THE CRAFTS
THE early history of the craft guilds, like that of the municipalities,
is the story of communities in the first strength of youth, growing
by the force of their own vitality into forms which can be reduced to
no mechanical regularity or order, and ever plastic to take on new
shapes according to the shifting exigencies of an age when industry,
commerce, local government, were all in a state of revolution. In
the pride of their first creation, in the humiliation of their later
apparent subjection, in the victorious results at last of their long
discipline, the guilds reflected successive movements in the great
change that transformed English society; and it would be hard to find
a single formula in which to express a life so free and various. Like
the boroughs their systems of government ranged from constitutions
which, if not democratic, were at least republican, to constitutions
which placed in command an oligarchy, whether limited or despotic; so
that we can scarcely say that the towns borrowed their methods from
the guilds, or the guilds from the towns, at a time when both alike
were perhaps tentatively feeling their way towards the only solutions
of the problem of government which the time and occasion admitted. They
had the same period of intense activity, from the awakening of the new
life of England under the Norman kings, till under Henry the Seventh
its industrial and commercial position was definitely established. The
very difficulties by which they were hemmed in were the true conditions
of any lively growth; and it was not till the sixteenth century,
when the militant life of the crafts came to an end, that a fatal
monotony settled down on their associations—a dreary uniformity[231]
both of constitution and of policy, which makes their period of
triumphant prosperity and imminent decay a record at once tedious and
disheartening.
In dealing with the history of commerce the craft guilds necessarily
take a foremost place in their character of trading or manufacturing
associations; but we are here mainly concerned with what we may call
their political relations to the borough, and their influence on
the growth of municipal life. The constitution of the craft becomes
therefore important, not from its economic results, but as indicating
the character and complexion of the guild, the policy which it might
be expected to pursue if it attained to authority, and the extent to
which it could be supposed to favour popular or democratic theories
of government. How far the crafts were actually able to make their
influence felt depends on a second question as to the connexion that
existed—of what kind and closeness it may have been—between the
guilds and the governing body of the borough.
We must remember that the various craft guilds represented all ranks
and classes in the industrial world—the capitalist, the middleman,
and the working man. There were aristocratic fraternities of the
Merchant Adventurers, and of dealers living by the profits of
commerce alone, who were grouped in the great mercantile companies
such as the vintners and spicers and grocers and mercers. In a lower
scale were the middlemen and traders who produced little or nothing
themselves, but made their living mainly by selling the produce
of the labour of others—such as the saddlers, the drapers, the
leather-sellers, the hatters—and whose unions were in fact formidable
combinations of employers. Below these again came guilds of artizans
employed in preparing work for the dealers, to be by them sold to
the general public, as the smiths who worked for the tailors or
linen-armourers,[232] the weavers who supplied the clothiers; the
joiners, painters, ironsmiths, and coppersmiths who made the saddles
and harness for the saddlers; the tawyers who prepared skins for the
leather-sellers; the cap-makers who fulled the caps which the hatters
sold.[233] Finally there remained the crafts which both manufactured
and sold their own wares, like the bakers, tailors, or shoemakers, and
who dealt directly with the consumer without the intervention of any
other guild. It is evident that these various associations had all
their own business to do,[234] and that their policy differed as widely
as did the interests of the several classes. We do not find a guild of
merchants or dealers trying to raise wages or shorten hours; or a guild
of artizans seeking to depress labour and assert the supremacy of the
middleman; or a mixed guild of masters and men intent upon lowering
prices for the public. But we may still ask whether behind all obvious
divergences of interest and of power, there was any ruling instinct
common to all these brotherhoods of trade.
The original motives which drew men together into craft guilds were
no doubt everywhere the same—the desire to obtain the monopoly of
their trade and complete control over it;[235] and also to find the
security which in those days organized associations alone could give
to the poor and helpless against tyrannical and corrupt administration
of the law, just as in the country men enrolled themselves under the
livery of a lord or knight who was their adequate protector against the
iniquities of the courts[236] and by whose arbitration their quarrels
were adjusted.[237] For these purposes associations were formed of
the entire trades of various districts. All the members of the craft,
great and small, were enrolled in the fraternity; and thus every
guild, to whatever order in the hierarchy of industry it belonged,
contained within itself the various ranks of workers who belonged to
that particular occupation. It is in this organization of the whole
craft into a compact body arrayed in self-defence against the world
outside, and in the means that were used to maintain it, that we trace
the peculiar characteristics of the mediæval guild as opposed to those
of modern associations. From the very outset its society was based on
compulsion. Dealer or artizan had no choice as to whether he would join
the association of his trade or no, that question being settled by the
charter which gave the craft power to compel every workman to enter
into its circle. A constitution such as this left a profound mark on
the conduct and ultimate policy of every guild, for where there was no
real freedom of association there proved at last to be no real freedom
of government. Societies such as the modern trade union, created and
maintained by the good will of men naturally bound to one another by
common occupation and interests, and who expect from their association
a common benefit, may long persist as voluntary institutions with a
democratic government. But the ancient guild—a fraternity of the
whole trade with all its ranks and classes, employers and wage-earners
alike, compulsorily bound together into one fellowship as against
the world without, and whose common interest in association tended to
become more and more visionary—was inevitably driven to preserve by
force an artificial and ill-compacted union; and instead of a free
self-governing community, there grew up a society ruled by its leading
members in a more or less despotic fashion, according to the character
of the trade itself and to the support given to its governors by the
authorities at Westminster or in the municipality.[238]
(1) For it is plain that no intimate union can ever have existed
between the three orders that practically made up the guild.[239]
At the head of the society stood the master and the aldermen or
wardens, drawn from among the wealthiest men of the trade; and grouped
immediately round them were all those who, after having passed through
these offices, retained for life a position of dignity among the
members, and from whom the court of assistants or governing council was
wholly or partly formed.
(2) Then came the commonalty, the craft-holders or shopkeepers
or “masters” of the trade—a term which by no means necessarily
implies _employers_ of labour, but rather artificers admitted into
the “mestier”[240] or mistery—who were alone responsible before the
law for offences[241] committed in their shops or work-rooms, and
were therefore alone authorized by the guild to take work from a
customer.[242]
(3) Last came the hired workers—that is the trained journeymen or
serving-men; for the unskilled labourers working for a daily hire and
apprentices can scarcely be reckoned as in any sense members of the
guild.
In a society thus constituted the notion of self-government never for
a moment implied the modern notion of democracy, or even the idea
that authority should be exercised only by the will of the majority.
In some fraternities indeed the whole community of craft-masters took
part directly in the yearly election of officers, though probably
this was the extreme bound and limit of their influence;[243] but in
general there was the same tendency in the guilds as in the boroughs
to choose their governors by some indirect and complicated system
through which the commonalty was kept well in restraint. Either the
alderman himself nominated candidates for the various offices, from
among whom the select council or fellowship made their choice, or
he appointed a few picked men, five or seven or eight as the case
might be, to choose the rulers for the next year.[244] In the same
way the two or four “sufficient and discreet men” who were to assist
the alderman, “the helpmen and overseers,” or the council of eight
or twelve or twenty-four, were chosen either by a similar committee,
or by the direct choice of the alderman himself “with the aid of his
fraternity.”[245] Nor is there any evidence that this method of
government by the select few was a growth of later corruption; it is
more probable that in societies which could only be founded at the
wish of the more prosperous men in the trade, since they alone could
undertake to raise the money for its charter or guarantee the payment
of its yearly rent, these men were accustomed, in return for their
money or as a security for it, to hold the management of the community
in their own hands; and this seems confirmed by traces of the system
which we find in very early times, as well as by what we know of the
origins of later fraternities.
If the power of the masters was thus limited, the mere journeymen were
practically of no account at all in such great matters as election
and legislation. Perhaps in some trades they occasionally exercized
a slight influence, as in the case of the London bowyers, whose
ordinances were agreed to “as well by serving-men as by masters.”[246]
But in general it is doubtful whether the voice of the hired worker
was ever heard or his will consulted, however much his obedience to
the ordinances was required and enforced. It was supposed that his
interests were sufficiently protected by the town authorities, to
whom an alien who was cheated by his master, a journeyman who found
his wages paid on the truck system, or a weaver who saw his labour
supplanted by that of a woman or a foreigner, could make his complaint;
and who were bound to see that no freeman of the borough took more
apprentices into his household than he could promise to support
comfortably; that the apprentice was not chastised beyond measure,
nor turned out penniless at the end of his service;[247] and that no
fraudulent action of his master should rob him of the benefit of the
exact tale of the years of service he had fulfilled.[248]
In all that concerned the hired worker, indeed, law had become so
rigid and so detailed by the time that Parliament, the Town Council,
and the Craft wardens, had taken their turn at legislation, that it
might be plausibly assumed that nothing remained for the discussion
of the working man. By a series of statutes Parliament endeavoured to
keep the hire of the workers and the length of the working day fixed
in spite of the increase of trade;[249] and mayors and bailiffs in
all boroughs[250] were ordered to compel labour to keep its allotted
times, and to proclaim the wages of craftsmen twice a year, “and that
a pair of stocks be in every town to justify the same servants and
labourers.”[251] Whatever was left undefined by Parliament was put
under rule by the subordinate authorities. Town Councils made provision
for the punishment of “rebel and contrarious” men in the mayor’s court,
examined and corrected the customs of the crafts, forbade workmen to
make their bargains anywhere save openly at the market cross, and fined
them if they stood there beyond one day in the week,[252] probably
on the supposition that they were holding out for a higher wage or
shorter hours. The guild-masters regulated the prices to be paid for
piece-work,[253] issued orders allowing work to be done by night,
and made rules as to apprenticeship and service.[254] For greater
security moreover the masters were accustomed to enter into covenants
for mutual protection against their servants—“And if any serving-man
shall conduct himself in any other manner than properly towards his
master, and act rebelliously towards him,” said the Whittawyers, “no
one of the trade shall set him to work until he shall have made amends
before the mayor and aldermen.”[255] On the other hand journeymen were
invariably bound by oath not to make any sort of confederation among
themselves,[256]—a precaution which State and town and guild were
equally vigilant in enforcing. Under such a system as this, if at any
time the workers proposed to disturb the statute wage or the statute
day, they had to contend not only against the upper class of their
own craft, the masters and wardens and shopkeepers, but against the
governing body of the town, and the opposition of the whole community.
Neither oaths nor laws nor public opinion however could permanently
prevent men from combining to better their position, and from time
to time we can follow the fortunes of a struggle which, when the
town records are published, will probably be shown to have been very
general. In London alone we have during a single century records of
strikes among the workmen of four trades—the shearmen, the saddlers,
the shoemakers, and the tailors.
The journeymen of the cloth shearers took a lesson in combination
from the employers. “If there was any dispute between a master in the
said trade and his man,” ran the complaint of the masters about 1350,
“such man has been wont to go to all the men within the city of the
same trade, and then by covin and conspiracy between them made, they
would order that no one among them should work or serve his own master,
until the said master and his servant or man had come to an agreement;
by reason whereof the masters in the said trade have been in great
trouble and the people left unserved.” These men were also making a
covert attempt to raise their payment by refusing to work at day wages,
and insisting on piece-work through which they could gain more money;
while the masters, so long as they were forced by law to sell at a
fixed price, had a valid reason for protesting before the mayor that
there must be some relation between lowering the price of their wares
and raising the wages of their workmen, or they themselves would be
set between the upper and nether mill-stone; and for making a petition
that the men might be chastised and commanded to work according to the
ancient usage “as matter of charity and for the profit of the people.”
The city magistrates granted ordinances which forbade any attempt to
settle trade disputes by strikes, and ordered all complaints to be
brought before the warden of the craft (himself of course a master),
and failing him before the mayor. Though the court did not forbid
piece-work, it fixed its price at the low rate that prevailed before
the Plague.[257] On the whole the victory therefore lay with the
masters.
The shoemakers’ servants were early in the field. They made their
first rebellion before 1306, the main results of which seem to have
been a decree added to their old ordinances that the journeymen of the
trade should make no provisions to the prejudice of the public;[258]
and perhaps the imposition of an oath that they would not make
among themselves any union or confederation.[259] For eighty years
they waited before making a new attempt. At last in 1387 a “great
congregation” of them met at the Black Friars “and there did conspire
and confederate to hold together ... and because that Richard Bonet
of the trade aforesaid would not agree with them made assault upon
him so that he hardly escaped with his life ... to the alarm of
the neighbours.” The meeting was illegal, not only because of their
oath, but because of a law passed four years before to forbid any
confederation among workers; so to make their position more regular the
poor shoemakers hit upon the plan of calling in the help of a friendly
friar preacher, “Brother William Bartone by name, who had made an
agreement with their companions that he would make suit in the Court of
Rome for confirmation of that fraternity by the Pope; so that on pain
of excommunication and of still more grievous sentence (!) afterwards
to be fulminated, no man should dare to interfere with the well-being
of the fraternity. For doing the which he had received a certain sum of
money which had been collected among their said companions.” This form
of Papal interference, however, was not to the mind of Londoners—“a
deed,” they said, “which notoriously redounds to the weakening of the
liberties of the said city and of the powers of the officers of the
same.” The mayor accordingly threw the leaders into prison,[260] and
the attempt of the luckless journeymen came to an end.
The serving-men of the saddlers tried another plan, and formed in 1383
a religious fraternity whose ostensible duties were perfectly harmless.
Its members were wont once a year to array themselves in a like suit
and go out beyond the city bounds to Stratford (in other words, out
of reach for the moment of the city authorities) where they held a
meeting, and returned to hear mass in honour of the Virgin in the
church next to the Saddlers’ Hall; also from time to time their beadle
would summon journeymen to attend at vigils of the dead and pray for
the souls of their old comrades. According to the masters, however,
this was but “a certain feigned colour of sanctity” under which the
men merely wasted their masters’ time and conspired to “raise wages
greatly in excess”—in fact in the space of thirteen years, from 1373
to 1396, they had increased their hire to twice or three times the old
customary rate. The mayor and aldermen agreed with the masters as to
the dangerous character of these proceedings, forbade any such meetings
or any fraternities for the future, and ordered that the serving-men
should be under the masters, and that the “masters must properly treat
and govern” them as in all other trades.[261]
The journeymen tailors took a bolder line, for they not only held
illegal meetings both within and without the city bounds, at which
they assembled wearing a common livery, but also hired houses in the
city where they lived in companies, and defied both their own masters
and the officers of the city. Whereupon the masters and wardens of the
trade notified to the mayor and aldermen “that they were exceedingly
sorrowful at there being such offenders and such misdeeds”; and the
mayor and aldermen “after holding careful council and conference
thereon” decided that it was manifestly to the public peril to allow
journeymen and serving-men—a race at once youthful and unstable—to
have a common livery at their assemblies, or common dwelling-houses
by themselves. The settlement was broken up, and livery and meetings
forbidden. Then the tailors also put on the colour of sanctity, and
a couple of years later (in 1417) we find them petitioning to be
allowed to meet for prayers and offerings for the souls of deceased
tailors.[262]
That similar attempts, with the same impotent conclusions, took place
in other manufacturing towns is certain; though we have not yet the
means of measuring the extent of the movement. The uniform failure
of every effort at revolt, even the acquiescence of the workmen when
revolt was impossible, declare the helplessness of the mediæval
labourer, entangled as he was in a vast net-work of commercial
theories, administrative maxims, and arguments of vested interests
public and private. For in a society where law ruled all industry, the
whole community was on the alert to resist any defiance of ordinances
avowedly made for their own protection.[263] The right to strike was
denied by law and vehemently resisted by public opinion as contrary to
the common good; and disputes were settled, not as now by an agreement
voluntarily made within the trade, but by the formal decision of the
municipality, against which there was no appeal.
At the same time it is evident that in their dealings with journeymen
and hired servants, if in no other respect, the municipalities did no
more than carry out exactly the intentions of the guilds themselves.
From the moment that they come into view the crafts—that is, all the
more important ones, for from the nature of the case we know very
little about the poorer sort of associations or the humbler trades
concealed under the form of religious societies—are distinguished by
the same creed and policy. Their essential character was laid down
in the oligarchic schemes of administration to which they inclined;
and, as we have seen, the purity of the guild government was further
maintained by the pains which was taken to prevent the journeymen
from pressing on into the upper ranks and weakening the established
system by multiplying the number of small masters; and to select with
adequate care the people admitted to be subjects with constitutional
rights—a people chosen as far as possible from an upper class and
even from the hereditary stock of the guild.[264] By an original
stringent constitution therefore, and by their own later discipline,
the governing oligarchy was protected as by a double course of
entrenchments; and a third line of defence was formed by keeping guard
over every entrance through which the common workman might make his
way into the superior class of artizans who, in however inferior a
degree, might still be recognized as more or less officially attached
to the craft. In its very nature, therefore, the guild organization was
adverse to the claims of the men who worked for hire, and under its
government the journeyman was practically condemned without a hearing.
What with the influence exercised by the masters in the Town Council
and government, and what with the credulous fears of the public of
consumers when they were told what “contrarious” workmen might do in
raising prices and limiting supply, and “the many losses which might
happen in future times” through combinations of hired labour, the
victory of the employers was never for a moment doubtful,[265] and
unions of journeymen such as those which sprang up in the fourteenth
and first half of the fifteenth centuries, broken and disabled almost
at the outset, seem, so far as we can see, to have been again and again
crushed out of existence by the overwhelming forces of guild and town
and state brought to bear on them, and to have found no permanent life
till the eighteenth century.
There was no doubt a sense in which the strong rule of a governing
oligarchy fully justified itself throughout the course of the struggle
for autonomy between the rising crafts and the rising municipalities.
Shaking itself free from discussions and divisions within its own body
by asserting the triumph of the stronger party, the guild was able to
maintain in practice the consistent theory of its constitution—the
undisputed supremacy of the masters in the regulation of the trade
policy; and through centuries of varying and doubtful fortunes the
crafts still contrived to present to the world outside an unbroken
front and a certain air of independence; holding together in companies
under leaders of their own choosing, and, save in rare instances,
scorning to stoop to the custom common in France or Germany of having
their chief officer appointed by some external authority.[266] But this
bold militant attitude was only maintained through a rigid discipline,
and by a ruthless suppression of every attempt to break the ranks.
A body to all appearance uniform, but in fact split up into two or
three hostile groups, the craft only preserved its air of harmony by
abandoning all pretence at democratic government, and avowedly subduing
the weaker classes to the stronger. The policy which had been its
safety in the time of conflict remained its settled creed in the time
of power. It is clear, therefore, that if ever the members of the guild
forced their way into the council chamber of the town, their appearance
can scarcely be taken as marking a popular or democratic movement. That
it enlarged the governing class by bringing in a new group of men to
take part in the active political life of the country is evident; but
on the other hand these men do not seem to have contributed a single
idea to political experience, or carried political experiment a single
step further. Saturated with the customary views of administration
which were the fashion in the upper class of town society, and by which
their own interests had been so well served, the craft-masters sent
their representatives to the council only to give new strength to the
coercive policy of the governing oligarchy. The character of the trade
fraternity was fully shown when, victorious over the foes of its own
household, strong in its complete organization, the craft guild rose
out of its long subjection to public control, and seizing into its own
hands municipal authority, destroyed its terrors for the trader. When
this last step was taken the crafts stood forth in full realization of
their ideal—close corporations fully equipped against the whole body
of consumers, and masters of the labour of the country. What has been
called the decline of the guild system may more truly be called its
triumph—the revelation of its constant aim and true significance.
NOTE A
STATUTE WAGES IN 1388.
_s._ _d._
Bailiff for husbandry 13 4 a year with clothing.
Master-hind, carter, shepherd 10 0
Ox-herd and cow-herd 6 8
Cowdriver 7 0
Swine-herd and woman labourer 6 0
No servant of artificer or victualler in a town was to take more than
those in the country (12 Richard II. cap. 4.).
IN 1444.
_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._
Bailiff of husbandry 23 4 With clothing 5 0 and food
Hind, carter, shepherd 20 0 ” 4 0 ”
Labourer 15 0 ” 3 4 ”
Woman servant 10 0 ” 4 0 ”
Child under 14 6 0 ” 3 0 ”
Summer wages of mason or carpenter 4_d._ a day with food, without
5_d._; tiler, slater, rough mason, and builders 3_d._ with food; other
labourers 2_d._ Without food 1_d._ more in all cases. Winter wages
1_d._ less all round. In harvest a mower 4_d._, reaper 3_d._; labourers
2_d._; 2_d._ more for meat and drink. (23 Henry VI. cap. 12.)
IN 1495.
_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._
Bailiffs had risen to 26 8 With clothing 5 0
Carters, shepherd, &c.,
remained at 20 0 ” ” 5 0
Labourers had risen to 16 8 ” ” 4 0 and food
The hire of women, children, and artificers remained the same.
(11 Henry VII. cap. 22.)
By 12 Henry VII. cap. 3, all statutes fixing the wages of artificers
and labourers were made void for masons and all concerned in building,
and servants in husbandry. Rogers (Work and Wages, ii. 327) fixes the
wages of the ordinary artizan in the fifteenth century at 6_d._ a day
and agricultural wages at 4_d._, carpenters a little under 6_d._,
plumbers 6-1/2_d._, masons 6_d._ The board of a skilled artizan might
cost in 1438 about 2_s._, of a common labourer about 1_s._, very
commonly from 8_d._ to 10_d._, most generally 8_d._ (Agriculture and
Prices, iv. 505, 751-2.) In 1395 a Nottingham “layer” was charged for
working two days as stone-cutter for 12_d._ against the law, and the
jury stated that “all the carpenters, all the plasterers, all the
stone-cutters, all the labourers, take too much for their craft by
the day, against the statute of our lord the King.” (Nott. Rec. i.
275.) For a list of wages paid in 1464 see ibid. ii. 370-373; in 1511
iii. 328-337. In 1495 a man was employed to dig stones at 3_d._ a day
without food.
That there was difficulty in enforcing the legal wage and that there
was often a difference between the prices actually paid and those which
the law books spoke of as still valid is evident from the ingenious
methods in use of evading the law. Sometimes the workman was paid his
board wages and given his food besides; or false entries were made in
the account books; or a yearly fee was given in addition to wages;
or he was paid a sum of so much a mile for coming to and going from
his work; or his wages were calculated at 6_d._ or 5_d._ according to
ability for 365 days in the year, against the statute which forbade
the workman to receive hire for holidays or for the eves of feasts.
(Rogers’ Agric. and Prices, i. 255; Work and Wages, ii. 328-330; Stat.
4 Henry IV. cap. 14.)
The legal hours of work for country labourers from March to September
were from 5 A.M. till between 7 and 8 P.M., with half an hour for
breakfast, an hour and a half for dinner; from September to March, from
the springing of the day till the night of the same day. They were not
to sleep in day-time save after dinner from May to August. (Stat. 11
Henry VII. cap. 22.) The Saturday half-holiday from noon seems to have
been universal. In shops trading on Sundays, holidays and vigils was
very generally forbidden in the middle of the fifteenth century, save
in harvest time, and unless “great high need may excuse.” (Kingdon’s
Grocers’ Company, ii. 190; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 169.) Rogers (Work
and Wages, i. 180-2) calculates that an artizan working three hundred
days a year could earn from £3 15_s._ 0_d._ to £4 7_s._ 6_d._, and in
London might get from £6 5_s._ 0_d._ to £6 17_s._ 6 _d._ a year. Walter
of Henley (ed. by Miss Lamond, p. 9) gives forty-four weeks, leaving
eight weeks “for holidays and other hindrances.” But in his translation
of Walter’s Husbandry, Bishop Grosseteste adds a phrase (ibid. 45)
which throws a new light on the matter. “In these forty-four weeks be
264 days besides Sundays”—an explanation which certainly expands the
amount of leisure allowed to country labourers, whether it applied to
town artizans or no.