Royal appointment an 'immense honour' for south Staffordshire butcher as he receives freedom of City of London
A south Staffordshire butcher has spoken of the immense honour and privilege of being awarded the freedom of the City of London.
Craig Thomas was given the freedom of the city through redemption, which means becoming a Freeman of London by paying a fee or fine, a historical method alongside apprenticeship/servitude or patrimony/inheritance to gain the right to trade within the City.
The honour as a freeman is now mostly a symbolic one which recognises a strong connection to London, often through a Livery Company, granting membership in a historic tradition rather than modern legal rights, and was granted to Mr Thomas in a ceremony at the Guildhall in the city on Friday, December 5.
He was also clothed at Butchers Hall in the city at a second ceremony to the Worshipful Company of the Art or Mistery of Butchery.
It's the latest honour to be granted to the sixth generation butcher at Martin Thomas Butchers, who is the treasurer of the National Craft Butchers, and comes a year after he was first approached about becoming a freeman, a process he said was a long one.
He said: "The freedom that I've been awarded is through redemption and through the Worshipful Company of Butchers, which is historically through the livery trades in the centre of the city of London, but it is mainly for people who want to go further with the educational and charitable work and passing on the butchery trade and meat trade to future generations.
"It's for people who do active butchery, not just own a business or manage someone else's business, so it's a great honour to be given and when you go to the event, you have to go through multiple rounds of interviews, questions and background checks from your peers.
"You do a room with 12 of the ex-masters and liverymen and they can ask you questions, then you need to be proposed and seconded and that starts the process at about six months back, they they send out all the relevant information and people at the Guildhall do all the assessments to check if you're able to carry out your functions as a freeman."
Mr Thomas said that as a Freeman, he had voting rights for the Mayor of the city of London, carry and drive sheep over London Bridge and also, if drunk, be taken back to his residence by police.
Mr Thomas said it was a massive honour for a butcher from a small butcher shop in Pattingham to be given and spoke about the moment he realised the level of the honour.
He said: "When you go to these events in the Guildhall and you sign your name in the relevant ledger book, you're signing in front of the ones on the wall, which is Commodore Nelson, Nelson Mandela, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Queen Elizabeth II.
"When you start looking around the room in the chamber and you have to be welcomed by the Beadle, it's a ceremony that hasn't changed for 700 years and everything is done to the original part of what England used to be like.
"Being from such a small village and being welcomed into all of this in London is such an amazing honour and I just want to carry on being in the meat trade and help the meat trade from my generation now to anybody else who comes forward to know what I know what I've seen to carry it further."
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