A Paper
ON
CRAFT GILDS,
READ BY
The Rev. W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D.,

There is, as I understand it, a double object in the work of this Society; it interests itself in the preservation of ancient buildings, partly because they are monuments which when once destroyed can never be replaced, and which bear record of the ages in which they were made and the men who reared them; and in this sense all that survives from the past, good and bad, coarse or refined, has an abiding value. But to some folks there seems to be a certain pedantry in gathering or studying things that are important merely because they are curiosities, a certain fancifulness in the frame of mind which concentrates attention on the errors of printers, or the sports of nature, or the rubbish of the past. And much which has been preserved from the past is little better than rubbish, as the poet felt when he wrote:

Still, the view Clough takes is very superficial; there is a real human interest about even the rubbish heaps of the past if we have knowledge enough to detect it; the dulness is in us who fail to recognise the interest which attaches to trifles from the past or to read the evidence they set before us.

But there is another reason why the vestiges of bygone days claim our interest—not as mere curiosities, but as in themselves beautiful objects, excellently designed and skilfully fashioned. There are numberless arts in which the men of the past were adepts; their skill as builders is patent to all, but specialists are quite as enthusiastic over the work that was done by mediæval craftsmen in other departments. Their wood-carving, and working in metals, the purity of their dyes, the beauty of their glass, these are things which move the admiration of competent critics in the present day. Machinery may produce more rapidly, more cheaply, more regular work, of more equal quality, and perhaps of higher finish, but it is work that has lost the delicacy and grace of objects that were shaped by human hands and bear the direct impress of human care, and taste, and fancy. We may be interested in the preservation of the relics of the past, not merely as curiosities from bygone ages, but as examples of beautiful workmanship and skilled manipulation to which the craftsmen of the present day cannot attain.

Most Englishmen—all those whose opinions are formed by the newspapers they read—are so proud of the vast progress that has been made in the present century, that they do not sufficiently attend to the curious fact that there are many arts that decay and are lost. In this country it appears that the art of glass-making was introduced more than once, and completely died out again; the same is probably true of cloth dressing and of dyeing. It seems to me a very curious problem to examine what were the causes which led to the disappearance of these particular industries. In each single case it is probably a very complicated problem to distinguish all the factors at work—what were the social or economic conditions that destroyed this or that useful art once introduced? But into such questions of detail I must not attempt to enter now. I wish to direct your attention to-day to a more general question, to an attempt to give a partial explanation, not of failure here and there, but of conspicuous success. In the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a very high degree of skill was attained, not in one art only, but in many. It is at least worth while to look a little more closely at one group of the conditions which influenced the work of the times, and examine the organisations which were formed for controlling the training of workmen, for supervising the manner in which they lived, and maintaining a high standard of quality in the goods produced. There is no need to idealise the times when they were formed, or the men who composed them; the very records of craft gilds show that the mediæval workman was quite capable of scamping his work and getting drunk when opportunity tempted him. But the fact remains that a very great deal of first-rate work was done in many crafts, for portions of it still survive, and I cannot but believe that some of the credit is due to the gilds which set themselves to rule each craft, so that the work turned out should be a credit to those who made it.

Herein, as it seems to me, lies the secret of the importance of the craft gilds during the period of their useful activity. They were managed on the principle that "honourable thing was convenable;" that honesty was the best policy; the good of the trade meant its high reputation for sound work at fair prices. It has got another meaning to our ears; a time when trade is good means a time when it is more possible than usual to sell any sort of goods at high prices, and the craft gilds in their later days were contaminated by this lower view of industry. The ancient anecdote of the Edinburgh glazier who was caught breaking the windows of peaceful inhabitants for "the good of the trade," may illustrate the modern sense of the phrase, while the conduct of the stalwart citizen who thrashed him within an inch of his life, and said at every blow "it's all for the good of the trade," was in closer accord with the disciplinary character of mediæval rules.

I trust I have said enough to justify my selection of this topic as one which is not unfitting the attention of this society; the subject is a very wide one, and I think the treatment may be somewhat less diffuse if I draw most of my illustrations from a single centre of industry, and speak chiefly of the craft gilds of Coventry. It is a town which I visited recently, and where, through the kindness of the Town Clerk and Mr. W. G. Fretton, the antiquary, I was able to make good use of the few hours I had to spend. It may be convenient too, to arrange the matter under the following heads:—

  I. The introduction of craft gilds.

 II. The objects and powers of mediæval craft gilds.

III. The resuscitation of craft gilds.

I. There is a certain amount of assumption in talking about the introduction of craft gilds, because it suggests the belief that they were not a native development. The word gild is, after all, a very vague term, much like our word association, and though we can prove the existence of many gilds before the Conquest,—at Cambridge and Exeter and elsewhere,—their laws contain nothing that would justify us in regarding them as craft gilds. It is much more probable, though Dr. Gross, the greatest living authority on the subject, speaks with considerable reserve, that the hall where the men of Winchester drank their own gild, or the land of the knights' gild at Canterbury, belonged to bodies which had some supervision over the trade of the town—in fact, were early gilds merchant. But I know of no hint in any of the records or histories of the period before the Norman Conquest, that can be adduced to show that there were any associations of craftsmen formed to control particular industries. The earliest information which we get about such groups of men comes from London, where, as we learn, Henry I. granted a charter to the Weavers. It is pretty clear that by this document some authority was given to the weavers to control the making of cloth (and it