Shiv Shanker Nair, Chairman emeritus of Suez Holdings and Tuvalu’s Ambassador on Oceans and Climate change, was given the Freedom of The City of London in a ceremony which dates back to Medieval England.
In a ceremony at Guildhall in the City of London, The Clerk to The Chamberlain’s Court, presented Ambassador Nair with his parchment granting him the Freedom of The City.Ambassador Nair’s sponsoring company is the Worshipful Company of Fuellers, of which he is a Freeman.
The term ‘Freeman’ was originally a definition of status in feudal society but in England it later became to mean a man possessing the full privileges and immunities of a city, borough or trade gild to which admission was usually by birth, apprenticeship, gift or purchase.
There are a number of rights traditionally but apocryphally associated with freemen—the right to drive sheep and cattle over London Bridge; to a silken rope, if hanged; to carry a naked sword in public; or that if the City of London Police finds a freeman drunk and incapable, they will bundle him or her into a taxi.
