THE
INFLUENCE AND DEVELOPMENT
OF
ENGLISH GILDS.
London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
AVE MARIA LANE.
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO.
LEIPZIG: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN AND CO.
Cambridge Historical Essays. No. V.
THE
INFLUENCE AND DEVELOPMENT
OF
ENGLISH GILDS:
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE HISTORY OF
THE CRAFT GILDS OF SHREWSBURY.
BY
FRANCIS AIDAN HIBBERT, B.A.,
OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ASSISTANT MASTER IN DENSTONE COLLEGE.
THIRLWALL DISSERTATION, 1891.
Cambridge:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
1891
[All Rights reserved.]
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
TO
THE REV. D. EDWARDES, M.A.,
HEAD MASTER OF DENSTONE,
IN REMEMBRANCE OF MUCH KINDNESS
AND ENCOURAGEMENT.
PREFACE.
I should explain that, in the present Essay, I have restricted myself to associations which had for their object the regulation of trade. Frith Gilds and Religious or Social Gilds have received only passing notice.
The Merchant Gild is too wide a subject to be treated in an Essay such as this. Moreover the records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild are too meagre to afford much information, and I would therefore have gladly passed over the whole question in silence but that without some notice of it the Essay would have seemed incomplete.
My attention has thus been concentrated on the Craft Gilds, and on the later companies which arose out of these.
It is greatly to be regretted that we have no work on Gilds which deals with the subject from an English point of view, and traces the development of these pre-eminently English institutions according to its progress on English soil.
The value of Dr Brentano’s extremely able Essay is very largely diminished, for Englishmen, not only because he is continually attempting to trace undue analogies between the Gilds and Trades Unions, but still more because he has failed to appreciate the spirit which animated English Merchants and Craftsmen in their relations with one another, and so has missed the line of Gild development in England. If he had not confined his attention, so far as English Gilds are concerned, solely to the London Companies he could hardly have failed to discover his mistake.
Something has been done to set the facts of the case in a clearer light by Dr Cunningham briefly in his Growth of English Industry and Commerce[1].
But it is to be feared that Mr J. R. Green’s History is so deservedly popular, and Mr George Howell’s Conflicts of Capital and Labour is so otherwise reliable, that views differing from those which these writers set forward—following Dr Brentano as it appears—stand little chance of being generally known.
Great as is the weight which must attach to such important authorities, I have endeavoured—by looking at the facts in my materials from an independent standpoint—to avoid being unduly influenced by their conclusions, or by a desire to find analogies where none exist.
The materials from which I have worked call for but little description. They are simply the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds—either in their original form as preserved in the town Museum and Library, or as printed in the Shropshire Archæological Society’s Transactions.
Though my view has been thus confined it has been kept purposely so. English local history is its own best interpreter, and although in some instances the documents have required illustrating and supplementing from extraneous sources, these occasions have been few. At the same time I have not omitted to notice how the effects of national events were felt in provincial changes, and I have especially striven to point out how the Shrewsbury records bear upon the various theories which have been put forward respecting Gilds. Writing thus in a historical rather than an antiquarian spirit I have not considered it necessary to overburden the pages with needless footnotes referring repeatedly simply to the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds.
October, 1890.
Note.—The Gild Merchant, by Charles Gross, Ph.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890), appeared after the above had been written and the Essay sent in. I have since had the advantage of reading it. The general conclusions at which the writer arrives are so similar to those I had already formed, that I have not found it necessary to alter what I had written. I have however to some extent made use of the material he has brought together in Vol. II., chiefly by way of strengthening the authorities in the footnotes to which reference is made in the text.
EXTRACT FROM THE REGULATIONS FOR THE THIRLWALL PRIZE.
“There shall be established in the University a prize, called the ‘Thirlwall Prize,’ to be awarded for dissertations involving original historical research.”
“The prize shall be open to members of the University who, at the time when their dissertations are sent in, have been admitted to a degree, and are of not more than four years’ standing from admission to their first degree.”
“Those dissertations which the adjudicators declare to be deserving of publication shall be published by the University singly or in combination, in an uniform series, at the expense of the fund, under such conditions as the Syndics of the University Press shall from time to time determine.”
CONTENTS.
PAGES CHAPTER I. Introductory 1-6 CHAPTER II. The Merchant Gild 7-29 Note 1. Chronological Table of Merchant Gilds 24-28 Note 2. List of Trades and Professions
NOTE.
On page 26 Liverpool should be inserted. The charter was granted in 1229, by the king.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
In these days of convenience and easy transit, when distance has been annihilated by the telegraph wire and the express train, we can hardly realise, even with an effort, the extent to which such changes have revolutionised the social life of Englishmen. Of local sentiment there can be now but little, yet local sentiment has played a greater part in our history than perhaps any other motive. The England of to-day is little more than a great suburb of its capital. Yet it is a peculiar feature of the England of the past that its local life was always singularly varied, not only in the Middle Ages but down to quite recent times. Indeed the characteristic is still more than traceable in some of our less busy districts.
In the past, too, some parts possessed the feature in a more marked degree than others. We should naturally expect that few towns would have a stronger infusion of local feeling than Shrewsbury. Through all its history it has indeed been marked by strong individuality.
Situated in the midst of the Marches of Wales, the centre round which long waged the struggle for the fair lands westward of the Severn, its strong walls and insular position soon gave it a marked commercial superiority over the surrounding country. In consequence we find Shrewsbury at an early date considerably more advanced than the unprotected land outside, which lay open to the ravages of the Welsh. This condition of affairs, the reverse of favourable for commercial advancement, continued to depress the neighbourhood after Edward the First’s conquest of the Principality, for the disorders of the Lords Marchers kept the Borders in a state of continual alarm, and prevented the inhabitants from settling down to any regular and profitable industry[2].
Henry IV. on the death of Glendower effected the reconquest of Wales, and enacted severe laws against the inhabitants. The only result was, however, the organisation of robber bands whose definite object was to plunder and harass more completely their English neighbours. The evil became so intolerable that a special court had to be erected to remove it, and in 1478 was formed the Court of the President and Marches of Wales.
By dint of powers of summary jurisdiction over disturbers of the public peace, a diminution was effected in the disorders, and the border lands were able to participate in the increase of trade which was such a marked feature of the fourteenth century. In spite of the temporary shock given to industry by the Reformation, the district had, by the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, quite recovered from the Welsh ravages, and its prosperity at this time was very remarkable.
The fertility of the district brought wealth to the market towns, and provided a wide area of comfortable purchasers for the products of their industries. The expansion of the Welsh cloth trade gave rise to a twofold struggle. There was firstly a strenuous effort of the border towns to keep it to themselves, and secondly a private quarrel as to which of them should engross the market. Shrewsbury eventually secured the monopoly after an arduous contest, and the importance of the town was thus
The internal history of its Gilds will show how peculiarly the state of Shrewsbury illustrates the period of quiet prosperity before the introduction of machinery broke in upon the comfortable life of provincial England.
The county towns then possessed an importance of which they have since been shorn by various causes[3]. Each was the capital of its district, filling the part of a distant metropolis to which neither the country gentleman nor the wealthy burgess could expect to go more than once or twice in a lifetime. Shrewsbury, in particular, was possessed of features which serve not only to make it especially typical of the social habits of the period, but which at the same time give it an interest exceptionally its own[4].
And when the introduction of machinery transformed the face of England to such a large extent, the changes which it brought to Shrewsbury were extremely slight. Local life was strong. The town was slow to accommodate itself to new conditions of industry. Its Gilds and companies maintained their vigour to the end. Their yearly pageant continued to our own day. The timbered houses which the substantial tradesmen built in the days of their prosperity are still, many of them, standing. The streets of the town have been only gradually altered and improved. They still follow the old lines, often inconvenient, but always interesting: they still are called by their old names, full of confusion to the stranger, full of significance to the student.
Their quiet development.
Peculiarities.
Shrewsbury, then, exhibits a character eminently its own, from whatever point we view its history. But it is a distinction of similarity rather than the prominence of singularity. The progress of the town has gone on quietly and calmly, seldom interrupted and never forced. The history of its Gilds must of necessity present similar features. It will be a record of silent development, often leaving few traces, yet not the less evident to careful observation.
But it is also a history in studying which we must be particularly on our guard against being led astray by the analogy of similar institutions in other parts of England or on the Continent. The desire to arrive at, or to conform to, general conclusions often blinds writers to the fact to which we have already drawn attention, namely, that local life in England was always varied; that each town and district had its own strongly-marked peculiarities. Bearing this in mind, deviations—apparent or real—from the ordinary course of Gild history will cause us no surprise. The shearmen’s maypole quarrel[5] with the bailiffs is almost the only trace of serious conflict at Shrewsbury between the municipal authorities[6] and the companies until the seventeenth century. There are no signs of the rise of Yeomen Gilds[7] in earlier or later years, though evidence in plenty is found of the complete disregard shown by the masters for the interests of the journeymen[8]. On the other hand, so far from the Court of Assistants being a late creation we meet with it at Shrewsbury very early in Gild history.
It will also be a record rich in illustrations of contemporary social life[9]. The closeness of relationship between religion and the ordinary business pursuits of the mediæval burgess; the wide public influence exercised by the Gilds in their earlier years, and the remarkable family feeling they maintained within the boundaries of the old towns even down to the time when the companies had become utterly demoralised, will be exemplified not less remarkably than the continuity of the Gild sentiment through the shocks of the Reformation period, through the economic changes of Elizabeth, and even (in some sort) through the Reforms of 1835.
It is a history too which will help us to understand a problem of considerable difficulty. We shall not only see the degenerated societies of capitalists in full vigour down to the date of their enforced termination as trading companies, but we shall also be enabled to perceive how it was that they managed to retain their prejudicial and antiquated privileges to the very end of their existence.
It is indeed in the light which their history throws on the conditions of provincial trade and the social customs of an ordinary provincial town during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that its special importance lies. The rapid progress which marked the commencement of that period, not less than the torpor and decay which characterised the corporate towns at its close will be found to be eminently exemplified in the history of the Shrewsbury Gilds.
CHAPTER II.
THE MERCHANT GILD.
Dr Brentano[10] is particularly desirous to make it clear that he considers England “the birthplace of Gilds.” But it is scarcely necessary to point out that the conception of the Gild belongs to no particular age and to no particular country. Not to insist unduly on the universality of an institution from which some writers have derived the Gilds, and to which they certainly bear considerable resemblance, the family—common to humanity itself—we note that the Greeks had their ἔρανοι[11] and their ξυνωμοσίαι[12], and the Romans their collegia opificum[13], each exhibiting not a few of the features of the mediæval Gilds. Corps des métiers existed in France in very early times, perhaps in direct continuation of the Roman institutions, and played a great part in the beginnings of many towns
Each of these associations, so various in date and object, bore great resemblance to the Gilds of later times, according as the latter are considered in the light of some one or other of their functions: now it is the common feast, now it is the possession of corporate property, here it is the union of all the workmen of a craft into one sodality, there it is the association of neighbours for mutual responsibility and protection; now it is the confraternity “in omni obsequio religionis.” Such a tendency to association is simply the result of man’s gregarious nature, and there is no need to restrict what is found alike in all peoples and all periods. But it is none the less true that the tendency has been more strongly marked in England than elsewhere. The earliest Gild Statutes which have come down to us are English[16], and the development of Gilds in England proceeded according to its normal course without being diverted and confused by external and disturbing circumstances. The real history of Gilds will thus be the history of English Gilds, not of those of the Continent, whose records detail rather a bitter struggle between rival classes in the towns[17]. If the constitutional importance of the Gilds was thus greater on the Continent than it was in England[18], this was because there a social institution was dragged out of its proper sphere of action, and in the arena of politics was shorn of the most attractive of its features.
In these pages we shall be concerned solely with examples drawn from the history of our own country. Where necessary reference will be made to the institutions of other towns, but in general our attention will be concentrated on one provincial borough only—a town, as we have seen, well calculated to illustrate the social life of England in the past. It is only by working out the several departments of local municipal history that anything like a complete view of the subject can be ultimately obtained[19]. In the following chapters an attempt will be made to contribute something towards such a consummation.
The records of the later Craft Gilds at Shrewsbury are entirely satisfactory, but unfortunately those of the Merchant Gild are of the most meagre description. They throw but little light therefore on its functions or history, and still less on the interesting question as to the precise nature of the relationship which existed between the Gilda Mercatoria and the Communa. Our attention will consequently be chiefly directed to an examination of the history and development of the Craft Gilds. A few remarks, more or less general in their scope, on the Merchant Gild seem however to be called for, in anticipation of the history of the later trade associations.
In England, as elsewhere, the growth of the towns was one of the most marked features of the twelfth century. This was due to various causes. William’s conquest had opened up increased facilities for communication with the Continent: the Norman soldiers brought skilled Norman traders in their train, and so war ministered to commerce just as subsequently the Crusades were largely helpful to the growth of trade and the progress of the towns. The vigorous administration of Henry I. and Henry II. had also facilitated the expansion of industry. Henry I. favoured the rising towns both because of their commercial utility and in order to make use of their counterbalancing influence against the power of the Barons. Shrewsbury he took into his own hands, having enforced the surrender of the town from the rebellious Robert de Belesme. The amendment of the currency and the organisation of the Courts of King’s Bench and Exchequer were also as favourable to material prosperity as were the legal reforms of Henry II. afterwards. The circuits of the Justices Itinerant were restored, and appeals to the king in Council were established. A further weakening of baronial power was also effected by the destruction of the castles which the lawlessness of Stephen’s tenure of the sovereignty had permitted; while the introduction of scutage made the king in some measure independent of the feudal forces by enabling him to call in the support of mercenary troops. On the other hand the Assize of Arms restored the national militia to its old important place.
Shrewsbury had seemed to be depressed by the conquest. The town had been granted, in the first instance, to Roger de Montgomery, whose two great works, his castle and his abbey, yet remain. Both the earl and his works were at first the cause of complaint. In Domesday Book it is pointed out that Montgomery had destroyed 51 houses to make room for his castle; to the abbey he had granted 39 burgesses; 43 houses in the town were held by Normans and exempted from taxation. Consequently, as the same sum was required from the town as had been paid tempore regis Edwardi, the burden fell with undue hardship on the English inhabitants who remained.
But the ultimate result of both castle and monastery was beneficial to the town. The latter attracted trade and the former protected it[20], and Shrewsbury early became a commercial centre of some importance.
A.-S. Frith Gilds.
Trade regulations.
Royal authorisation: earliest mention.
The towns at this period differed but little from the country. They both engaged in agriculture as well as trade; they were alike governed by a royal officer, or by some lord’s steward. In the towns the houses were of course more closely clustered, and a further difference arose afterwards in the fact that a freeman in the town, when admitted to the Gild, might be landless[21]. The chief distinction indeed between town and country lay in the fact that the former had a Merchant Gild.
The origin of such
Frith Gilds, with much the same objects, had been common anterior to the Conquest[22]. In most places where there was a market it was essential that some recognised authority should be in existence to keep the peace, as well as to be witness to sales[23]. The “laws of the city of London” were apparently drawn up with the express design of supplementing defective law[24]. They exhibit to us a complete authority for the supervision of trade, corresponding to the later Merchant Gild in nearly every particular: there is the common stock, the head man, the periodical meetings at which “byt-fylling” plays its usual important part[25]. The “ordinance which King Ethelred and his Witan ordained as ‘frith-bot’ for the whole nation” imposed the duty of pursuing offenders on the town to which they belonged[26]. There was thus evidently some organisation within the boundaries of the town, and as the chief of the burgesses forming this organisation were also the chief merchants (since trade was the raison-d’être of the towns) it soon began naturally to frame commercial regulations[27]. So the Town Gild became, when, after the Norman Conquest, trade had assumed important dimensions, the Gilda Mercatoria with exclusive powers and privileges by royal charter. The earliest unmistakable mention of a Merchant Gild is at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century[28]. Under Henry I. grants of Merchant Gilds appear in one or two of the charters granted to towns[29], and under Henry II., Richard and John they become more frequent[30]. Shrewsbury was one of the few which had the Merchant Gild confirmed as early as the reign of Henry II.[31]
By these charters what had originally been a voluntary association now became an exclusive body to which trade was restricted.
Important as were the advantages gained by the procuring of such royal authorisation, these charters only set the seal to what had existed in effect before. The landed and mercantile interests were practically identical within the towns: the great merchants were also the great landowners; the Gilda Mercatoria could thus frame regulations which it would be extremely difficult for any trader to disregard[32].
Besides, the benefits which resulted from common trading would be too obvious for any individual who could procure entrance into the Gild to abstain from doing so. It was far more to the common interest that one representative should buy for all and then divide the purchase equitably than that each should compete with each and so minister simply to the profit of the seller.
There are several examples of such combined purchasing by a royal or municipal officer in towns where there was no Merchant Gild[33]. It was however generally effected by means of the latter, the granting of which meant the according of permission to the members to settle for themselves their custom in buying and selling.
The retail trade within the town was restricted to their own members individually, and the wholesale trade coming to the town was reserved to themselves collectively. Members of the Merchant Gild alone might sell within the walls, and traders coming from without might sell only to the Merchant Gild.
There was no danger then as there would be now of such a practice driving all trade away from the town, for the restrictions in force at one place would be paralleled almost exactly in every other. At the periodical fairs alone did free trade prevail.
But the exclusive privileges might be exceedingly harmful if the main body of householders were not members of the Merchant Gild. It was then the fact that the restricted trading was not “to the advantage of the community of the borough but only to the advantage of those who are of the said society[34].” When however the great majority of the householders were members of the trading corporation the arrangement would work well and beneficially for the whole town.
The effect of the granting of royal authorisation was, therefore, to finally draw all burgesses into the Gild, for all townsmen of any importance were traders. The records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild, though of the scantiest description, are sufficient to show how comprehensive was its range. All branches of trade were, at least down to the time of Edward I., represented in it[35]; it comprised every rank and degree, proportioning its fines and payments accordingly. The progress of the fusion of races is shown by the lists of names, which are both Saxon and Norman in indiscriminate order.
Tendency to amalgamation of Gild and Communa.
So closely indeed did the practical boundaries of Gild and town coincide that in many places the
This apparent identity of Burgesses and Gildsmen would find palpable expression in the fact of the Gild Hall becoming the Town Hall. This naturally did not take place to any considerable extent before the 14th century, though during that period it became fairly common. It may have been that the Merchant Gild permitted the use of its Hall for public purposes, at first only occasionally and then more and more frequently until at length what had been exceptional became normal (either through precedent or purchase[38]); certain it is that the two names of Gild Hall and Town Hall became practically synonymous in about the 14th and 15th centuries. This had been foreshadowed at an early date. Domesday Book spoke of the “gihalla Burgensium[39]” at Dover.
At Shrewsbury, in a charter of 1445, the Town Hall is called, as it is at this day, the Gildhall.
But the ideas of Gild-members and townsmen were long kept separate. Burgess-ship depended on residence[40] and the possession of a burgage-tenement, but not so membership of the Merchant Gild, which often comprised among its numbers many outsiders[41]. In this way the two bodies were clearly distinguished. At Ipswich it was ordered in John’s charter[42] that the statutes of the town were to be kept distinct from those of the Gild “as is elsewhere used in cities and boroughs where there is a Gild Merchant,” for the latter would probably consist of both “de hominibus civitatis” and also “de aliis mercatoribus comitatus[43].” Ecclesiastics[44] and women might also be members of the Gild, but of course could not be burgesses. Such members had, in some towns, to pay additional fees[45].