since c. 4070The see of Southwark, associated with threshold chapels, river parishes and the moral handling of difficult districts.
Bishopric of Whitechapel
Whitechapel · London Since c. 4100The see of Whitechapel, belonging to crowded parishes, hospital burdens and uneasy charity.
Britannian consular chaplainry at Blanchefleur
Blanchefleur · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450The Britannian chaplaincy at Blanchefleur which, with the factor houses, attends the walled burial ground behind the old factory chapel holding over four hundred Britannians.
British missions
inland stations on three continents, including the River Station · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The one British institution that routinely goes inland and stays. Their letters and registers are the most continuous British writing on the interiors of three continents, recording avoidances, observances and ground that is not entered, in the words of those who keep them.
Canterbury Chapter
Canterbury (the precinct) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 3500The cathedral chapter of Canterbury, which holds the endowment, the precinct, the archive and the fabric, and runs two almshouses and a grammar school. Its remaining authority is that it can consecrate ground in a form the whole south accepts and certify in writing that a burial was properly done; it signed the Obedience in 3949, surrendering the island-wide ordering to Oxford.
Church of Britannia
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 3450The realm's church of the Cross. The sovereign is spoken of as its head in the political and legal sense, while sacramental seriousness descends through the Archbishop of Oxford under the blessing of the Pontifex Maximus. It keeps registers, teaches children, relieves widows, condemns the burning of the dead, and shares with the Crown the declaring of the season-runs.
Church of the Hundred Virgins
Black Stone, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4250The older of Sarrum's two churches of any size, holding about three hundred.
Combe Bourne parish
Combe Bourne, Wold shoulder · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 3800A chalk parish whose winterbourne stopped in 4589 because of Blackdown's pumping, which still keeps its four observances at the dry bourne head and the fullest customary practice in the county.
Conclavium Cardinalium
Holy Seat · Over the Horizon Since 3712One of the two governing bodies of the Holy Seat, formalised in 3712.
Conclavium Emissariorum
Holy Seat · Over the Horizon Since 3897The Holy Seat's governing body of emissaries from the aligned churches, which took modern form in 3897 and was widened after the Accord of the Aligned Churches in 4044. Marriage dispensations for every aligned realm pass through it.
Cult of Saint Nicholas of the Flooded Stairs
riverside belts · London Since c. 4020A practical little cult of devotion binding sailors, divers, widows and recoverers of drowned goods; bargemen leave candles to the saint before dangerous recoveries.
Diocese at the county town
The county town, a hundred and thirty miles (five days) south of Harrowgate · The Northern Marches Since c. 3950The diocese and bishop over the march. Bishop's faculties and reconsecrations come from here. Faculty applications go through the priory to the county town and are considered at a chapter. The bishop keeps a closed archive at the county town.
Harrowgate chapter
Harrowgate · The Northern Marches Since c. 3970The Church chapter at Harrowgate whose proctors visit marcher parishes and whose positions govern local observance: it tolerates ancient offerings and inherited courtesy to powers but condemns worship, sacrifice and claims of sovereignty.
Harrowgate Priory
Harrowgate (walled precinct on the rise on the north bank of the Harrow) · The Northern Marches Since c. 3500The oldest and only uninterrupted institution of the March: six and twenty brothers under a prior holding the town church, a school, an infirmary, the great tithes of eleven parishes and the principal interest in Wychwood. It alone can consecrate ground, license priests, bless and bury, conducts visitations of the parishes, and keeps the only archive in the county, including the Black Thorn roll.
Hidden Lamp
chiefly London · Britannia Since c. 4490Afflicted devotional circles and networks revering Brother Alwin Grey-Scale, a visibly afflicted lay brother who hid malformed children from lawful examination. Their symbol is a covered lamp lit when a child must be moved, a body hidden from a mob, or a mother protected; their prayer is 'Hide the child until mercy wakes.'
Lyonnais orders
treaty ports of the near world · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The religious orders of Lyonnais which, like the Seat and the White Eagle chapters, keep their own people in the larger treaty ports.
Marsh deanery
the Oxford Marsh · The High South Since c. 3960The deanery of the marsh, against which the chapter's oil for Causey End is charged.
Netherlode parish
Netherlode (drowned under the Netherlode water), Blackdown edge · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400A parish drowned under a flash, with its chapel and churchyard, that remains on the chapter's roll: its bounds are still walked round the water by Blackdown and its return still filed.
Nieuwlanden chapter
the Nieuwlanden · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The religious chapter of the Nieuwlanden, which holds its own grounds and the calendar and has a voice in anything touching water that arrives without weather, but none in ordinary works.
Ninefields mission room
Ninefields, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580The mission room in Ninefields, whose room book records what households come to ask for: sick children, safe deliveries, blessings on rooms and help against bad luck.
Northern Deaneries
The Northern Marches · The Northern Marches Since c. 4100The rural deaneries through which the Church covers the March. It falls to their rural deans to send proctors to any parish that has let an obligation lapse, and, wherever the Concord of Saint Winnow, the order that makes such terms and keeps them, will not come, to recommend some local woman to treat with the power in its stead. Suppressions for the poorer parishes, by which is meant the rites the suppressing orders use against trouble on a ground, are charged to the archdeaconry.
Northern religious houses
The Northern Marches Since c. 4000The religious houses of the north. They keep the only systematic collections of accounts of sealed ground, copied from lost originals, and note each witness's condition and reliability.
Office of Bells and Holy Reckoning
Oxford cathedral · The High South Since c. 4088The office, older than the archbishopric it now sits under, that reckons the province's year, computing the season-runs and movable observances from which the ringing follows. Its computists, about a third of them lay, work in checking pairs and keep the Great Reckoning, a record of every declared season-run since 4088.
Office of Sacred Provenance
Unknown Since c. 4050Across four coasts at once this body rules on where relics came from, which is to say their provenance; for the aligned churches, one and all, have provenance judged under a single authority.
Oxford Cathedral Chapter
Oxford (cathedral close, chapter houses) · The High South Since c. 3750The governing chapter of the Church as it sits at Oxford, which has held the ordering of rite for the whole island ever since the Canterbury Obedience War. In its doctrine spirits are remnants of the fall, and every pact made with them a temporary expedient in a Reclamation not yet finished; the end it states for itself is the eventual extermination of spirits.
Oxford chapter provisioning office
Oxford · The High South Since c. 4000The office at Oxford that keeps the chapter's provisioning accounts, including the oil sent to Causey End as a charge on the marsh deanery.
Pale Orchard Abbey
The High South Since c. 4200A house of religion that held out in the Siege of Pale Orchard Abbey during the grey necromancer war while the country round it was lost.
Pruss church
Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The Church as kept in Prussland, whose moral order reaches public and private life: bells silence all conversation, public dress is black, divorce is not permitted and whipping remains an ordinary punishment.
Saint Bride's
London Since c. 4050A London church whose canon is cited wherever bridges, burials and stern city memory meet.
Saint Eadric's
the Fleecegate end, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560Sarrum's poorer and fuller church, reachable by turn workers without crossing the river.
Saint Hester's Reach mission
Saint Hester’s Reach, Western Continent · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450The old mission around which Saint Hester's Reach, a western landing of perhaps three thousand, has grown.
Sarrum deanery
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4300The church deanery that for years has taken an annual return from drowned Netherlode, a parish with no incumbent or parishioners.
Sarrum mission rooms
the housing districts of Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560Eleven mission rooms staffed overwhelmingly by women on a Church licence, the one body that meets arrivals deliberately. They take everything and charge nothing — teaching some six hundred children to read a year, sitting with the dying, saying office at the burning and feeding those living below ground.
See of Canterbury
Canterbury · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 3400The local see of Canterbury, with cathedral, bishopric, chapter, endowment, burial right and archive. Before the Obedience War it was the ordering see of the island church that settled the form of the rite; after the war (legal transfer 3949) that island-wide function passed to Oxford, but the see itself, its lands and bishopric continued.
St Albans chapter
St Albans · Unknown Since c. 3700The church chapter of St Albans, whose men upheld Robert II, crowned at Oxford Gate, in the War of the Two Kings. Many religious manuals and chronicles cited in the book survive in St Albans issues or copies.
Unlicensed chapel off the Commons
a court off the Commons · London Since c. 4619An unlicensed chapel that has grown to a congregation of over ninety in eighteen months; four of its people have buried someone in the last year without any burial passing through a parish office.
White Chapel
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4100The oldest institution in Cambridge to have run without a break. From its teaching comes the White Chapel arrangement, under which every material entering a licensed process is first committed, which is to say formally given over, by the chapel's form of words, and every material condemned is committed a second time before it goes to be ground.
Civic body 56
Ash crews
Porto Cenere · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The Basin harbour crews who gather soot and handle condemned cargo; at Porto Cenere they are fielded under the discipline of the Soot Court.
Bank Charge of the Eastern Parishes
Middelburg · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The administration kept at Middelburg for the dike obligations of the eastern parishes: it holds the great rolls and appoints the assessors, making Middelburg the administrative centre of the country's real business.
Barrow Combe market council
Barrow Combe · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4200The chartered council of Barrow Combe, the stock market town where four droves meet and the Rolle of the Drove is kept.
Bell fraternity of Lucerna Maris
Lucerna Maris · Over the Horizon Since c. 3900The fraternity that rings the bells of Lucerna Maris, older than the city's charter and holding office by usage. Members are unpaid, elected by each other and cannot be removed by the municipality.
Cambridge Guarantor Rooms
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4400The establishment, under the Collegium's licence and the town council's charter and run almost entirely by women, through which every Afflicted person living in Cambridge passes for examination, classification and the finding of a guarantor; it issues permits and keeps the case ledgers.
Cambridge Town Council
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 3900Cambridge's older civic council, controlling streets, wells, fire rules, public houses and the ordinary watch. It is one of the five Cambridge authorities beside the Collegium, the Schola, House Beaumont and the craft guilds.
Candlewick association
Candlewick, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4500The association of Candlewick, a trades neighbourhood with half its members in hall employment, inclined to settlement.
Canterbury city corporation
Canterbury (outside the precinct) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4000The civic corporation of Canterbury, which governs the city outside the cathedral precinct, licenses ground for performers and regulates the lodging houses.
Cinders association
the Cinders, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4550Barely an association at all, serving the district with the city's worst conditions.
Coldwell market council
Coldwell · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4300The chartered council of Coldwell, which survives by never pretending municipal office outranks the storage houses; its watch is eleven men.
Dover corporation
Dover (guildhall) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4100The borough of Dover, which owns civic property, confirms the port-reeve's election, audits the public quay account and keeps the borough minutes. It enforces weights-and-measures by-laws on victuallers after two failed attempts to regulate lodging and victualling prices.
Dover Packet Office
Dover (a room off the quay office) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4448The office that keeps the packet calendar, entering sailings in advance and posting them, and handles the mails. Constituted after the Azure Banner war (4448) so that sailings could be known and convoyed; its Keeper is chosen jointly by the packet owners, not by the Crown or corporation.
Dover parish overseers
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4200The overseers of the poor for the Dover parish, who relieve over four hundred people in an ordinary quarter under the settlement law and bury paupers in a parish ground full for a generation.
Dover Quay Office
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since 4253The Dover office that keeps the pilots' licensed roll (writing the names down without choosing them), enters and lists licensed interpreters, and holds harbour records including loss figures. A room at its back is used to keep bodies awaiting a winter inquest.
Free-port syndics
Albrecht Quay and the other free ports · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The permanent port officers of the free ports; in most ports senior syndics face a public vote or confirmation.
Hall of Records
Unknown Since c. 4200A records body for which Beatrice Wren's work on blood, service and legitimate elevation was printed.
Harrowgate Corporation
Harrowgate · The Northern Marches Since c. 4120The chartered town government of Harrowgate: a mayor, twelve aldermen, a clerk, four sergeants and lesser officers. It holds the Thursday market, the bridge and its tolls, the wall and gates, fairs, weights and the gaol, but its jurisdiction stops at the town wall.
Hollowgate association
Hollowgate, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4550The poorer, rougher neighbourhood association of Hollowgate, quick to the street.
Hythe corporation
Hythe · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The most practical of the smaller charter-port corporations. It has let several exemptions lapse in exchange for county money, which paid for a market house, a school and two bridges.
Kent county meeting
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4175The county meeting held at Maidstone.
London Adventurers' Register
London · London Since c. 4450A London register recording names, sponsors, past work, complaints and standing of irregular companies so a patron can tell a band with a verifiable history from six strangers with a name.
London burial offices
London Since c. 4100The offices that process London's dead: carts, records, certificates, grave assignments, church coordination and watching against theft. They will not inter before the third day, nor inter a death not seen by someone they will name, nor take a body from the river before the third tide.
London river office
London Since c. 4100The office that keeps the capital's tide tables.
London sewer commission
London Since c. 4150It keeps the sewers of London, and has a plan of all it keeps; but of the passages it does not keep it has no plan whatever.
London ward councils
the wards of the Commons · London Since c. 4075The ward councils, parish boards, market and dock committees, improvement societies and quasi-councils that are the granules of civic London.
Lord Mayoralty of London
London · London Since c. 4100London's civic government under the Lady Mayor, reaching streets, wards, markets, lamps, pumps, watch, bridge and ferry burdens, fire readiness and the city's public face through ward councils, committees and improvement bodies.
Lucerna Maris signal service
Lucerna Maris and its chain of inland hill stations · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The continuously manned signal towers of Lucerna Maris, which the port treats as its government: blessed towers, sworn keepers and elaborate codes, with vapour bells regarded as the Basin standard.
Lydd corporation
Lydd · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The corporation of Lydd, a shingle-bound former port, which has twice defended its liberty in court successfully within eighty years.
Maidstone corporation
Maidstone (guildhall) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4175The self-selecting corporation of the county town: a mayor chosen yearly from aldermen who hold for life, and an elected common council. It controls the town, its markets and tolls, bridges, paving, watch, quay and river navigation, two charities and the grammar school, and its market by-laws affect every parish in Kent.
Mereford Cross market council
Mereford Cross · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4200The chartered council of the carriage town at Mereford Cross, whose through trade the line broke.
Mereton Reed Sessions
The staithe at Mereton (in the open), twice a year · The Northern Marches Since c. 4100The twice-yearly open assembly of the fen's eleven holms, the nearest thing the wet country has to a government. Anyone from the holms may speak in a fixed order, the ferrylords last; a reeve reads the book but has no vote. It reallocates reed-cutting and causeway obligations and publicly asks about unlit staithes.
Near-Coast harbour syndicates
the Near-Coast (Lyonnais) harbours, including Blanchefleur · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200Merchant bodies that own each quay in defined pieces and govern the harbour through a dues counter, a quay watch and a harbour court sitting on named days. They can detain a cargo until the next quarter bell ('hold a cargo for a season'), appoint the beacon-master who keeps the harbour's lights and approach book, and license the insurance notaries.
Netherhythe hythe
Netherhythe, Oxford Marsh · The High South Since c. 4388A chartered river port left four hundred yards from navigable water since the 4490s, whose reeve still makes a nil return each year and whose quay and crane are kept up from a parish charge.
New Romney corporation
New Romney · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The corporation of New Romney, a charter port stranded inland by a storm, which has built its civic life around keeping its liberty: its roll, chest, court, mace and mayor. The town lives as the market of the marsh.
Ninefields association
Ninefields, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560The most disciplined of Sarrum's neighbourhood associations, which raised the first association burial fund and fed the four hundred refugees of Ironmere for eleven weeks out of its own fund in 4597.
Old confederation of the charter ports
New Romney, Sandwich and the other old chartered ports · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4025The old chartered ports of Kent, holding grants of self-government made in exchange for ship service (the youngest in 4186). They still hold an annual muster acknowledging the service, though no ship has been supplied since 4319; within its bounds each liberty is a real jurisdiction.
Oxford Market Council
Tallow Hall, Oxford · The High South Since c. 3700The chartered city's council, holding the market, the tolls, the ward constables, the poor rate within the walls and liberties older than the chapter.
Quarantine office
The Northern Marches Since c. 4400The health authority that prohibits passage over ground for sickness in beasts or people or for bad water. It is the youngest and most used of the four authorities that shut ground.
Romney level wall court
the Romney level (the marsh) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 3900A self-governing body of Romney Marsh landholders who keep the sea wall and drains. They elect officers, levy a rate by the foot of frontage, and hold a court at Snargate that can enter land, order work and distrain. No charter created it, it predates every other marsh authority, and it keeps the roads and the single bridge.
Sandwich corporation
Sandwich · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4100The corporation of Sandwich, an old charter port that adapted to silting by turning to the market and land trade. It holds its liberty lightly, keeps its muniment chest, musters and court, and has its haven men walk the channel every year.
Sarrum city council
Mayoral Manor, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400Sarrum's civic council of twelve appointed aldermen (four presented by Crown interests, four by the Oxford chapter, two each by Hartfell and Ashdown) under an appointed Mayor. It keeps the conduits, rates, licences, the burning ground contract, tax collection and the public accounts, but holds no court of general jurisdiction.
Sarrum neighbourhood associations
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4520Subscription bodies of the housing districts, funded at about fourpence a week, whose funds carry burial (burning), short sickness, street drainage, an unarmed watch and a reserve against stoppage. Their speakers are admitted to the Mayoral Manor as mediators only.
Scala Meridiana departure office
Scala Meridiana · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400The named officers of Scala Meridiana who ring its exact departure bells on a judgement made under a published procedure and recorded openly.
Senate of Lucerna Maris
Lucerna Maris (a room behind the towers) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The civic senate of Lucerna Maris, which meets behind the signal towers.
Shore chamber
the Near Coast · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450A chamber of the Near-Coast ports at which the six orderly ports complain, twice a year, about the free-trade creek town.
Southwark Committee
Southwark · London Since c. 4200A ward committee whose councillor keeps notes and memoranda on ward business, including the disputed accounts rendered by the Brethren's houses.
Sweetwater association
Sweetwater, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4520The small and unusually literate association of Sweetwater, which produced three of the four accounts of 4551 that anybody reads.
Vestry of Ampney Bourne
Ampney Bourne · The High South Since c. 4200The vestry of Halden's model tithe village, which bought certified drying frames from the parish chest.
Vestry of Ockley Parva
Ockley Parva · The High South Since c. 4200The vestry of a tithe village with no parson for twenty years, run by five substantial householders who set the poor rate, appoint the constable and answer the tithe audit themselves.
Vestry of Tithe End
Tithe End · The High South Since c. 4200The vestry of Tithe End, to which Bailiff Roger Malle of the Halden estates deposed in 4609 about the waste households.
Wage panel
Sarrum and Its County Since 4551The panel created by the wage article of the Bill of 4551 — three members from the halls, two from the associations and one from the council — which sets each year a wage floor for members of hall trades.
Weisshafen merchant senate
Weisshafen · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The elected civic chamber of Weisshafen, model for the other free ports' senates. Matters are referred to committees of owners, reported and argued, so decisions take weeks; the ports regard that slowness as armour against capture.
Wetherslade market council
Wetherslade · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4150The chartered market council of Wetherslade, the county's first market town, with burgesses, a mayor, constables and a court; it hosts the October fleece fair.
Wold Ash borough
Wold Ash, Wold shoulder · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4150A borough whose charter lapsed beyond anyone's knowledge but whose borough book and alderman's title continue; its clerk keeps the shearing, walking and drove tallies of the Wold shoulder on no authority.
Wool sessions
the upland · The Northern Marches Since c. 4300The upland's wool assembly, where news from the upland is exchanged. It keeps a yearly minute of business.
Wye vestry
Wye · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The competent parish vestry of Wye, a market town beside the Pikes' household.
Company & trade 54
Aerial Board
masts at the capital, at two Near-Coast courts, at stations of the southern chain and at some eastern concessions · Britannia Since c. 4550The board, answerable to proprietors, that builds and works Britannia's chain of skyship mooring masts and relay yards, carrying mail, small specie, medicines, persons and machine parts. It is loss-making in strict accounting and kept up for prestige and as a signal system; other aerial companies also hold masts.
Archcliffe Yard
Archcliffe, under the western cliff at Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4350Not one dockyard but a cluster of private works on the western side of Dover laid against Crown ground: a stone graving dock owned by five non-shipwright interests, hauling slips, mast and sail lofts, smithies, pump shop, ropewalk and chandlers, plus the licensed timber quay.
Argent Basin Company
Over the Horizon c. 4560–4601 · no moreThe defunct fourth charter house of the mining phase, founded by the assay brothers, which pursued ore concessions with assay guards, sappers, mule columns and hired marines, and a technical culture that raised engineers nearly to the rank of captains.
Baths of Saint Cordelia
London Since c. 4450A medicinal and respectable bath house of warm stone, mineral water, separate hours and quiet attendants, recommended by physicians.
The Black Buckle
River Armourers' Lane · London Since c. 4550Known for practical pistols, expedition locks, waterproof cases and repairs that ask no questions.
Black Gull Auction Rooms
near King's Basin · London Since c. 4500Auction rooms that make a public business of the collector traffic in relics, saint-metal and condemned apparatus.
Blackdown Colliery Company
Blackdown · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4500The company that owns Blackdown's ground and rows, employs every adult, runs the shop, pays the chapel and keeps the road; its office is landlord, employer and shop together.
Blue Kiln
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4402The Cambridge fire-work yard for refractory work, treated clays and compounded substances, never let go cold; its day-books, running back to 4402, are the most complete industrial record in Britannia.
Blue Lamp Baths
London Since c. 4550A bath house advertising foreign steam, stronger massage, later hours and private rooms and introductions.
Bonded Rows
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450The bonded warehouses of Sarrum and their factors, who hold standing sealed parcels under warrants that describe parcels, not contents, on the principle that a parcel is never opened.
Britannian factory at Blanchefleur
Blanchefleur, Lyonnais · Over the Horizon Since c. 4320A merchants' undertaking three hundred years old: a street of four warehouses, a counting-house and a chapel at Blanchefleur, where Britannian factors buy, sell, receive and vouch for people on behalf of houses at home. It is older than the consular house and is not British sovereign ground.
Britannic Deepworks Company
Sarrum (private receiving ground) · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4550A London-directed chartered company holding the principal deep-mineral concessions around Sarrum, letting much of the extraction to subcontractors; it keeps a private receiving mast off the Blackdown road.
Cambridge skyship yards
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4500The Cambridge aerial yards that build and certify lift chambers, frames, anchor gear, mast fittings and instruments, employing some six hundred hands under painted safety lines.
Cold Market
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4500The Cambridge market handling worked flint, specialist clays, refractory stone, imported material and posted prices for creature parts, with a dozen or so examiners appointed by the Collegium and paid by the market.
Coldwell storage houses
chalk cellarage at Coldwell · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450The bonded granaries and fodder stores under the chalk, a formal institution governed with the drover courts. Goods enter under warrant and are released against notes that pass as coin from Wetherslade to Cambridge.
Crown Meridian
bonded granaries and stations of the outer sea · Over the Horizon Since c. 4525One of the four charter houses of the outer sea, risen from victualling reform. It holds ports by feeding them: bonded granaries, exemplary warehouse books, lending to weak governors, farming customs and making rivals depend on its schedule.
Davenant's sale rooms
London Since c. 4550Sale rooms dealing in recovered antiquities with sale-room ceremony.
Deepcut Company
The Deepcut, in Hartfell's country · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4500The largest single working in the High South, quarrying freestone and the realm's only certified machine-stone, with a company hamlet, chapel and store. It holds a working lease from a party it pays and does not name.
Dover packet service
Dover (Camber Quay) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4400The nine to thirteen fast packets working the crossing from Dover to Blanchefleur, carrying mails, passengers and light valuable freight. Each hull is divided into sixty-fourths held by masters, Dover houses, London houses, small holders, a charity and, in three hulls, the pilots' fund; the owners jointly fill the Keeper's office.
Dover ropewalk
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4350The largest formal employer of women at Dover, paying them eleven parts in twenty of the men's rate for the same measured yardage.
East Carriers' Exchange
Assay Bridge, Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4250The exchange at Assay Bridge that brokers the wagon and storage traffic without which the Cambridge schools would starve.
Fourteen Fires
London Since c. 4570A tavern remembered for stew, noise and a rough safety that cannot quite be guaranteed.
Freight conferences
the capital · Britannia Since c. 4450Unpublished agreements between the owners on a lane about rates, sailings and division of the trade, described as the most effective institution in British commerce that no statute mentions.
Gant and Rook Hoisting
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4570A subcontractor maintaining cranes and pit winders for two rival principals.
Glassmere
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4150The Cambridge yard for glass, lens and sealed vessels, and the market where essence and creature parts are lawfully bought and sold, with vaults for keeping essence.
Guild Hall
Black Stone, Sarrum (holds the four acres of the spring) · Sarrum and Its County Since 4482The standing association of Sarrum's transport and maintenance companies (carriers' masters, the wharf company, tramroad owners, engine houses), constituted in 4482 to maintain the four transport roads, the tramroad, the wharf gear and the cistern fabric by direct payment. It has never fixed a price.
Harrow Plate and Rivet
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4570A subcontractor making ordinary ironwork for White Falcon that never sees the finished aerial pieces.
Ironmere mining company
Ironmere · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4500The company working the Ironmere lode, which sealed a level in 4597 on a stated ground of exhaustion, abandoned the lode eleven weeks later and still works a poorer second lode.
Kentish growers' storing association
Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4617A current association of apple growers that stores crops together so small growers can hold them until prices improve. It has run four years and follows three failed direct-selling associations.
Lantern houses
the Near Coast · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450Commercial bodies that keep lights for profit under contract to syndicates and merchant houses, and are among the readiest employers of foreigners on that coast.
Lantern Ledger Office
Britannia Since c. 4200An office whose clerks deal in relics; more than one witch-hunter memorandum has accused them of caring too much for valuation and too little for holiness.
London presses
London · London Since c. 4250The London printing houses which jointly issued the Common Shelf of 4519 A.C., the first authorised, corrected and uniform editions priced for any household shelf.
Mercy Vale Chemical Works
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560A subcontractor preparing washes and furnace reagents that it is forbidden by contract to sell elsewhere.
Mereby's
Fleet Street · London Since c. 4550Fleet Street bookseller's rooms that double as a rendezvous, moving sermons, maps, prints, pamphlets, auction lists and under-the-counter titles.
Merefield
Unknown Since c. 4025A regional employer that pays for stolen grain, mill fraud, disputed seed, vanished tenant teams and escorts in the weeks when barns are fullest.
New Lode Partnership
the New Lode · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560A contractor working deep-mineral extraction let by Britannic Deepworks.
River navigation company
the river from the estuary to Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4200The company that maintains the county's river navigation and charges at the locks; the cheapest carriage in Kent, used for stone, timber, coal, grain, paper, brick and hops.
Rose Sugar House
London Since c. 4550A confectioner sending preserved peel, sugared violets, travelling sweets and wedding boxes into fashionable households.
Saint Aldwyn Engine Company
Sarrum (private receiving ground) · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4525A chartered company keeping the largest Enginemead works and the pumps, winders and sealed green-coal engines that make the deep shafts possible; it has a private works mast by its outer engine compound.
Saint Corvin Navigation and Colonial
Saint Corvin’s Haven and its other havens · Over the Horizon Since c. 4560The charter house built by a packet magnate's widow on harbour religion, quarantine law and relic traffic: pilot chapels, protected enclaves, patronage of saint feasts and the cultivation of local treaty elites. It holds and victuals Saint Corvin's Haven on the southern run.
Sarrum and London Line Company
principal board in London · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4565The Crown-licensed company that built and runs the ninety-one-mile line from Enginemead to the capital, opened in part from 4540 and finished in 4574, carrying high-value and strategic freight at four to eleven times the barge rate. Its licence, garrison, arrest powers and rates are reviewed every seven years.
The Silver Measure
London Since c. 4560Sells jewellery, mourning silver, watch chains, devotional lockets and old-looking rings favoured by Gloam youth.
Southbank Preserving Works
Southbank, London · London Since c. 4590Beatrice Sallowe's preserving works, showing the industrial face of old necessities: meat, fish, broth and prepared suppers made portable for barracks, ships, colonial depots and winter towns.
Stonecourt
Cambridge (with its quarry workings) · The High South Since c. 4150Cambridge's largest working complex and employer, where machine-stone is dressed, cut and first proved, with its own quarry workings.
Thornycroft registries
London Since c. 4200Registries named among the lawful channels by which relics and artefacts enter London.
The Three Needles
London Since c. 4550The fashionable tailor's sign most often copied by cheaper shops.
Westmere Droves
Unknown Since c. 4550A cattle-droving concern associated with David Harnett, whose supply makes him as important to urban appetite as many lords in Parliament.
Wharf company
the Long Wharf, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4325The company holding the wharf and the Enginemead sheds, which stand on unplanned old coal working. It has offered eleven pounds since 4574 for information closing an entry into the Rows and has never raised the sum.
White Dock Tin Stores
White Dock, London · London Since c. 4450A tinned-food concern supplying portable meat, fish, broth and prepared suppers for barracks, ships, colonial depots and winter towns.
White Falcon Metals and Aerial
Sarrum (private receiving ground) · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4525The chartered company holding the chief contracts for light iron and other treated structural materials used in flying ships; it keeps the White Falcon Receiving Mast with an inspected store for treated members.
White Furnace Row
Northern edge of Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4125A sealed workyard where rejected machine-stone and condemned lift chambers are ground under warrant, double witness and independent weighing, reconciled against the Register; it also has a metal foundry side.
White Hart at Barrow Ash
Barrow Ash · The High South Since c. 4300An inn that stores sealed parcels unopened and keeps a book of depositor, collector and mark.
White Salt Exchange
represented at Dover · Britannia Since c. 4350A realm-wide exchange taking contracts for curing salt, sulphur and preservation stock moving through the southern harbour belt.
Whitfleet Fisheries
Unknown Since c. 4550A fishery associated with John Cresswell, whose supply makes him as important to urban appetite as many lords in Parliament.
Court & law 28
Articles arbitration panel
Sarrum and Its County Since 4494The arbitration provided by the Articles of the Halls: three men drawn by lot from halls not party to a dispute, sitting within fourteen days, with power to make an award that the halls enforce against their own members.
Chalk Wold Water Court
Sits four times a year at Sarrum and twice at Oxford · The High South Since 4193A court found nowhere else in Britannia, constituted in 4193 to hear the movement of water through the chalk: fouling, diversion, blocked bournes, sinkhole burial and the siting of middens and tanneries. Its joint bench of two drover justices, a chapter proctor and (since 4534) a non-voting Collegium examiner is the only table where the archbishopric and the Collegium sit together.
Church courts
Britannia Since c. 3500The ecclesiastical courts, which hear sacrilege, including taking anything from a church ruin or consecrated ground.
Coroner's office of the coast
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The coroner for the Dover stretch of coast, who keeps the only systematic record of people who went into the water, with his own terms for cases that are not drowning: found bloodless, found hardened, found part.
County assize (High South)
Sarrum (quarterly) · The High South Since c. 4110The Crown's criminal court for the region, hearing felonies over the whole county but only what somebody troubles to bring, perhaps two hundred cases a year.
Court of Ash
Qadis · Over the Horizon Since c. 3800At Qadis sits the court that judges dead ships and tainted cargo. It is convened the same day a matter arises, and the pilot is heard before the owner. Not treaty but standing agreement makes its condemnations binding in every port of the western crescent, and custom carries them to the central ports besides. Condemnation at Qadis is condemnation everywhere; clearance there is clearance at Qadis, and does not of itself clear the cargo anywhere else.
Drover courts of Sarrum
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4150Four open-air courts of three elected drover justices, a clerk and the roll, hearing encroachment, water, straying and standings with the enforcement of about forty road officers carrying brass rods. They keep the Rolle of the Drove at Barrow Combe and also govern the bonded storage houses and enforce winter contracts.
Harbour court (syndic ports)
Near-Coast syndic harbours · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The syndicate's court, which sits on fixed days, hears its own people first and foreigners last, and decides chiefly whether the port's trade is served. Anybody may commence a matter there for a small fee, which detains the goods concerned.
Harrowgate Assize
Harrowgate (court house at the bridge foot) · The Northern Marches Since c. 4100The whole of the realm's law in the March, sitting at Harrowgate four times a year: twice by the county justices and twice by a justice riding the northern circuit from Westminster (the Hilary sitting often fails in snow). It hears felony, debt, inheritance and above all boundary disputes, decided on bounding books and a rule of four witnesses from at least three households.
Harrowgate Gaol
Harrowgate, at the bridge foot beside the court house · The Northern Marches Since c. 4120The town's eleven-cell gaol, run by a gaoler paid by prisoners' fees, holding those awaiting the assize. It also holds, 'at the sheriff's pleasure', people brought in from the districts in conditions nobody can describe and who have committed no offence.
Kent assize
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4125The twice-yearly assize for the county, part of the Crown's ordinary apparatus in Kent. It hears complaints brought by liberty corporations when a Crown hull enters their ground.
Kent quarter sessions
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4125The county's magistrates sitting together at Maidstone, handling ordinary crime and much administration: setting the county rate, ordering bridges, licensing, overseeing the gaol and hearing settlement appeals.
Liberty courts
Deal and the eastern liberties · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The courts and bailiffs of Kent's coastal liberties, which hear more disputes about boat shares than anything else.
Lion Tower Prison
Lion Tower Precinct, High City · London Since c. 4100A stern upper custodial fortress for political prisoners, dangerous occult offenders, military traitors, sensitive witnesses and prisoners whose public handling would embarrass the realm, held under superior warrant.
Lyonnais banner courts
Lyonnais · Over the Horizon Since c. 4100The older jurisdiction of Lyonnais, beyond its commercial courts, where outcomes turn on who stands behind whom.
Maidstone county gaol
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4200The county gaol holding all of Kent's serious custody: debtors, those awaiting trial, the sentenced and the condemned, with separate debtors' and felons' sides. Built for sixty and holding ninety-one.
Marcher sessions
The Northern Marches Since c. 4200The local criminal courts of the march, whose rolls and books record prosecutions for unlicensed practice, theft and unlawful entry to closed ground.
Marshalsea Prison
Southbank · London Since c. 4100A prison of the lower civic economy, taking debtors, fraud cases, civil prisoners, embarrassed petitioners and lesser political nuisances.
Molleville banner court
Molleville · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200Molleville is the region's assize town, and any banner court of consequence sits there; this is the one that does. Land, inheritance, debt and violence among those of its allegiance are what it decides, as banner courts do.
Newgate Gaol
the Commons · London Since c. 4075The great civic prison of London, holding common criminals, the condemned, debt-wrecked men and those awaiting trial, sentence or transfer.
Oxford chapter court
Halden Close / the cathedral precinct, Oxford · The High South Since c. 3950The ecclesiastical court of the Oxford chapter, dealing with rite, burial and the discipline of the clergy; searchers commit accused persons to it and it prosecutes the forbidden practices villages report.
Rougebray harbour court
Rougebray · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400The harbour court of the Red banner city, which hanged four men after the Rougemere incident of 4588 and declared the matter closed.
Sarrum assize
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400The county assize, the only royal court in Sarrum, sitting four times a year for four days and hearing perhaps two hundred cases a year prepared by the council's clerk and the halls' prosecutors.
Sarrum hall courts
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400The courts of the Sarrum guild halls, to which the hall bands are sworn.
Soot Court
Porto Cenere · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300Porto Cenere's court for its soot law, which forbids moving the yellow dust into the water, through certain streets or aboard on clothing. It sits continuously and weekly in public, has summary powers over cargo, and also decides when the ash-farmed terraces are abandoned or reoccupied.
Treaty court of Qadis
Qadis · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450A treaty court sitting at Qadis, before which the testimony of a Black Banner captain was taken down in 4607; treaty-court depositions elsewhere preserve local parties' views of their bargains with British holdings.
Woodmote of Coldharbour
Coldharbour · The High South Since c. 4000The oldest court still sitting in the belt, with jurisdiction over the hangers and everything in them. Four verderers elected for life by the hanger freeholders, unpaid and unremovable, sit three times a year; sixty woodwards enforce in the wood and regarders ride the bounds every third year.
Wychwood Woodmote
Wychwood, under the Lord Oak at a crossing of rides · The Northern Marches Since c. 4200The open-air court of Wychwood, meeting four times a year under the Lord Oak, with four verderers holding for life as judges, regarders who walk the wood each September and present its condition, woodwards over particular walks, and agisters who take the pannage money. It hears cutting, pannage, charcoal and timber matters, and its oral decisions are entered in short rolls.
Crown & government 45
Admiralty
London · Britannia Since c. 4100The naval authority of the Crown. It prints such sea hazards as can be verified, and its standing instructions with them: how the great sea creatures are to be avoided, and the Basin fair-weather practice, for in the Basin, which is the inner sea, a calm fine morning is held more dangerous than a storm, and on such a morning ships hold back their departures, sound their bells and keep off any quay the harbour has closed. In its own water it puts down rovers; in season it convoys; and it keeps lists of foreign officers, Admiral Ingrid Skall among them.
Bailiffs of the hundreds
the five hundreds of the march (Northern Hundred, Gant Hundred, Rigg Hundred, Mereton and others) · The Northern Marches Since c. 4200The five bailiffs of the hundreds are rent collectors and keepers of small works. They administer the Crown's bounty of two shillings a head and keep the five bounty books.
The Board
Britannia Since c. 4110An unnamed Crown board to which the Dover customs house answers and which posts its officers; the revenue service works alongside it. It has also proposed enlarging the pilots' roll and rebuilding the Beacon Rock light.
Board of Trade
Britannia Since c. 4110Commerce is the business of this Crown board. In his Commercial Papers its Secretary maintains that trade at a distance sells, in truth, one commodity, which is order, that is, reliable and predictable dealing; and there he works out the arithmetic whereby goods carried over the sea outweigh those carried through the sky.
Britannian consular house at Blanchefleur
Blanchefleur, Lyonnais · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450The British consular office at Blanchefleur, one of several in the principal Near-Coast harbours. It holds a strongroom, chapel rooms, clerks, an interpreter and the files that make British births, deaths, detentions, crew disputes and certifications legible on both shores.
Britannian legation at Blanchefleur
Blanchefleur (attached to the White court) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4500Britannia's legation to the White banner court, one of the legations kept in each great banner city. Its resident carries Westminster instructions and deals with compact interpretation, arrests above harbour jurisdiction, naval access, banking guarantees and ceremonial quarrels.
British consular service
consular posts abroad, including on the Near Coast, in the Nieuwlanden and in Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400Britain's consuls abroad write despatches, keep inherited letter books, certify deaths and keep the register the dock chapels read from. Near-Coast consulates register arriving men, state the arms rule, publish the local calendar and keep a glossary and a list of banners that have lost their ports.
British legations
foreign court cities · Over the Horizon Since c. 4350Britain's diplomatic missions at foreign courts, which negotiate the aerial articles governing passage over foreign ground and treat foreign objections (burial grounds, palaces, shrines) with care.
British officium at the Sepulchrum
the Sepulchrum, on the consecrated cliff-isle above the harbour of Civitas Murata Omnium Sanctorum · Over the Horizon Since c. 4050The permanent office Britannia keeps inside the Sepulchrum, where much of the business of faith is settled before it reaches any king.
Chancery
London · Britannia Since c. 4070The Crown's office of seals, records and legal procedure. In 4271 A.C., under Edmund III, it required every roll, register and issued copy to be written in one settled spelling, the Standard of Rolls and Registers.
Chart Office
the capital · Britannia Since c. 4300Britannia's hydrographic office, which compiles, grades and corrects the realm's charts from ships' logs, field surveys, consular despatches, mission letters and foreign charts obtained by purchase or exchange. Its doctrine is that a chart states its own uncertainty, and it keeps a family of marks for ground that is 'reported and not recommended' whose meaning it never prints.
Coast commission
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4610A commission whose surveyor attempted a survey of the Kentish cliffs.
Commons Committee on Metropolitan Readiness
London Since c. 4610A committee before which General Ashcroft gave evidence on the Army in London.
Convocation of the Ducal Estate
Britannia Since c. 4070An ancient body in which, in ceremonial theory, the dukes of the realm are gathered to consider grave questions and offer high counsel to the sovereign. It is now largely inactive, overshadowed by the House of Lords and direct negotiation among the Great Houses.
County Shrievalty
The county town (sheriff's higher office) · The Northern Marches Since c. 4200The sheriff's administration of the county containing the March, with its surveyed shrievalty line; the higher office sits at the county town and an under-sheriff's staff works from Harrowgate. It issues writs, assesses taxes and makes returns.
The Crown
Westminster, London · Britannia Since 4063The summit authority of Britannia: it gives seal, charter, high warrant, levy and high judgement, stands over the armed realm and the Great Houses, and is the name in which the ministries act. It rules through layered arrangements rather than direct command, tolerating local lords, councils and customs it cannot replace.
Crown customs (High South)
on the river and at the railhead · The High South Since c. 4120The Crown customs establishment in the belt, the one Crown office there that works well because it attempts nothing the belt objects to.
Crown revenue establishment (High South)
The High South Since c. 4120The Crown's revenue office in the belt.
Dover customs house
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4300The Crown office at Dover holding the warrant to examine, detain and charge goods; the only body in the port whose authority comes from outside it. It has nine officers who stay for life, a collector, a comptroller, tide-waiters and boatmen, and three interpreters between them covering four languages.
Examiners of the capital
Southwark office · London Since c. 4500It is in London that this office examines persons for entry on the exclusion roll. Two telltales are looked for: a malformity that can be seen, and a report that the person has shown a power. Both go into the same column, and it is against that column that permits are issued.
Exchequer
Exchequer Steps, Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4070The Crown's treasury, which has costed replacing the line garrison with Crown troops and costed governing the county, each time deciding against.
Excise
Kent hop kilns · Britannia Since c. 4150The Crown excise, more present in Kent than anywhere in the realm because hops are taxed on dried weight at the kiln, so an officer stands inside a private undertaking for six weeks a year.
Heralds
Britannia Since c. 4065The body through which commissions pass, named only in the account of the Crown's unnamed reserve.
Home Office
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4110The ministry's department of internal order, county reporting, certain policing arrangements, public emergency coordination and embarrassing domestic questions that begin as local failures and end at Westminster.
House of Commons
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4101The representative chamber that gathers the burdens of cities and towns upward — tolls, bridges, burial, grain, paving, ferries, watch costs and spirit obligations — into speech the greater powers cannot wholly ignore. It does not govern as a sovereign parliament.
House of Lords
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4065The chamber in which the Great Houses sit; it gives aristocratic continuity, patronage and practical sponsorship to the realm and is where broad rule, dynastic myth and sponsorship of councils, charters, ports and foundries meet.
London Customs House
Lower Thames, London · London Since c. 4101The capital's customs service, which counts, stamps, taxes, inspects, delays and classifies goods, judges whether southern-harbour seals still hold, and handles licensed direct Thames arrivals.
Lord Chamberlain
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4063The Crown office concerned with metropolitan admission and precedence.
Lord Treasurer
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4101The Crown's high finance office; its lesser men wait in Edmund Square for instructions.
Metropolitan Petitions office
Westminster · London Since c. 4150An office where private grievance is shaped into petition and civic paper.
The Ministry
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4615The present government of Britannia under Prime Minister Sir Alured Marchmont, acting in the King's name. It is not a harmonious cabinet: Marchmont depends on Vane for money, Mortaine for military obedience, Thornycroft for foreign policy, Rooke for domestic warning and Bale for legality.
Ministry of Works and Communications
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4125The Crown office for major roads, bridges, public works, guarded masts and strategic construction, and for the awkward interface between metropolitan ambition and local jurisdiction.
Office of Season and Public Reckoning
Britannia Since c. 4090The office of the Royal Ministry of Survey, Roads, and Provision through which the Crown declares the season-runs.
Outer service
the stations of the outer routes · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400The realm's long-service establishment on the outer stations and routes, often second-generation and marrying within itself, with its own registers, customs and records of failed reliefs.
Parliament
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4101The body before which the aerial boards have laid projections, all wrong in the same direction according to the shipping interest; its committees hear the sea-versus-sky evidence.
Royal Household
Buckingham Palace (the Tower) · London Since c. 4065The dynastic household around Buckingham and the sovereign compounds, with its service belts, mews, chapels, kitchens and guarded courts.
Royal Ministry of Survey, Roads, and Provision
Britannia Since c. 4110The Crown ministry that declares the season-runs on the crown side, issuing watch notices and rising proclamations.
Sheriff of the High South
The High South Since c. 4110The Crown's sheriff and under-sheriffs in the belt, occupied chiefly with the assizes and process; requisition is exercised through the sheriff and served on the hundred.
Tower Stores
London Since c. 3975A long-standing stores office whose old tallies and rolls are still cited on inventories, salvage rights and missing recoveries.
Treasury
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4065The Crown's higher treasury machinery, controlling Treasury assent, borrowing, extraordinary war expenditure, subsidies to strategic works and the management of Crown credit. It has an institutional life older and more stubborn than any one ministry.
War Office
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4105The civilian machinery of mobilisation, fortification, magazines, military contracts and Crown-land defence, headed by the Secretary of State for War.
Westminster Aerial Yard
the High City · London Since c. 4525London's diplomatic, noble and official skyport of envoys, rare cargo, sealed correspondence and expensive travel.
Westminster office
Westminster · Britannia Since c. 4150The Westminster office over British legations and consular houses, which has hanged nobody for consular corruption but has quietly recalled a good many.
Westminster Office for Civic Information
Westminster · London Since c. 4550An office at Westminster named only as the source of the port-reeve's remarks on the lower Thames.
Westminster provisioning board
Westminster · London Since c. 4450A Westminster board concerned with provisioning, named only as the setting of Hester Vale's testimony on the belts of order.
Cult & forbidden 1
Foreign institution 21
Almanac Boards
the eastern courts · Over the Horizon Since c. 3500The permanent, salaried offices of the eastern courts that fix the proper days for audiences, voyages and works.
Blanchefleur harbour commissioner at Dover
Dover (three rooms above a wine warehouse near the western quay) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4475The harbour commissioner and commercial clerk Blanchefleur keeps at Dover, since the banner cities keep no embassies there. It handles claims, detained cargo, dead or missing Lyonnais sailors, and explains Dover's lawful but unfamiliar actions to White owners.
Blanchefleur harbour syndicate
Blanchefleur quays · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The eleven-man syndicate that governs Blanchefleur harbour day to day; each seat is tied to ownership of a defined piece of quay. Like other harbour syndics it licenses, fines, keeps a treasury and a court, and under its compact may hang a man for an offence against the harbour.
Blanchefleur town council
Blanchefleur · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The council governing the town behind Blanchefleur's quays, separate from both the harbour syndics and the White banner court.
Blue banner of Azuronne
Azuronne · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The banner court of Azuronne, the largest and least liked of the four colour cities. Like every banner court it is an alliance of kin, lenders, captains, dependent suburbs and sacred houses around a dominant house.
Crecques banner court
Crecques (sits in the inn) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400The banner court of the small free-trade town up a creek, which sits in an inn; the town has no syndicate of consequence and deals with the Kentish beaches by word only.
Holy Seat
Insula Sancti Georgii Defensoris Fidei (off Italy): Civitas Murata Omnium Sanctorum, the Walled City of All Saints · Over the Horizon Since c. 3564The far centre of the aligned churches, whose blessing is thought necessary for the full gravity of office to rest on the greater clergy. It is a port before it is a shrine, with harbour law, outer batteries, quarantine chapels and harbour courts, and every aligned church keeps an emissary and officium inside the Sepulchrum complex.
House of the Sealed Lantern
Santa Aurelia · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The quarantine house at Santa Aurelia that deals with whatever quarantine finds. It keeps its own records and officers and admits nobody who is not of it.
Korenbruck port committee
Korenbruck · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400A port committee at Korenbruck that engages parties to watch a bonded yard through the closed season and report to it alone.
Lyonnais mission
Lyonnais Court and embassy streets · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400London's shorthand for the Near Coast presence, which is in fact maintained separately by the four banner systems Azuronne, Blanchefleur, Rougebray and Jaunecourt through distinct houses, agents or delegations.
Noble Council of Valmora
Valmora · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The council of noble families under which Valmora is governed, a harbour-state that trusts wealth, hired steel and noble display, buying pilots, watchers and quarantine officers from other ports.
Pruss House
Pruss House · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400A Prussian presence in London's foreign quarter carrying technical and military gravity.
Pruss hydrographic service
Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400The Pruss chart service, whose surveys of the northern and eastern coasts are admired by the British office; its charts mark consecrated ground, quarantine stations and chapter-land boundaries as a matter of course.
Pruss ministries
Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The Pruss state departments, which run each harbour as a department of state with state pilots, sealed bonded yards, fixed published dues and precedence granted on written grounds, and which also run roads, regiments and the lightning-current workshops.
Red banner of Rougebray
Rougebray · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The banner court of Rougebray, which has the deepest credit on the shore and the worst reputation for keeping to an arrangement.
Sluice Court
the Nieuwlanden (sits in a barge moored at the lock under dispute) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4100The government of the Nieuwlanden in every matter touching water, sitting on a barge moored at the work in dispute. Its bench is rostered from frontage-holders of each parish; it decides obligations rather than rights and orders physical remedies before money.
State workshops of Grossenlicht
Grossenlicht upon the Weissstrom, Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4500Pruss state workshops where insulated coils, treated copper and arc trials were gathered into a method of controlling lightning current; ministry-run, staffed by examined men, and also treating the metal of Pruss firearms.
Watch of the Last Bank
the last bank of the eastern Nieuwlanden parishes · Over the Horizon Since c. 4220The only paid public employment in the Nieuwlanden: tower men appointed for life from a few families, who count and record what is heard beyond the bank in a book running back four centuries without a gap. The bank's inspectors are likewise appointed, and the office has never been left vacant.
White banner of Blanchefleur
Blanchefleur (the White City) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4250The banner court of Blanchefleur, the oldest colour city and the one holding the most sacred houses; the ordinary British packet lands there. The War of the White Banner Alliance (4586–4593) over an attempted partition of the White position drew Britannia in, because White credit carried too much British paper.
Winter confederacy of the Northern Cities
the ship halls of the Northern Cities · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200Standing agreements between the Northern Cities on grain, escort, price and the sharing of loss, renewed in the dark months and sworn in the halls on the patron's day. It has assemblies, registers and custom but no sovereign, and it writes insurance guarantees, escort bonds and grain advances across the water.
Yellow banner of Jaunecourt
Jaunecourt · Over the Horizon Since c. 4250The banner court of Jaunecourt, the smallest colour city, which survives by being the one everybody else is willing to deal with.
Great House 20
House Alderton
Britannia Since c. 4070A Great House with interests in posting, long-haul carriage, escort contracts and keeping routes open; its correspondents know the county road south of Ketton Bar well and can sometimes find carts when Harrowgate cannot.
House Ashcombe
the western Weald and the timber country · Britannia Since c. 4065A ducal house whose interest in the western Weald and timber country is older in rank and broader in woodland than the Pikes'. It works through foresters, woodwards, leases, timber contracts and long estate policy rather than presence.
House Ashdown
Sarrum County · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4300The newest and least ornamental of the four Great Houses, whose power is credit: stores, advances and disciplined correspondence exercised through the Council of the Banks rather than land. It began as a provisioning concern that lent to the Crown in the treaty wars and was paid in charters.
House Beaumont
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4100The Great House that holds Cambridge, its territory measured in places of assay rather than acres; in practice the ducal face of lawful artificery. Its revenue is fees, shares in licensed benches and certification endowments, so its income rises when the realm builds and falls when it is afraid.
House Bellamy
Foxhall House, Blackfriars quays · Britannia Since c. 4100A Great House of rivers, customs, bridge dues and freight order, profiting from the way water creates jurisdictions.
House Corbin
Crowspire House · Britannia Since c. 4150A Great House of sea law, signalling, convoy custom, coastal observation and guarded movement; the Corbins are named wherever sea law grows hard.
House Crowhurst
Britannia Since c. 4100A Great House known for hard construction and early bad-weather provision, touching the upland through stores, quarrying, wall stone, winter road practice and occasional blockhouse repairs.
House Fane
Lambeth · Britannia Since c. 4050A Great House close to ecclesial accommodation, cathedral patronage, church dues and the politics by which religion becomes administration — neither a clerical house nor a lay imitation of one.
House Halden
Oxford · The High South Since c. 3950One of the four ducal houses of the belt, holding Oxford and the valleys from Halden Close, where noble hall, chapter court, granary yard and knights' lodgings stand within one wall. It owns the great tithe barns and granary yard, keeps its own bailiffs on house land, and is understood to keep the capital's bread cheap.
House Harcourt
Westminster · London Since c. 3975A Great House whose power is strongest where chancery, seals, legal endurance, old service and Westminster access overlap; one of the houses most deeply embedded in the capital, with clients in law, record, bridge administration and older Crown offices.
House Hartfell
Sarrum County · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4100The Great House that holds Hartfell Chase, an unmortgaged franchise of eleven thousand acres with its own officers and courts, and is custodian of county right: hay, horse, fodder and drover law. It owes the Bank Council nothing, which is why associations, drovers and pit villages deal with it.
House Mereford
Britannia Since c. 4200The house that held the bridge after which Mereford Cross is named four centuries ago; its old local holding is dead and the town has had nothing to do with its present estates since.
House Mortaine
Britannia Since c. 4075A severe Great House long associated with custody, secure entry, prisons, fortified compounds and magazines.
House Ravenscar
Britannia Since c. 4100A Great House of exposed heights, storm stations, northern approaches and difficult signals, whose patronage has moved into aerial observation and high-ground communications.
House Redmarsh
Britannia Since c. 4150A Great House associated across Britannia with drainage, reed rights and flood storage; its factors buy reed, finance bank repair and sometimes guarantee ferry improvements in the March's wet country.
House Thornycroft
London Since c. 4010A family that, London gossip claims, made its first hard fortune financing independent descents for seals, plates and machine fragments during the Stairs Wars; Sir Julian Thornycroft came from the paper, bonded-storage and maritime-commercial world.
House Vane
London Since c. 4150A house named as a rival of House Halden whenever money seems to outrank the fear of hunger, and as a commercial ally of House Ashdown.
House Whitecroft
Britannia Since c. 4100A Great House identified with pilgrimage roads, hospitals, public benefaction and charitable foundations, using conspicuous piety to make ambition useful.
House Wychmere
Britannia Since c. 4100A Great House associated with old boundary knowledge, minor waters, woodland settlement and interpreting old surveys; its money backs antiquarian work, ride proposals and timber claims at Wychwood's edge.
The Royal House
Westminster, London · Britannia Since 4063First of the traditionally counted houses; its competence is sovereignty itself — warrant, court, diplomacy, high command and a royal household large enough to turn personal access into political fact.
Guild & craft 31
Almazira pilot lodge
Almazira · Over the Horizon Since c. 3800The lodge of Almazira's pilots, which maintains the Chapel of the Last Breath directly from its fees.
Basin pilot lodges
the ports of the Dead Sea Basin · Over the Horizon Since c. 3800Old pilot corporations of the Basin, with their own chapels, patrons and books of seasons, bell codes and standing instructions. Pilots are paid before the harbour establishment, often before the governor, and the lodges are treated almost as sacred property: officers do not enter them and they cannot be taxed.
Blue Kiln Fellowship
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4450The guild bloc speaking for kilnwrights, furnace hands and the most dangerous fired-material trades; it pays burial money and widows' relief and places orphaned sons in apprenticeships.
Burial Supply Guild
London Since c. 4200A guild of the money city serving burial supply, one of the houses of authority ordinary Londoners can name.
Carriers' Hall
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400The Sarrum hall of the carrying trade, which keeps a school for members' children.
Chandlers' Brotherhood
London Since c. 4200A brotherhood of chandlers counted among the recognisable houses of authority in guild London.
Colliers' Hall
Blackdown pits, Sarrum county · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400The colliers' guild of the pits, which pays on a death underground, asks nothing of a man beyond competence and keeps its own workings books. It walls stopped roads, entering them with a date and no reason.
Company of Soundings and Scales
Southwark and the lower Thames · Britannia Since c. 4250Supplies trained pilots, harbour measurers, convoy clerks and insurers, spreading from Southwark into the farther sea lanes.
Company of Surveyors
Britannia Since c. 4200A professional body giving route work, measures, site claims and recovery lines a recognised professional memory.
Dover pilots' roll
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since 4253The forty-one licensed pilots of the Kentish approaches, created by the settlement of 4253 after the Pilot Wars. Pilots are proposed, admitted and struck off only by the roll itself; each works his own stretch, and a pilot's refusal of a passage is absolute.
Dover quay gangs
Dover eastern quay, western quay and Archcliffe · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4200Standing parties of eleven to twenty hands, nine on the eastern quay and seven on the western, that hire and are paid as units by the tide. Each is a family or two intermarried; places pass by blood and marriage.
Dyers' Hall
Scour Lane, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400A small Sarrum hall whose dye works on Scour Lane discharge below the river's turn and are the main reason the drinkable line has crept upstream.
Elder Lodge
Crotan · Over the Horizon Since c. 3650The oldest pilot lodge of the Basin, on the poor island of Crotan, whose book runs back further than any harbour's.
Enginewrights' Hall
Enginemead, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560The engine trade of Sarrum, which did not exist a century ago, was admitted to the Articles in 4576 and now sets its own rates; it keeps a school for members' children and pays sickness more generously than other halls.
Fellowship of the Four Roads
Oxford · The High South Since c. 4150The collective body of Oxford's carriers, ostlers and hostellers.
Free-port yard fraternities
the four free ports (Weisshafen, Albrecht Quay, Korenbruck, Nordwall) · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The fraternities of the repair yards, each with its own chapel, burial ground, book and launching observance; nothing of consequence is decided in Weisshafen without them being heard.
Fullers' Hall
Scour Lane, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4350The fulling trade of Sarrum, which cut the unnamed fifth channel under Fleecegate before the council existed. Its stoppage of 4551 led to the council shutting the conduits and to the Water Days.
Glassmere Company
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4200The guild bloc covering glasswrights, vessel makers, lens grinders and many of the containment craftsmen the prepared-material yards depend on.
Guild of Artificers
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4125The Cambridge craft guild that, with the organised trades, governs apprenticeship, recognised skill, customary demarcation, injury relief and the willingness of trained hands to take a job. It does not certify work.
Guild of River Factors
Britannia Since c. 4200Trains and certifies people whose work sits between counting desk and wet cargo: valuation, storage, spoilage, river carriage and bonded delivery.
Guild of the Long Censer
represented at Dover · Britannia Since c. 4250Moves incense, ward oils, embalming gums and ritual powders between churches, embalmers, exorcists, artificers and private buyers.
Halls of Sarrum
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since 4494The eleven trade guilds of Sarrum, bound to one another since 4494 by the Articles of the Halls, a thirty-nine-clause treaty covering demarcation, arbitration, the limits of hall bands, common charges and fourteen days' notice before a stoppage. They regulate trades and admitted members, run guild courts, keep armed hall bands, and prosecute interference with the Rows, conduits, railhead and wharf gear as capital offences.
Piling gangs
the Nieuwlanden · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The pile-driving crews who keep the staged timber towns of the Nieuwlanden standing. Membership is by apprenticeship and inheritance, and they are nearer to an order than a trade.
Pilot houses of Qadis
Qadis · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200The exacting pilot houses of Qadis, the strictest on the Basin, which take longer to license a man than any other.
River Lightermen
the Thames · London Since c. 4100The lightermen's body, counted among the recognisable houses of authority in guild London.
Staplers' Hall
Fleecegate, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400The Sarrum wool merchants whose factors buy the March's clip at Harrowgate, advance money against it and set a spring price the whole district plans against; the wool travels south to the High South.
Stonecourt Brotherhood
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4200One of Cambridge's organised trades which, with the Guild of Artificers, governs apprenticeship, skill, demarcation and injury relief.
Surveyors' Hall
London · Britannia Since c. 4400A surveyors' body named as the issuer of circulars; the circular quoted in this part describes chart-making as survey, compilation, engraving and correction, with correction paid from a vote that is always the first to be cut.
Weavers' Hall
the Weavers' hall, Fleecegate · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4175The oldest and largest of Sarrum's halls, some four thousand members across the seven wool trades. It grades the clip, sets standards, licenses fulling and dyeing, and controls the lead seal without which Sarrum cloth cannot be sold as such; it keeps a court of wardens, a treasury, a school, an almshouse, a chapel and a band.
White Dock Enginewrights
White Dock · Britannia Since c. 4150Wherever salt and damp wear heavy machinery out before its estimated time, this body stands guard over its tolerances, the habits of its upkeep and its good name.
White Furnace Row metal societies
White Furnace Row, Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4200Small metal-working societies dividing White Furnace Row, too small to dominate alone.
Hunters 4
Black Orchard Hounds
Britannia Since c. 4200A Crown-sanctioned fraternity of beast trackers, carrion-breakers and road hunters, attached to marches and to punitive rides.
Grey Nails of Kent
Bilsington (first, keeps the serjeant's book) and Eastwell · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4300A sworn lay witch-hunting order of sixty to ninety men in small parties, answerable only to their own serjeants, with no commission from Crown, church or any house. Called by parishes through word-of-mouth, they come within a day and a half, charge nothing, examine people rather than ground, and may crop, burn out or carry away those they judge responsible.
Saint Hester's Hounds
Unknown Since c. 4410A hunting company made famous by the Wychwood man-eater hunts of 4417 to 4419, whose field reputation was turned into charter and privilege.
Saint Thomas Witch-Finders
London Since c. 4400A witch-finding body whose field manual was issued in a London edition of 4449 A.C.
Inquiry & intelligence 1
Learned body 15
Cabinet of Recovered Mechanisms
off Southbank Foundry Row · London Since c. 4590A cabinet where engineers, physicians, assay men and antiquaries compare damaged devices against copied diagrams and half-remembered traditions.
Canterbury chapter school
Canterbury precinct · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 3900A grammar school endowed before the war and run by the Canterbury chapter, with places for a hundred and nine boys and, since a recent chapter decision, nineteen girls. It charges no fee to children from the city and the chapter's parishes, though entry depends on recommendation and family circumstances.
Geographical Society
London Since c. 4400A learned society whose president's addresses are quoted throughout on the shape and limits of British knowledge of the world; it keeps a journal in which returned travellers are quoted.
Hall of Curiosities
London Since c. 4450A semi-public, half educational and half acquisitive hall by which recovered matter is made safe enough for display.
Hall of Recovered Curiosities
London Since c. 4550A collection of recovered matter from London's ruins, kept by Beatrice Grey.
London Field Society
London · London Since c. 4550A London society whose papers include Gareth Fen's study of how ordinary districts respond to trouble.
Maidstone grammar school
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4250A grammar school controlled by the Maidstone corporation.
Oxford schools
Oxford · The High South Since c. 3800Oxford's foundations and halls: four principal foundations (the old law foundation, a theological one, one for sons of valley gentry, and a newer trade-endowed one) plus poorer lesser halls, each a walled close run by an elected head, bursar and fellows, with copying rooms and almonry schools.
Pearl River Lyceum
Lianzhou, on the Pearl River · Over the Horizon Since c. 3700An eastern learned institution at Lianzhou that was examining natural philosophers before Cambridge had a charter.
Sawston Balance Yard
Outside the walls of Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4450An aerial proving ground outside Cambridge for balance, loading and mast behaviour, used for work too experimental or sensitive to begin inside the town.
University of Cambridge
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4125One of the realm's two schools, the nearer to the March at a little over two hundred and thirty miles, and the last place northward with a through road worth the name.
University of London
London · London Since c. 4150A London university at which Helena Mary Voss lectured on scars, survivals and false beginnings.
Westminster Cabinet of Foreign Curiosities
Westminster · London Since c. 4450In this collection the appetite for recovered objects goes about in the decent dress of curation.
White Walls Assay Collegium
White Walls and assay courts, Cambridge · The High South Since 4192The certifying authority of Britannia: some ninety members in four grades (entrants, examiners, wardens and the Master of the Walls) who assay stone, instruments, materials and aerial lift chambers, publish refusals, and license and inspect the benches of Cambridge through their yard officers. It takes no house, town or Crown money and lives on fees.
Wold Ash antiquaries
Wold Ash · The High South Since c. 4560Antiquaries who have spent sixty years mapping the barrows of the high Wold, producing a plan, measurements and no theory anybody will defend.
Lesser house / family 26
Alkham family
Dover and Blanchefleur · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4450A Dover house that spreads across both shores without becoming a corporation, owning relationships rather than the most tonnage.
Bellmere
the Crowferry wet country · Unknown Since c. 4200The barony of Baron Edmund Bellmere, in the Crowferry country, where old practice is suffered under his eye. It is said that its riders once made terms with the power of the reed-beds west of the crossing before the passage there could be taxed honestly; and by those terms the westernmost beds are never cut, and on the first night of every flood a rider stands bareheaded at the water.
Blackmere earldom
the northern fringes · The Northern Marches Since c. 4100A northern earldom with older papers and larger claimed acreage than Keldwick but a thinner presence on the ground.
Cresswell family of Marlfield
Marlfield, in the estate ring · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4300One of the largest walled estates of the ring around Sarrum: a house, walled home farm, engine house and a model village of some sixty cottages with school, infirmary and resident chaplain, over three hundred people governed by its steward alone.
Fenner family of Highcroft
Highcroft, in the estate ring · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4550Family holding Highcroft, bought with guild money two generations from the halls.
Ferrylords
Staithes of Lantern Mere and the fen crossings · The Northern Marches Since c. 3950The fen's name for the three largest ferry-holding families—the Gedneys, Redhams and Wiggenhalls—who hold the crossings by ancient grant, a right to say who crosses coupled with a duty to carry the parish, priests, midwives, coffins and anyone answering a staithe bell.
Ganthwaites
The middle ground of Gant Fell, about eleven hundred feet · The Northern Marches Since c. 3550A settlement of four households and under thirty people on Gant Fell, keeping sheep and in every ordinary particular an upland family; they appear in the tithe book from its opening, marry within the upland and bury at Harrowgate.
Gedney family
The Harrowgate staithe · The Northern Marches Since c. 3950One of the three ferrylord families, holding the Harrowgate staithe and the long crossing of Lantern Mere to Mereton.
Godmersham family
the Stour valley and Wye · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4300A county name carrying weight around the Stour and Wye through generations of service to great households, tenancy, estate knowledge and local marriage.
Greyfen line
Lantern Fort · Unknown Since c. 4150An older baronial line at Lantern Fort, not counted among the magnates, whose title carries the fort, the adjoining manor, road dues on the old approach and the duty to provision the place when the Crown calls.
Halden Reckoning
A separate stone building at Halden Close, Oxford · The High South Since c. 4220House Halden's tithe and store office, staffed by house servants rather than churchmen. It counts intake, orders the filling and emptying of the great barns, and keeps a running estimate of how long the valleys and the capital can be fed, in three series of books.
Harrow family of Combe Royal
Combe Royal, in the estate ring · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4400Baronial family seated at Combe Royal, which keeps the best estate school in the belt.
Keldwick barony
the northern fringes · The Northern Marches Since c. 4450Half tamed, and northern, a barony whose claims stand large upon the register and are held on the ground only in part. Riders from the baron's household will be on a ridge before the shrievalty's are.
Marle family of White Barley Vale
White Barley Vale · The High South Since c. 4400A bound family holding the secular remnant of White Barley Vale under House Halden through the collateral line that inherited after Katherine Marle took vows. Prosperous barley ground whose mill water, malt contracts and old title papers make it consequential beyond its acreage.
Marr family
Dover and Port Leonis · Britannia Since c. 4300One of the maritime houses whose junior branches staff British consular houses abroad so the family has eyes on the quay.
Pikes of Wye
Wye · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150A registered line of eastern Kent, risen from estate reeves to an earldom (title granted 4276), and the most continuously resident noble household in the east. It holds much of the eastern county, an interest in three landings, the right of wreck on one stretch of foreshore, the advowson of eleven parishes and a bridge on the pilgrim road; it is not Kent's Great House.
Prowse family of Stourmead
Stourmead, in the estate ring · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4571Family holding Stourmead, the only estate of the eleven sold in living memory, bought by Sir Alured's father after the Bank Council's foreclosure of 4571.
Quire of Stone Oast
Stone Oast (fortified hall on the Wold) · The High South Since c. 4000One of the old Wold dignities, a free lord holding directly of the Crown and so free of the four Great Houses in law. Stone Oast is a fortified hall with an old tower, a gatehouse and a household watch.
Redd family
Britannia Since c. 4250One of the maritime houses whose junior branches staff British consular houses abroad so the family has eyes on the quay.
Redham family
Redham, the middle crossing · The Northern Marches Since c. 4000One of the three ferrylord families, holding the middle crossing and two staithes on the eastern holms.
Sallowmoor burning families
Sallowmoor, on the moor above the western hangers · The High South Since c. 4200Four charcoal-burning families, some ninety souls, who hold no land, pay the Woodmote for the cut and burn charcoal in the hangers from spring to autumn. They are the only people in the hangers at night.
Stonars of Sandwich
Sandwich · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150A borough family whose name has long sat in port offices, shipping accounts and municipal business in east Kent; not a House in the Westminster sense.
Tern family
Britannia Since c. 4350One of the maritime houses whose junior branches staff British consular houses abroad so the family has eyes on the quay.
Teynham estate
Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4200A Kentish landed estate whose steward records that nine parts in twenty of its rent roll are paid to addresses in London.
Vexley family
Vexley Hall, near King's Basin · London Since c. 4400A mercantile family that endowed Vexley Hall.
Wiggenhall family
The northern water and the coast passage · The Northern Marches Since c. 4300One of the three ferrylord families, holding the northern water and the coast passage—the least profitable and most dangerous crossing.
Mercenaries 14
Amber Brotherhood
the Northern Cities · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The trade fraternity with a fighting arm that moves amber along the amber road; it sells boarding discipline to lawful captains and half-lawful convoy lords alike.
Banner companies
the colour cities · Over the Horizon Since c. 4500Infantry who follow a banner's colour rather than a city, hired the length of the coast, carrying firearms and drilled with them.
Black Bucklers
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4590An outside mercenary company holding one of the council's smaller contracts for force.
Black Caps
Britannic Deepworks' green-coal stores and pit offices · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580The paid security band used by Britannic Deepworks at its green-coal stores and pit offices.
Blackwater Contract Fellowship
Over the Horizon Since c. 4576The charter house that does the work nobody will declare: collecting arrears, holding convoy routes and frightening doubtful ports into obedience, with contract pike, marine battalions, hired dragoons for inland port roads and yard crews trained to impose martial law on a quay within a day.
Brazen Dogs
Saint Aldwyn's engine halls, Enginemead · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580The paid security band retained by Saint Aldwyn Engine Company around its engine halls.
Brotherhood of Saint Jude's Escorts
Britannia Since c. 4250The respectable convoy tradition: escorts hired because a patron could learn who trained them, under whose seal they served, and whether they came back with both cargo and witnesses.
God's Chosen
Britannia c. 4400–c. 4450 · no moreA mercenary company remembered from the War of the Two Kings, made up of Afflicted veterans, outcasts and hard-handed servants whose marks made ordinary service difficult. The name was first a mockery by enemies and then adopted by the band.
Grey Pike Company
Sarrum (recruited outside the county) · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4560An outside mercenary company supplying the largest contingent of the council's hired force, rotating through tax escorts, the cisterns, the furnace ground and the line.
Grey Pike Fellowship
Britannia Since c. 4450A contract hall selling convoy steadiness, bridge-holding, colonial escort and hard respectability to merchants and councils.
Kentish company houses
Dover, Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4450The agencies that place hired bands in Kent and broker their commissions, advising them, holding standing accounts with victuallers and lodging houses, and writing the letters that get bands received across the water.
Mere Spears
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4600An outside mercenary company holding one of the council's smaller contracts for force.
Red Saint Contract Hall
Britannia Since c. 4450A contract hall competing for shrine security, relic transfer, difficult burial support and foreign guard work where piety and paperwork ride together.
White Sashes
White Falcon's light-iron yards · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4550White Falcon's paid security band holding its light-iron yards.
Military, naval & aerial 31
Corvin Bluecoats
Over the Horizon Since c. 4500Saint Corvin's armed servants, serving alongside chapel marines and relic escorts.
Crowferry ferry guard
Crowferry · Unknown Since c. 4400The guard of the fortified crossing at Crowferry, kept by Baron Edmund Bellmere under his own roof so that lordship and daily command almost coincide.
Crown aerial service
Crown mast yards and guarded masts · Britannia Since c. 4575The newer aerial establishment, not yet independent of the Navy, whose authority extends through Crown aerial movement, guarded masts, lift discipline and the customs that keep expensive craft from becoming expensive funerals.
Crown Army
London and the lower Thames, Dover and the southern approaches, arsenals, magazines and key forts · Britannia Since c. 4070The sovereign's permanent armed establishment, smaller and more distributed than Crown rhetoric suggests, concentrated where continuity would be most expensive to lose. In war it combines Crown regulars with House contingents, militia, warpriests, engineers and contracted specialists under Crown command.
Crown garrisons of the northern march
Ketton Bar, Stang Head, Redham Foot and Thurwell · The Northern Marches Since c. 4400The Crown's whole standing force north of Harrowgate: twenty-seven men in four blockhouses under serjeants, with one lieutenant at the county town who visits twice a year. They hold roads, escort the pay, assize prisoners and powder convoys, and shut their gates rather than go out.
Dover garrison
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4100The permanent Crown garrison at Dover guarding the southern approaches, with its magazines and the guarded receiving masts used by sky vessels, fenced separately from the private yards at Archcliffe. Stores for the wall and county forces are landed at the garrison quay at Hythe.
Hythe garrison
Hythe · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4400The barracks at Hythe, whose garrison trade helps keep the town in employment.
Kent militia
Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The county militia, the only body in Kent with numbers, which can be called out only on a magistrate's written requisition, taking most of a day.
Ketton Bar garrison
Ketton Bar · The Northern Marches Since c. 4500The largest blockhouse, with eleven men of all ranks under a serjeant behind a coursed wall with a tower, well, chained gate and two light guns never fired. It holds the northern road where the carriers turn and is the district's front door, where strangers are first entered in a book.
Lantern crews of Hélène de Sablon
the Near Coast · Over the Horizon c. 4570–c. 4590 · no moreWithin living memory these lantern crews took the false warning light and made of it a method of war.
Lantern Fort garrison
Lantern Fort · Unknown Since c. 4400The permanent guard of Lantern Fort, keeping its gates, magazine, signal mast, well and stores under the Constable rather than the fort's lord.
Line garrison
the Sarrum–London line and its six blockhouses · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4600A force of 240 men in six detachments, contracted by the Sarrum council and assigned to the line under the Crown licence, with powers to stop, search, detain and remove within the cut and its fences. Most are recruited outside the county, many as formed mercenary companies.
March Muster
The Northern Marches · The Northern Marches Since c. 4150The ancient parish levy. Every man from sixteen to sixty is bound to appear armed at the sheriff's warrant within three days, and parish quotas are recorded in the muster book (nine hundred and forty men on paper). Its third clause, for dangers ordinary officers cannot meet, is the march's nearest thing to an emergency power.
Meridian Marines
Over the Horizon Since c. 4400Crown Meridian's armed servants: salt-water infantry trained to fight from a quay, a magazine and a narrow street.
Narrows Watch
Black Salt Fort, above the Narrows of Ormano · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The watch kept at the Black Salt Fort over the Narrows of Ormano, the entrance every Basin hull must pass. Its book is the nearest thing the Basin has to a record of who went where.
Navy
stations and squadrons across the outer seas · Britannia Since c. 4070Britannia's sea service. It keeps some powered warships, commands convoys whose commodores are obeyed beyond the letter of convoy law, patrols the lanes, keeps a presence at Port Leonis, and was a belligerent in the War for the Free Ports.
Port Leonis station
Port Leonis, within the Blanchefleur harbour · Over the Horizon Since c. 4450Bonded magazines under mixed British and Lyonnais management - 'a foreign wall with British powder behind it' - standing by the Compacts of Saint Corin, with British naval presence, chapel protection and protected mooring rights inside the Blanchefleur harbour apparatus.
Port Saint Nicholas garrison
Governor’s Fort, Port Saint Nicholas · Over the Horizon Since c. 4500The British establishment besieged at Port Saint Nicholas since 4620, after its outposts were overrun and the iron-mine garrisons driven back into the Governor's Fort.
Pruss regiments
Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4250The ministries' regiments, recruited by district, trained to one drill and movable where wanted within a season.
Redham Foot garrison
Redham Foot, on the road below Redham · The Northern Marches Since c. 4350A six-man blockhouse whose gatehouse bell is rung on a private schedule. The garrison teaches the schedule to each new serjeant and will not explain it to outsiders.
Redhats
Over the Horizon Since c. 4560The force of Grand Admiral Otto Kranz in the War for the Free Ports, which broke the relieving fleet in the first phase and used smoke barges.
Sand hosts
the Broken Lands, Black Continent · Over the Horizon Since c. 4620The inland force that descended from the Broken Lands in the present war, moving in order, holding what it took, cutting water first and keeping inheritable command.
Squadron of Admiral Ingrid Skall
a fjord fleet base in the far north · Over the Horizon Since c. 4605A squadron under Ingrid Skall, who holds a regular commission from a northern power, keeps her articles and exchanges prisoners properly; it can move in black water in the dark months and presses convoy attacks in weather a British commodore may break off in.
Stang Head garrison
Stang Head, at the mouth of the western valley · The Northern Marches Since c. 4350A six-man blockhouse, the only one with its own chapel. A chaplain comes quarterly from Harrowgate, and between visits the serjeant reads the office. The drovers use it most.
Surveying service
Britannia Since c. 4200The field branch whose officers survey coasts with instruments and boats on short seasonal commissions; its surveys are the first of the four trades that meet on a chart sheet.
Thurwell garrison
Thurwell, beyond the last kept parish · The Northern Marches Since c. 4475Of all the garrisons the Crown keeps in the realm, the smallest is this, the interior blockhouse, and four men hold it. Fallow ground lies deep about it now, and its road runs back through four miles that no parish walks any longer in the beating of its bounds.
Unnamed Crown reserve
Britannia Since c. 4500Something the Crown keeps above its enforcement stack, known only from an unnamed standing charge in the Exchequer and from its absence from establishment lists, muster rolls, Heralds' commissions and depot rations.
Valmora regiments
Valmora · Over the Horizon Since c. 4400Valmora's paid regiments kept in the northern manner, with noble officers, colours and parade.
White Banner Alliance
Britannia c. 4586–c. 4593 · no moreThe alliance that fought the War of the White Banner Alliance from 4586 to 4593, moving on Hartfell fodder from six depots in Britannia and four at the colonial station ports.
Whiteheath Crown Mast
the Crown City · London Since c. 4450The royal and military skyport of London: a place of command, guard lines, royal dispatch, restricted manifests and sovereign control over urgent movement.
Wye household guard
Wye · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4500The Pikes' household guard: fourteen men under arms, another dozen who can be armed, and the stables, the nearest thing Kent has to a standing force outside the militia. Its doctrine is arriving, in the earl's colours, before a disturbance has finished happening.
News & press 7
The Dover Packet
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4550Dover's newspaper, published with an Advertiser; it carries coastal news and engravings and, with the Maidstone Register, makes the small public fame by which Kent knows people.
Edmund Rowe's Southbank Press
Southbank · London Since c. 4590A press whose better print carries reform and alarm further than gossip alone.
Evening Register
London Since c. 4560A quicker, lighter London paper interested in society, theatre, crime and supper-table talk, with a society column.
Lantern Review
London Since c. 4550A London review that turns books, pictures and performances into reputations.
Maidstone Register
Maidstone · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4525Inland Kent's newspaper, which favours market winners, surveyors, magistrates, growers and attorneys.
Martin Bale's Penny Press
Fleet Street · London Since c. 4600A cheap press whose broadsheets are read aloud in Fleet Street taverns and can give a ward scandal official shape by breakfast.
Westminster Mercury
Fleet Street · London Since c. 4550A London newspaper following ministries, Parliament, foreign affairs and respectable political scandal.
Other 4
Basin Chains
London Since c. 4350A body named only through the title of Captain Ysabel Marsh, who survives in tavern murals, boatmen's boasts and barrack prints.
Dover beach community
Dover beach (lodging houses, boats and three unpermitted sheds) · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4580Between forty and ninety uncounted men, mostly runners who left their ships, who live by the Dover beach, share work and food, and keep their own rough order.
The Ladies
districts of four or five parishes across the belt · The High South Since c. 4400Wise-women of the belt's country, about one for every four or five parishes, who carry in memory the terms a district has made with the powers of its ground and accept payment only in kind. They have no office and no licence, and they teach no doctrine. Recognition is what makes a Lady, and commonly it comes when a Lady already recognised fetches her.
Sweetwater Fund
four wards of Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4575Four wards subscribe to it, and it presents itself as a burial club, though the book says plainly that it is no such thing; and every year some forty to seventy of the dead it is meant to cover cannot be accounted for.
Reclamation 7
Bell-and-Bridle
Little Mere · The High South Since c. 4525A marsh company working out of Little Mere, taking only what can be reached in a day from a station.
Commission on the Lower Thames Ruins
Oxford · London 3956–c. 3984 · no moreOxford-sent parties of road clergy, survey clerks, relic bearers, ferrymen and escorts who from about 3956 A.C. tested London's ruins, measured stairs, sounded vaults and marked fragments for lawful return.
Glassmere Nine
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4540The oldest retrieval company still working, retained by two prepared-materials benches.
Halloway's Company
Cambridge · The High South c. 4580–c. 4601 · no moreOnce an establishment of Cambridge, ruined because between 4598 and 4601 it three times lent its good name to sealed parcels, carrying them without ever having seen what was inside.
Thames-Ruin Commissions
The Oxford Thames · The High South c. 4540–c. 4575 · no moreCommissions of the last century called when the upper Thames reach had ceased to be reliable; they settled which parish owed which stretch, which structures could be pulled, and who should pay.
Vance's company
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4590A Cambridge retrieval company working the Marches and the wilder country, taking the hardest commissions in the trade.
Vlissingen salvage men
Vlissingen · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The salvage men of Vlissingen in the Nieuwlanden, who will come out for a hull in the dark and in weather for a share fixed by custom.
Reform & agitation 1
Religious order 18
Benedictine holding at Saint Benedict's Ford
Saint Benedict's Ford · The High South Since c. 3950The Benedictine holding beside the crossing where the tithe road from the eastern villages meets the water.
Black Lantern Brethren
Sarrum (the Sarrum house) and other houses across the realm · Britannia Since c. 4000When a parish asks, this order attends upon troubled ground. Its Kentish presence is one small house, at Wye, and from the sending it is commonly nine to fourteen days in coming. An ordinary attendance brings two brothers and costs eleven shillings. If matters proceed to a bounded suppression, the house goes to work after dark, four strong. By a suppression the order means its fixed procedure for bringing troubled ground to quiet; and before any begins, the ground is walked and a boundary marked about it, called the bound, over which no one may pass until all is finished. Of the four, two do the work and two keep an inner mark; the outer bound is held by hands the parish hires. The order finds against no person. Its business is with the ground, not with whoever may be to blame.
Brethren house at Wye
Wye · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4300The only Brethren house in Kent: a small plain building with a handful of brothers and a stable, not a monastery. Every attendance in Kent is arranged from it, and it answers to its order, not the earl.
Brotherhood of Saint Elric
Britannia Since c. 4050A fellowship concerned with relic provenance that, like the Office of Sacred Provenance, operates across four coasts under the aligned churches' single authority.
Brotherhood of Saint Varo
Qadis · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The brotherhood that keeps Qadis's Vapour Bells, rung for a dead-ship as a parish rings for a death; it will not let a hull berth until its dead are blessed and its cargo declared clean or cursed.
Brotherhood of the Lantern Grave
Britannia Since c. 3800A religious brotherhood which, in the Spirit War of the Three Fens as recited in the March, got men through contested marsh tracks with mire bells, saint ash and bound reed standards.
Brothers of Mercy
a house on the edge of Black Stone · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4500An order of eleven brothers who heal by rite, answering to their own rule and the Holy Seat rather than the Oxford chapter. Three can work the rite, perhaps forty times a week in all, and Brother Felix alone decides who is chosen from the list.
Concord of Saint Winnow
across the belt (no formal character in Oxford) · Britannia Since c. 4189Perhaps sixty wardens make up this small order, and their work is keeping pacts. With the territorial powers, which is to say the powers that hold a place, it treats; the terms it records, and thereafter maintains; and it keeps the Concord Roll, in which some thousands of such arrangements are entered from 4194 onward. The amendment of 4189, on which the lawful trade in essence also rests, has in it its working arm. It is likewise the chief exponent of the accommodationist position: that a power properly brought to terms carries Christic order over ground that would otherwise be lost.
Four fraternities (Sarrum)
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4540Four fraternities holding standing retainers in Sarrum, paid quarterly under vague headings by the Halls, both pit companies, the Bank Council and two estates. They keep a vigil two brothers at a time over the sealed places — the acres, the stopped roads under Enginemead, the two combes, the four acres by the third tip.
Fraternity of Saint Elric
a cape on the Near Coast · Over the Horizon Since c. 4200A brotherhood that keeps a light on a cape under the name of Saint Elric; its lamps are entered in the beacon-master's register of marks kept by others.
Fraternity of Saint Nicholas of the Flooded Stairs
the Near Coast · Over the Horizon Since c. 4150A fraternity whose lamps are entered, with the keeper named, in the beacon-master's register of marks the harbour does not itself maintain.
Order of Saint Frideswide's Reed Cross
Frideswide House, northern edge of Oxford · The High South Since c. 3650Oxford's oldest religious foundation, whose order works the marsh causeys and settlements. Frideswide House is at once hospital, burial establishment and registry: it takes in the drowned, the burnt, the unclaimed and the wrongly buried, buries them in numbered plots, and keeps the fullest register of the missing in Britannia.
Order of the White Eagle
Prussland · Over the Horizon Since c. 4000The great religious-military order of Prussland, organised like an army with chapters, rents, a roll of brothers, sergeants and servants, a chaplaincy, infirmary and school. It rides against pagan practice on the eastern borders, keeps burial discipline over a wide country and wages a standing war against 'dead things'; by its doctrine, corruption of ground follows from things done or left undone and can be undone.
Ordo Custodum Sepulchri et Crucis
Holy Seat (the Sepulchrum) · Over the Horizon Since c. 3575The Holy Seat's knights. Their knight-brethren keep guard over the Sepulchrum, escort the greater relics and emissaries, and, once a crisis abroad has grown serious, secure the sites of breach, which is to say the places where something that was shut has been opened.
Shrine-port fraternity
the shrine port of the Near Coast · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The fraternity keeping the shrine at the harbour mouth of the Near-Coast port that grew round it; the shrine is endowed by three otherwise hostile banners.
Templars
Britannia Since c. 3600An order whose members include Brother Sir Garrick Ashmantle, a visibly Afflicted Templar scout who became one of the Church's deadliest witch hunters.
Wardens of the Quiet Ground
circuits across the High South (none in the hangers) · Britannia Since c. 3900A lay body under the vigil of Saint Cuthbert that does the maintenance third of the orders' work: walking bounds, renewing marks, keeping observances whose reasons are lost, and reporting when a district has quietly stopped. About a hundred and thirty across the High South.
White Barley Vale priory
White Barley Vale · The High South Since c. 4000The religious house implied by the title of Prioress Katherine Marle of White Barley Vale, who took vows after the failed Marle Match and wrote instructions still copied in the valleys.
Society & club 13
Gloam
Cambridge students and Oxford's schools · Britannia Since c. 4590A melancholy fashion and circle among younger scholars, junior professionals, reform clubs and artists, favouring mourning dress, reliquary rings, dream notebooks and bell-toned music. Gloam rooms read pre-Reclamation poetry, collect rural charms, discuss spirit folklore and sometimes hold supervised seances.
King's Basin Athenaeum
King's Basin · London Since c. 4450A club turning maps, memoirs and supper lectures into quiet social capital.
Lantern and Compass Club
London Since c. 4450Exclusive, and given to dressing up the fact as hospitality, the club keeps a candidate waiting long for admission, and teaches him, while he waits, to take pleasure in it.
Lantern Chamber
London Since c. 4500A collector society where money, grief, scholarship, appetite and ambition sit at one table, turning possession into reputation.
London technical clubs
London · London Since c. 4575Technical clubs of London that follow the Pruss lightning-current work closely, quote Pruss masters at every meeting and 'print more than they understand'.
Mitred Hart
Oxford · The High South Since c. 4450An Oxford public house with a chapter-and-schools crowd in front and singers, antiquaries and students in the back.
Mourning Rooms of Saint Bride Lane
Saint Bride Lane · London Since c. 4550A theatrical society of widows, minor houses, actors, collectors, curates and connoisseurs of organised melancholy.
Noctuary Club
the Blackfriars quarter · London Since c. 4500A gentlemen's dining and reading society presenting itself as devoted to city memory, funerary art and respectable antiquarianism.
Saint Thomas's Table
London Since c. 4500A serious club where members discuss politics, machinery, war, theology, travel, concessions, relic disputes and House news.
Society for Corrected Antiquities
London Since c. 4450A society offering polite cover for ruthless bidding on provenance, fragments and old devotional matter once it can be made to look legitimate.
Southbank Rooms
Southbank · London Since c. 4550Rooms where music, reform talk and occult gossip contaminate one another profitably.
Twelve Oaks Society
London Since c. 4500A serious club where members discuss politics, machinery, war, theology and House news under the fiction that conversation is leisure.
White Compass
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4550A Cambridge public house serving yard masters before supper and Schola students after, with an upstairs room for arguments about certification, reform and music.
Underworld 18
Ash Dogs
the eastern Cinders and approaches to the tips · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4590A gang that gathers its money through the eastern Cinders. It has climbed above the remnants of several neighbourhood associations and now governs the labour there, for the foremen pay it for what it alone can do, which is to find two hundred hands by morning.
Bellmarsh Black Net
the marsh and lower-river belts · London Since c. 4580An illicit message chain that sells speed and silence, moving word across four wards faster than the post through laundries and leaving nothing a court could subpoena.
Black Room
moves when threatened (under Sarrum) · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580A moving underground market dealing in things whose possession can hang a man: pistols, fighting blades, armour plates, powder, stolen company seals and occasionally supposed green coal.
Black Spittle Men
the undercity · London Since c. 4600A name used in lower talk for an Afflicted or half-Afflicted underworld crew specialising in covert movement.
Crooked Saints
the undercity · London Since c. 4600A name used in lower talk for an Afflicted or half-Afflicted underworld crew specialising in covert movement.
Fifth Market
chambers off the old overflow channel · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580An underground market meeting twice a week, selling food, coal, clothing, tools, medicines and small quantities of stolen household stock.
Fifth Men
the old overflow channel and the Cut · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4575A gang that governs movement rather than territory, using the old overflow channel, the Cut and Enginemead workings as carriage routes for smugglers, gangs, factors and respectable firms.
Grey Censer
Britannia Since c. 4550One of the shadow bodies, reckoned among those syndicates which last because no lawful body can follow goods as quickly as they carry them from one jurisdiction into the next.
King's Basin Lenders
around King's Basin yards · London Since c. 4575Lenders on the edge between credit and coercion, advancing on freight and wages around the yards, whose security can become tools, papers, rooms, future pay or information.
Nightstairs Combine
Southwark · London Since c. 4580A syndicate controlling porterage on the undercity stairs, selling passage rather than violence.
Oxford lane gangs
The lanes behind the Oxford colleges · The High South Since c. 4570Two loose companies of porters, copy-house runners, discharged servants and debt men who divided gambling rooms and protection of unlicensed lodging houses behind the colleges; their quarrel became the Seven Lanes War of 4584 (officially the Lane Disturbances).
Red Lattice
Yellow Ward · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4580A protection network around Yellow Ward's rooms and houses, through which much of the city's prostitution and visiting trade passes; it governs discretion.
Reedhaven chain-brokers
river and warehouse intermediaries on the lower routes · London Since c. 4580A sinister name for brokers who appear wherever bonded goods, disputed security and difficult carriage have become badly entangled.
Scale Lanterns
the undercity · London Since c. 4590An Afflicted or half-Afflicted underworld crew specialising in movement through hidden stairs, sewer turns, hospital back doors, quarantine gaps and underbridge passages.
Three Nails
the Candlewick edge · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4570A gang on the Candlewick edge making money from tools, scrap and the illegal arms trade, and arbitrating property disputes in public-house back rooms.
Tin Cross
under Hollowgate · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4575An underground market under Hollowgate where the illegal medical trade, charms, forged work papers and unlicensed lodging are arranged.
Tin Saints
three streets of low Hollowgate and a run of the made ground · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4575A Hollowgate gang, least hierarchical of the five, governed by a shifting table of older members, mission contacts and household figures; many of its hardest members are visibly Afflicted, though it is not an Afflicted society.
Velvet Reef
Britannia Since c. 4550Accountants who insure cargoes nobody publicly admits owning.
Watch & enforcement 23
Blue Sleeves
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since 4497A Sarrum hall band, in its modern armed form from 4497. On the tenth day of the Water Days in 4551 it refused an order and its Guildmaster upheld the refusal.
Cambridge town watch
Cambridge · The High South Since c. 4000The town constables of Cambridge, who keep order in everything the yard officers do not hold.
Causey Wardens of Saint Frideswide
The Oxford Marsh: causey stations, Reedgate, the crossings · The High South Since c. 3720A lay order under the Reed Cross, drawn mostly from causey households, that holds the marsh stations and crossings and keeps the counts of who crosses. A warden may close a causey, refuse a party, impress labour and hold a man until the water falls, but may not arrest.
Coast service
the Kentish coast · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4150The Crown revenue men of the Kentish coast: riding officers ashore, revenue officers working the estuary in pairs by daylight, and a single fast cutter on the station.
Collegium yard officers
Cambridge, within the liberty · The High South Since c. 4450The Collegium's officers who hold the walls, the licensed benches and the routing of dangerous material, and may enter any licensed bench in working hours but cannot leave the walls or enter an unlicensed bench. Collegium wardens drill for yard containment and sealed-space breaches.
Crown guards
Crown offices, treasuries, archives, prisons and restricted bridges · London Since c. 4070The Crown's guards defending offices, treasuries, archives, prisons, restricted bridges and registry corridors.
Dover watch
Dover · Kent and the Narrow Sea Since c. 4100The Dover borough watch: a beadle for the quay quarter and two constables for the borough, backed by the corporation's serjeants.
Grand Witchhunter's examiners
Britannia Since c. 4150Examiners in black coats, attached to the warrant of the Grand Witchhunter. It is the Crown that may call them in, and it does so when a matter has passed beyond what the ordinary layers of local authority can hold: witchery, false sanctity, a politically sensitive haunting, or blight practice, by which is meant the deliberate bringing of blight upon a place, souring its land, its water or its stock by forbidden working.
London City Militia
London Since c. 4100The formal civic peace-keeping and emergency-order bodies under mayoral or urban warrant, answering riot, fire perimeter, market panic and barricade.
London river watch
river-watch stairs below the basin · London Since c. 4075The Thames enforcement body holding stairs, bridge approaches, ferry licences, flood alarms, corpse traffic and waterside contraband.
London watch
Southwark Bridge watch houses and the wards · London Since c. 4075The city's watch, which wants names and locations of the Afflicted, keeps watch routes and captains, and increasingly argues with priests and physicians over breach cases.
Market-town ward constables (Sarrum county)
Wetherslade, Barrow Combe, Mereford Cross, Coldwell · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4300Paid constables of the county market towns: six at Wetherslade, four at Barrow Combe and three each at Mereford Cross and Coldwell, holding the market peace and town watch.
Oxford city watch
Oxford · The High South Since c. 4100The small civic watch of Oxford's lay city, controlled by the Market Council under its High Constable.
Proctors (Oxford)
Oxford and the province · The High South Since c. 3950Officers of the chapter whose ground is rite, burial, clergy discipline and the chapter courts; the schools also have proctors rather than soldiers. They reach laymen only through the parish.
Quay serjeants
Near-Coast syndic harbours · Over the Horizon Since c. 4250The syndicate's own armed men, paid from the dues, mostly sons of quay families holding their places for life. They stop loads, close chains, take men off the stones and put hulls under watch, but their authority stops at the top of the quay.
Rows watch
the Bonded Rows, Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4490Eleven well-paid watchmen who hold the four lane ends of the Bonded Rows by night and answer to the halls rather than the council; raised after the Rows were nearly breached in 4489.
Royal enforcers
London Since c. 4100The rare, feared elite enforcing hand used for dynastic security, protected persons, state scandal and sealed warrants.
Sarrum hall bands
Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450Guild servants, not militia, sworn to a hall court and confined by the Articles to their own hall's ground, goods and people.
Sarrum watch
the conduit quarters of Sarrum · Sarrum and Its County Since c. 4450The council's small body of local constables, attached in law to conduit quarters, who take bodies and complaints, carry summonses and notices, and may hold a man one night before the council's clerk.
Searchers of the Oxford writ
Oxford and the province · The High South Since 4488The accusers of the belt, by which is meant the High South country lying about Oxford: four lay searchers, appointed and paid by the chapter, who have served the whole province since 4488. They may act only upon a written information laid by a named person; they may examine the accused in the presence of two women; and they may commit the accused to the chapter court.
Temple guards
great churches, relic houses and processional routes · London Since c. 4050Church guards keeping processions, relic traffic, shrines, funerals, burial routes and church property from theft or profanation.
Torre Sulfurea watch
Torre Sulfurea · Over the Horizon Since c. 4300The warning watch of Torre Sulfurea, a dark, poor harbour whose watchers ring early and often and have never flattered a captain.
Wardens of the Oxford gates
Oxford · The High South Since c. 3960Oxford's officers, clerks and gate searchers who treat approach by the Afflicted as a spiritual and civic danger; under the Oxford writ four searchers serve a whole province and act only on a signed written information.
No body in the volumes answers to that description.
