Plymouth, formed by union of three hamlets, 219-220;

its incorporation, 220;

church of S. Andrew, 220;

guild merchant, 220.

Poles of Hull, 79, _note_ 2

Pontefract, its council, 278, _note_ 1

Portmen of Ipswich, 223, 250, 252

Portreeve of Canterbury, 283

Portsmouth, its treaty with Southampton, 53, _note_ 4;

control exercised by mayor of Southampton over, 319

Portugal, its trade with Southampton, 291, 294

“Potentiores” of Lynn, 196, _note_ 3, 407-409, 412, 413, 419, 421-424

Preston, distinction between “foreign” and “inn” burgesses, 47;

punishment of mayor for striking burgess, 227, _note_ 2;

government, 275, _note_ 4;

election of chief officers, 276;

school, 14, _note_ 2;

“stallingers”, 48;

style, 231, _note_, 275, _note_ 4

Prices, controversy as to fixing of, 139-140

Priests forbidden to keep schools at Bridgenorth, 18

“Probi homines”, 249

Prolocutor of Lynn, 414

“Protection” of industry, 53, 56, 100

“Prud’hommes”, appointment of, 34

Prussia, its trade with Lynn, 404

Q

Queensborough, merchants of, in guild of Coventry, 206, _note_

Querdling, John, 390

R

Reading, almshouse of poor sisters at, 14, _note_ 2;

guild merchant, 203, _note_ 2;

first use of paper for accounts, 259, _note_ 6

Recorder of Exeter, 168, 171, _note_;

of Norwich, 387;

of Nottingham, 347-348;

of Southampton, 302-303

Redehode, his gifts to the church at Wycombe, 75, _note_ 2

Regrating, 39, 54

Retford, settlement about its tolls, 335, _note_ 2

Revenue of towns, its source, 47

Rhineland, its trade with Lynn, 404;

with Southampton, 289

Rhône, trade of Jacques Cœur on, 81

Rhymes of fifteenth century, their character, 6;

nailed on church door in Coventry, 211

Ricarto, Robert de, town clerk of Bristol, 264, _note_ 1;

his Calendar, 20

Richard I., his charter to Oxford, 278, _note_ 2

Richard II., his charter to Liverpool, 41;

to “the citizens” of Norwich, 371;

guilds formed in his reign, 155, _note_ 1;

his grants to the Emperor, 292, _note_ 1

Richard III., his laws concerning foreigners, 94;

letter to Southampton, 313;

attitude of Nottingham towards, 330

Richard the Writer, of Nottingham, 326

Ripe, marshland common on, held by Lydd, 237

Robert, bishop of Lincoln, translation of his “Rules”, 5

Rochester, Alcock, bishop of, 14

Rolls of towns, 259

Romney, “extravagantes” in, 47;

payment to apprentice at end of service, 120, _note_ 1;

arrest of non-freeman for attending common council, 224, _note_ 2;

church of S. Nicholas, 59, _note_;

town clerk, 61, 261, 262, _note_, 263;

fines paid by foreigners, 91, _note_ 1;

jurats, 278, _note_ 1;

common land, 237;

election of Mayor, 59, _note_

Rose, John, chamberlain of Nottingham, 344, _note_ 2;

mayor, 349

Rother, old bed of, held by Romney, 237

Rotherham, college at, 13

Rowe, Daniel, of Romney, 61

“Rules of S. Robert”, translation of, 5

Russell, John, 79, _note_ 1

Rye, punishment in, for striking mayor, 227, _note_ 2;

seals, 233, _note_ 1;

framing of ordinances, 258, _note_ 3;

proposed union with Tenterden, 262;

burnt, 323

S

Saddlers of London, strike among journeymen of, 125-126;

their controversy with crafts that worked for them, 162-165

S. Albans, guild merchant of, 203, _note_ 2

S. Botolph’s, lord of the fair of, his dispute with Lincoln, 244

Salt marsh held by Romney, 237

Saltmarsh, Southampton, 314

Samon, John, 251, _note_ 2

Sandwich, member of Cinque Ports, 428;

primitive constitution, 430-431;

makes peace with Edward IV., 431;

changes in its constitution in middle of fifteenth century, 431-432;

conflict between governing class and commonalty, 432-434;

royal grant of 1548 to, 435;

ruin of popular liberties in sixteenth century, 433-436;

common assembly, 225-226, 430;

Black Book and White Book, 258, _note_ 3;

church of S. Clement, 227;

of S. Mary, 75, _note_ 2;

town clerk, 257, _note_ 4, 262, _note_, 263;

common council, 430, 432-434;

custumal, 257, _note_ 4;

Delf canal, 435;

foreigners in, 91, _note_ 1, 320, 429;

goldsmith employed to weigh bread, 37-38;

guilds, 155;

common horn, 227;

hornblowing, 430;

hospital of S. Thomas, 75;

Italian merchants allowed to buy in, 293;

jurats, 430;

election of mayor, 226-227, 274, 430-434;

non-burgesses fined for attending elections, 431;

grammar school, 16;

wards, 431

Schools, causes of their desertion, 14, _note_ 2;

control of, transferred from clergy to people, 17-19;

free grammar, their foundation, 13-17;

their training, 21-22;

influence, 22-23;

first school founded by layman, 16, _note_ 2;

school at Appleby, 14, _note_ 2;

school at Ashburton, 13, _note_ 2;

Banbury, 17;

Bristol, 13, _note_ 2, 20;

Canterbury, 14, _note_ 2;

attached to Clare Hall, Cambridge, 14;

at Coventry, 14, _note_ 2;

Deritend, 13, _note_ 2;

Hull, 14;

Liverpool, 14, _note_ 2;

London, 13, _note_ 2, 14, _note_ 2;

Ludlow, 13, _note_ 2;

Macclesfield, 16;

Manchester, 17;

Nottingham, 19, 348, _note_ 3, 354, _note_ 4;

school at Preston, 14, _note_ 2;

Reading, 14;

Sandwich, 16;

Shrewsbury, 13, _note_ 2;

Stockport, 16;

Stratford, 13, _note_ 2;

Worcester, 13, _note_ 2;

Wotton-under-Edge, 16, _note_ 2

Schoolmasters, Erasmus’s description of, 22, _note_

Scott, Thomas, founds Rotherham college, 13

Scrope, Sir John, visit of Sir William Plumpton’s daughter to, 78

Sea, keeping of, given to English merchants, 323

Seal of the community distinguished from mayor’s seal, 233, 238;

the common, of Norwich, 390, 391, 392;

of Southampton, 309;

of Winchester, 286

Selling, Prior, appoints master for Canterbury school, 14, _note_ 2

Serles, John, town clerk of Sandwich, 257, _note_ 4

Serjeant of Lynn, his election, 418, _note_ 3;

of Southampton, his election, 309;

rules about his appointment in Worcester and Bridgenorth, 271,

_note_ 3

Servants, their duties during harvest, 64;

of country gentry, appointed to offices of importance, 79, _note_ 1

Shaa, Sir Edmund, establishes school at Stockport, 16

Shearers of cloth resist introduction of machinery, 89

Shearmen of London, 123-124;

of Shrewsbury, 126, _note_

Sheriffs, election of, 275, _note_ 3;

of Norwich, their election, 373;

their tourns, 381

Sherwood Forest, 328

Shillingford, John, mayor of Exeter, 168, 172

Ships, English, sent out to foreign ports, 291;

for protecting Southampton harbour, 298

Shipbuilding in Southampton, 289

Shoemakers, protection of tanners against, 165-166;

protected against cobblers, 166;

quarrels with cordwainers, 166;

of London, their complaint about foreigners, 95, _note_ 1;

strikes among their journeymen, 124-125

Shrewsbury, constitutional changes in fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, 285-286;

aldermen, 286;

bailiffs, 285;

councils, 285, 286;

disputes with Worcester as to jurisdiction over Severn, 42,

_note_ 1;

drapers’ company, 173, _note_ 4, 183-184;

election of Members of Parliament, 285;

foreigners in guild, 49, _note_ 1;

guild of Trinity, 144, _note_ 2, 173, _note_ 4;

mercers, 182, _note_ 1;

shearmen, the festival suppressed, 126, _note_;

school, 13, _note_ 2;

trade troubles, 324

Shropshire, its wool, 88, _note_ 3

Silver, its exportation forbidden, 69, _note_ 3

Sligo, its trade with Southampton, 289

Smallwood, John, town clerk of Hythe, 263, _note_ 1

Smiths at Coventry, election of keepers among, 118, _note_ 1

Smuggling at Southampton, 293-294

Songs, political and satirical, their decline in fifteenth century, 6;

pictures of town life in, 6-12

Soper, William, repairs Water gate, Southampton, &c., 291

Southampton, example of early municipal government, 288;

its early constitution, 305-306;

attempt to make it a free port, 290;

burnt, 295, 299;

interference of royal officers in, 296-297;

seized into King’s hands, 298;

heavy charges, 299, 300;

grant to Margaret of Anjou, 300, _note_ 3;

money troubles, 300-304, 313-314;

grant to hold land, 304, _note_ 2;

Richard III.’s letter to, 313;

want of political activity, 318;

outer influences acting on, 320-321;

administration, 305-321;

alms, 295-296;

aldermen, 307-309, 312, _note_;

archers, 297, _note_ 2;

audit house, 310;

bailiffs, 305, 309;

Bargate tower, 310;

inquisition of boundaries in 1254, 314, _note_ 4;

castle, 297, _note_ 3;

common box, 314;

burgesses distinguished from commonalty, 311;

its charters, 306-310;

common chest, 309, 314;

church of S. Michael, 308;

of Holy Rood, 316;

town clerk, 309;

foreign commerce, 288-292, 294, 320-321;

common, 238, 314;

corruption by town authorities, 294-295;

council, 280, 308, 309;

made into county, 310;

leasing out of customs, 68, 291;

pressure of military discipline, 297-300;

twelve discreets, 278, _note_ 1, 308, 309;

dispute with S. Julian’s Hospital, 314-315;

with abbot of Westminster, 52, _note_ 1;

about Winchester fair, 292-293;

fair, 293;

ferm, 300-305;

foreign settlers, 289, 293, 320;

God’s House Meadow, 314;

guild merchant, 198, _note_ 1, 207, _note_ 3, 305;

exclusive right of melting tin ore given to, 293;

guildhall, 310, 312;

guild rules, 258, _note_ 1;

town gunner, 298;

protection of harbour, 298;

hospital of S. Julian, 295;

home industries, 288-289;

Italian merchants in, 290, 293;

common lands, 311, 314-317;

settlement of London traders in, 291;

mayor the alderman of the guild, 306, 407, _note_ 2;

his powers, 306;

election, 274-275, 306-307, 312-313;

salary, 314;

authority as King’s admiral, 319;

importance, 319-320;

presented at court leet, 318, _note_;

deposed, 303, _note_ 1;

burgesses allowed to do without, 307;

town officers, their election and duties, 308-309;

“out-burgesses”, 47, _note_ 2;

outlay in 1428, 303-304;

paviour, 32, _note_ 3;

relief to paupers, 296;

recorder, 302, 303;

revenue in 1428, 303-304;

Saltmarsh, 314;

common seal, 309;

smuggling, 293-294;

made staple of metals, 293;

style, 307, 308;

decree about alien tailors, 294;

treaties with trading towns, 53;

growth of trade, 292-294, 305, _note_ 1;

maintenance of walls, &c., 292, 298-299;

wharf, 294, _note_ 1;

Water gate, 291;

money left for water pipes, 76;

condition of working people in fourteenth century, 295, 296

Southwell, church of, Whitsuntide offerings at, 329

Spain, its trade with Bristol, 73;

with Southampton, 290, 291, 294

Speaker, the common, of Lynn, 414;

of common council of Norwich, 376;

of House of Commons, 376, _note_ 3

Spurriers, guild of, its rules, 147

“Stallingers” in Preston, 48

Stapledon, Bishop, founds Ashburton school and Exeter college, 13,

_note_ 2

Statutes for regulation of craft guilds, 148-149;

for protection of drapers’ craftsmen, 87

Steelyard, right of keeping, 27

Stockport, its school, 16

Stour, Act of Parliament for deepening, 435

Stratford, school of guild at, 13, _note_ 2

Stratford, London butchers rent houses at, 44-45;

meeting of journeymen saddlers at, 126

Streets, improvement in their condition, 32

Strikes among journeymen, 123-127

Stroud, Flemish workmen settle in valley of, 88

Stuppeneys, the, of Romney, 59, _note_

Suffolk, Earl of, 387, 392

Sundays, reason for rules about closing on, 148;

shooting practised at Southampton on, 297;

trading forbidden on, 133

Sussex, popular movements in, 429

Sutton, Priors’, united with King’s Suttons, 219-220

Sye, John, obtains licence to enclose common ground in Nottingham,

348, _note_ 3

Symon, of Lynn, his pledge on behalf of Lübeck merchants, 404

Syre, John, schoolmaster at Canterbury, 14, _note_ 2

T

Tailors of Coventry, 208-209;

of Exeter, 172-181, 184;

of Lynn, 151, _note_ 1;

merchant, of London, granted royal charter, 182, _note_ 1;

their charters of 1390 and 1502, 143, _note_ 3;

their right of search transferred to mayor, 149, _note_ 1;

their school, 13, _note_ 2;

strike among their journeymen, 126-127;

alien, decree of Southampton in 1407 about, 294

Tames, the, of Fairford, 68

Tanners, protected against shoemakers, 165-166;

of Norwich, 105

Taverners, profit allowed to be taken by, 36;

rebellions of, in London, 139

Tawyers of London, their ordinances of 1365, 165

Tenterden, its proposed union with Rye, 261-262

Thorney, abbot of, his dispute with Northampton, 52, _note_

Tilers, regulations for their work, 152

Tilly, mayor of Bristol, 267

Tin ore, exclusive right of melting given to Southampton guild, 293

Tol-booth of Norwich, 362, 389, _note_ 1

Toll, retaliation in taking of, 53, _note_ 1;

at Ipswich, money left for relief from, 76;

at Retford, settled by Nottingham, 335, _note_ 2

“Tollerati” in Canterbury, 47

“Tolleration money” in Canterbury, 47

Totnes, its merchant guild, 33, _note_ 2, 220

Tourns of sheriffs of Norwich, 381

Towns, the characteristic movement of the fifteenth century in,

269-270;

their condition in Middle Ages, 29-33;

their accounts, use of Roman numerals in, 259;

town-books, 258;

burgesses and commonalty, 231-236;

copies of Magna Charta bought by, 236;

class inequalities and rivalries, 60;

effacing of class-distinctions, 80-81;

ancient customs, 230;

copying and translating of custumals, 257-258;

keeping of deeds, 258, _note_ 2;

systems of government, 223-230, 253-254, 273-281;

foreigners in, 90-96;

their relations with guilds, 128-131, 135-138, 140-158, 181-189,

194;

jury-system, 228-229;

intellectual life, 19-23;

common lands, 234, 237-239;

their traditions of ancient liberties, 235-236;

prosperous middle class of, 57;

the appointment of officers in, 249-252;

rise of oligarchy, 240-246, 255-257, 264-265;

ordinances affected by local circumstances, 99, _note_ 2;

strife of parties, 158-159, 190-191;

early privileges, 50-51;

questions of conflicting rights in, 51-52;

rolls, 259-260;

treaties made between towns, 52-53;

of eastern coast, their intense vitality, 360-361;

of Netherlands, their temper of independence, 360-361.

Trade, mediæval system of, 55;

contrasted with modern theory, 134-136;

reasons for its regulation, 43-48;

its depression under Henry VIII., 87;

free, 41, 47-56;

manufacturing, its decline in Canterbury, London, and Norwich, 88;

between towns, 53-54;

of Bristol, 73;

of Liverpool, 41;

of Lynn, 404.

_See_ Cloth, Wool

Trade union, modern, its difference from mediæval craft guild,

115-116, 134-136, 159-160

Traders, English, their character, 82-85;

power to hold citizenship in more than one borough, 49;

rough training, 57-59;

position in towns, 60-62;

devices to increase wealth, 64-66;

capitalists and employers, 66-67;

lend money to kings, 78;

great marriages, 78-80;

their art of organization, 83;

their complaint against foreigners, 94-95;

against suburban manufacturers, 96-97;

their fraudulent dealings, 137-138;

feeling of common folk against, 138;

their foundation of schools, 16, 17;

withdrawal outside town boundaries, 45-46;

alien, 39-40, 47-48

Trades ordered to form themselves into guilds, 155-156;

disputes about boundaries, 165-166;

terms of incorporation, 156;

of London, jurisdiction of, in early fourteenth century, 149,

_note_ 2

Treaties between towns, 52-53, 233;

commercial, of Henry VII., 87

Trenode, Richard, his services to Plymouth, 219-220

Trent, bridge over, 322, 324;

dispute about control of waters, 328-329;

free passage granted to Nottingham, 331

“Triours” of Canterbury, 276

“Trove”, weighing of wool at the, 28

Tuddenham, Sir Thomas, 388, 389, 391, 393, 394

Turks, war against, grant from Richard II. to Emperor for, 292,

_note_ 1

Turtle, mayor of Bristol, 267

Tyece, James, of Romney, 61

U

Usurers, burghers become, 77-78

V

Venice, its trade with Southampton, 288, 290, 291;

ships of, compete with Jacques Cœur for Mediterranean coasting

trade, 81;

galleys, 288, 305, _note_ 1

“Vice-comites”, 361, _note_ 3

Victuallers, profit allowed to be taken by, 35-36;

their wealth, 60-65;

forbidden to hold offices in towns, 62, _note_ 1

W

Wages, payment on truck system, 65-66;

disputes about, 88;

fixed by law, 152;

of labourers and artizans in fifteenth century, 131-133;

of labourer in Norwich before 1340, 101;

of journeyman, 104, _note_ 1;

of town clerk, 262

Wakefield, cloth-makers at, 89

Walden, teaching of children at, 17-18

Waleys, Nicholas, 390

Wallingford, its trade with Romney, 61

Walloons in Sandwich, 430, _note_ 4

Walsall, authority of guilds at, 183-184

Wars of the Roses, action of townsmen in, 331;

their effects on towns, 265;

on Southampton budget, 300-304

Wards of Norwich, 376, 380;

of Sandwich, 431;

hereditary owners of, 253;

of Canterbury, 276, 279, _note_ 1

Warden of guilds sworn before mayor, 150

Warwick, guilds and government in, 186

Warwick, Earl of, 302;

Lydd sends men to help, 262;

his relations with Southampton, 299, 302, 303

Wayhill, fair at, 66

Wealth, its unequal distribution among townspeople, 60;

of butchers, brewers, and victuallers, 60-65;

devices to increase, 64-67

Weavers of Bristol, their complaints, 92;

forbidden to employ women, 96, _note_;

of Leicester, 122, _note_ 1;

of London, their privileges, 141-142;

quarrels with burellers, 160-162;

decline of the guild, 162;

of Newcastle, 102, _note_ 2;

of Nottingham, their payment to King for guild, 141, _note_;

of Winchester, 121, _note_ 5;

of York, their monopoly, 106, _note_ 1;

Flemish, in England, 90-91, 94;

ordinances for, 162

Weigher, the common, 34

Weights tested and sealed by mayor, 27-28;

use of stones for, 28

Wells, its council of twenty-four, 278, _note_ 1

Welles, John, 391

Wendling, abbot of, his disputes with Norwich, 387, _note_

Westminster, abbot of, his relations with Southampton, 52, _note_,

53, _note_ 4

Wetherby, Thomas, 389-393

Whittingdon, Richard, his prosperity, 72

Widows, provision for, in Nottingham and London, 80

Wight, Isle of, supplied by Southampton with wool for web, 289

William of Worcester, 20

William-at-the-Mill, 262

Wiltshire, Earl of, seizes carracks of Genoa in Southampton, 302

Winchelsea, its gun-metal, 54, _note_ 1;

election of jurats in, 434, _note_ 2

Winchester attempts free trade, 47, _note_ 1;

its treaty with Southampton, 53;

fair, 66, 292;

ordinance against payment on truck system, 66, _note_ 1;

payment of weavers in, 121, _note_ 5;

bailiffs, 286;

craft guilds, 142;

contribution of burellers to ferm, 154, _note_ 1;

German town clerk, 261;

method of electing mayor, 274;

its constitution, 286;

its common seal, 286;

staple for wool, 290;

Parliament at, 400

Women might be traders, 33, _note_ 2;

admitted to guild merchant, 33, 193, _note_;

disputes about employment of, 88;

employment as weavers in Bristol forbidden, 96, _note_;

their property guarded by law, 33, _note_ 2

Wool stored in common house, 3;

weighed at the “Trove”, 28;

manufactured at Nottingham, 326;

different qualities of, 88, _note_ 3;

Winchester made staple for, 290;

trade in, its importance, 11;

superseded by cloth manufacture, 98-99;

in Norfolk, supervised by Norwich, 385-386

Worcester, free school of the guild of S. Nicholas at, 13, _note_ 2;

its “citizens denizen” and “citizens foreign”, 39-40;

its disputes with Shrewsbury, 42, _note_ 1;

ordinance against payment on truck system, 66, _note_ 1;

complaint about non-observance of assize of breadth of cloth, 67,

_note_ 2;

its decay, 97, _note_ 3;

ordinances to protect townsmen against country weavers, 106;

regulation for tilers, 152;

common lands, 237;

town clerk, 259, _note_ 6;

use of parchment, 259;

appointment of serjeants and constables in, 271, _note_ 3;

its two councils, 278 _note_ 2

Worsted shearers of Norwich, 149, _note_ 1

Worsted trade of Norwich and Norfolk, 385-386

Wotton-under-Edge, first lay school at, 16, _note_ 2

Wycombe, its fair, 25, _note_ 2;

gifts to church, 75, _note_ 2;

mayor, 260, _note_ 4;

his election, 228;

binding of corporation books, 230, _note_ 2;

common lands, 237

Y

Yarmouth, its two councils, 278, _note_ 2;

translation of book of laws and customs, 258, _note_ 1;

appointment of searcher, 79, _note_ 1;

appointment of bailiffs by Cinque Ports, 434

Yelverton, Judge, 394

Ymme, John, M.P. for Norwich, 400

York, its mistery of mercers, 69, _note_ 2;

merchant’s daughter of, marries Sir W. Plumpton, 78;

coverlet-makers, 97, _note_ 3;

weavers, 106, _note_ 1;

Edward IV.’s patent about election of mayor, 186;

guilds, 205, _note_ 1;

guildhall, 205;

town clerk, 261, _note_ 1, 263

York, Duke of, his reception at Norwich, 394

Yorkshire, Flemish weavers in, 94

Z

Zealand, its trade with Southampton, 291, 294;

with Lynn, 404

END OF VOL. II

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 461, 488.

[2] Freeman’s Exeter, 146-7.

[3] Book of Precedence, E. E. Text Society, part ii. 8-18, 79, etc.

143, etc. Manners and Meals (E. E. Text Soc.), 175.

[4] Paston Letters, ii. 319.

[5] Lamond’s Walter of Henley 123-145. Monum. Franciscana (Rolls

Series), i. app. ix.

[6] Manners and Meals, pp. 250, 251, 252.

[7] Ibid. 258-260.

[8] Ibid. 274.

[9] “Take not every rope’s end with every man that hauls,” ran the

warning to the young. “Believe not all men that speak thee fair,

Whether that it be common, burgess or mayor.” Manners and Meals, 183.

See Songs and Carols (Percy Society, vol. xxiii.) viii. ix. xviii.

[10] Manners and Meals, 182.

[11] Percy Society, vol. xxiii. Songs and Carols, see songs xxxii. and

xxxv.

[12] Commonplace book of the fifteenth century edited by Miss Toulmin

Smith. Catechism of Adrian and Epotys, p. 40, lines 421-8.

[13]

“Men’s works have often interchange That now is nurture sometime had

been strange. Things whilom used be now laid aside And new fetis

[fashions] daily be contrived.”

—Caxton’s Book of Courtesy (E. E. Text Society), 45.

[14] Manners and Meals, 271.

[15] Ibid. p. 265.

[16] The popularity of the “Ship of Fools,” with its trite,

long-winded, and vague moralities, is an excellent indication of the

intellectual position of the new middle class.

[17] Songs and Carols (Percy Society, xxiii.), song xxx.

[18] Songs and Carols (Percy Society, xxiii.) lxxvi.

[19] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 174.

[20] Book of Precedence, 106. “Money maketh merchants, I tell you, over

all.” Skelton’s Poems (ed. Dyce) i. 277.

[21]

“‘Though some be clannere than some, ye see well,’ quoth Grace, That

all craft and connyng came of my gift.”

—Passus xxii. 252-3.

[22]

“Son, if thou wist what thing it were, Connynge to learn and with

thee to bear, Thou would not mis-spend one hour, For of all treasure

connynge is the flower; If thou wilt live in peace and rest Hear and

see and say the best.”

Book of Precedence, 69. Another rhyme gives the lesson in ruder form.

“Learn as fast as thou may and can For our Bishop is an old man And

therefore thou must learn fast If thou wilt be Bishop when he is past.”

—Manners and Meals, 383.

[23] See Manners and Meals, lii to lxii.

[24] At Lynn there was in 1383 a Guild “of young scholars”; at

Worcester the Guild of S. Nicholas kept “time out of mind a free school

within the said city in a great hall belonging to the said Guild called

the Trinity Hall.” The Guild of Palmers supported a school at Ludlow;

and so did Guilds at Stratford and at Deritend. The Guild of Kalenders

in Bristol had in the twelfth century kept a school of Jews, and when

that business came to an end were still charged with education, public

lectures, and the management of a free library. (English Guilds, 51,

205, 196, 221, 288. See Hunt’s Bristol, 112, 249, 260.) The Drapers had

a school at Shrewsbury (Hibbert’s Inf. of English Guilds, 33); and the

Merchant Tailors in London (Clode, 35). I learn from Mr. A. F. Leach

that at Ashburton the Grammar School founded 1314 by Bishop Stapledon

of Exeter (who also founded Exeter College) was entrusted to the Guild

of St. Lawrence, whose chantry-priest was the schoolmaster. The school

is still kept on the site of the Guild Chapel, the original tower of

which forms part of the School.

[25] Hunter’s Deanery of Doncaster, vol ii. 5-6.

[26] Bentham’s History of Ely Cathedral, 2nd Edition, 182. Hull Grammar

School Gazette, 1891, No. 8, p. 88. See Riley’s Liber Albus, xix.

There was a grammar master at Ewelme Almshouse 1461 (ibid. 627), where

teaching was to be free (ibid. ix. 217-8). Four new grammar schools

were opened in London in 1447, and during the reign of Henry the Sixth

nine were set up in London alone (Pauli’s Pictures, 452). In 1472 Prior

Selling, of Christchurch, reports to the Archbishop of Canterbury that

he has provided a “schoolmaster for your grammar schools in Canterbury,

the which hath lately taught grammar at Winchester and at S. Antony’s

in London” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 105). John Syre, the grammar school

master in 1436, lived in Gayhow’s tenement, S. Alphege parish (ibid.

139). The Almshouse of the poor sisters in Reading was in 1486 turned

into a grammar school (Coates’ Reading, 15); there was a school in

Appleby taught by a chantry priest before the middle of the fifteenth

century (Transactions of Cumberland and Westmoreland Arch. Soc. part

ii. vol. viii.); and one in Preston whose master was made a burgess

in 1415 (Memorials of Preston Guilds, 14). In Liverpool there was an

endowed free school before the reformation (Picton’s Memorials, ii.

55-6). Miss Dormer Harris has learned from the town records that the

expenses of the grammar school at Coventry in the fifteenth century,

were paid by the Trinity Guild—in other words, by the Corporation.

It is evident that when William Bingham, who founded a grammar school

attached to Clare Hall, Cambridge, says that in 1439 he passed seventy

deserted schools in travelling from Hampton to Ripon by way of

Coventry (Boase’s Oxford, 108), we cannot infer from this any decay

in education. It may have indicated a shifting of population, or more

probably perhaps the results of the effort made in 1391 to prevent

villeins from being put to the clerical schools in preparation for

taking minor orders and so gaining emancipation from their lords. Rot.

Parl. iii. 294.

[27] In the royal accounts the principal artizans in each craft audit

such parts of the accounts as deal with labour and sign every page

(Rogers’ Agric. and Prices, iv. 502).

[28] Richard the Redeless, pass. ii. 41.

[29] The Will of Sir John Percivale, published by the Governors of

the Macclesfield School. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. A. F.

Leach for this reference—as well as for that about Stockport, and

the reference to the School Gazette and the Town Records of Hull. He

informs me that the first school founded by a lay person of which we

have as yet any record was at Wotton-under-Edge, and was founded by a

woman, Lady Berkeley, in 1385.

[30] Baines’ Hist. of the County of Lancaster, i. 296-7.

[31] The author of Piers Ploughman criticizes the education given by

the clerics of his day. “Grammar that ground is of all” was neglected

so that no one could now either “versify fair” or construe what the

poets wrote.

“Doctors of degree and of divinity masters That should the seven arts

conne and assoil _ad quodlibet_, But they fail in philosophy, an

philosophers lived And would well examine them, wonder me thinketh!”

—Passus xviii. 107-118.

[32] The “alphabet and the humanities” did not imply culture in

anything like our sense of the word, nor yet Latin from the literary

point of view, but the old ecclesiastical discipline, which included

above all things _logic_, and which ultimately led, if the pupil

advanced far enough, to the scholastic philosophy. Thus for example in

the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_ one of the (priestly) correspondents

is made to protest against the introduction of the study of Vergil and

other new-fangled writers.

[33] Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 281-2.

[34] Hist. MSS. Com. x. part 4, 425-6.

[35] Nottingham Records, i. 246, 263.

[36] Ordinances for Dame Agnes Meller’s School, Nott. Rec. iii. 453-6.

The Mayor of Chester had the payment of the master at Farneworth,

Lancashire. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 370.) In Coventry the corporation

(_i.e._, the Trinity Guild) paid the master.

[37] Ibid. iv. 191.

[38] Nott. Rec., iv. 214.

[39] Collectanea (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), ii. 334-6.

[40] Paston Letters, i. 431. Hunt’s Bristol, 112.

[41] Introduction by Miss Toulmin Smith to Ricart’s Calendar. Lives

of the Berkeleys, i. 5, 7. Skelton was possibly a native of Norfolk,

perhaps of Norwich. Skelton’s Poems, ed. Dyce, I. v. vi.

[42] Caxton’s Book of Courtesy, 33-41. See Manners and Meals, lix.

Skelton’s Poems (ed. Dyce), I. 75, 377-9.

[43] Directions not to spare the rod were constant. Manners and Meals,

384. See the poor boy’s complaint, p. 385-6. Tusser’s lines show that

the system was not confined to the lower schools.

“From Paul’s I went to Eton, sent To learn straightways the Latin

phrase; Where fifty-three stripes given to me At once I had,

For fault but small, or none at all, It came to pass thus beat I was.

See, Udall, see the mercy of thee To me, poor lad!”

Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, singles the schoolmasters out as “a

race of men the most miserable, who grow old in penury and filth in

their schools—_schools_ did I say? _prisons! dungeons!_ I should

have said—among their boys, deafened with din, poisoned by a fetid

atmosphere; but thanks to their folly perfectly self-satisfied so

long as they can bawl and shout to their terrified boys, and box and

beat and flog them, and so indulge in all kinds of ways their cruel

disposition.” One such master he tells of who to crush boys’ unruly

spirits, and to subdue the wantonness of their age, never took a meal

with his flock without making the comedy end in a tragedy. “So at the

end of the meal one or another boy was dragged out to be flogged.”

Boase’s Oxford, 76-77.

[44] The Commonweal (ed. E. Lamond), 21-23, 30.

[45] Manners and Meals, xxiv. Cf. ibid. xxvi. xlv.

[46] See Crossthwaite. Rep. Royal Com. on Markets, 25.

[47] “Feria” or Saint’s day. The place originally held by the fair is

illustrated by the ancient custom in Leicester, that when merchants

went to the great fairs, when the “fairs were up no plea was holden no

more of them that were at home, than of them that were at the fairs;”

this was altered by Crouchback’s charter of 1277, so that those who

stayed at home might be tried in case of complaint. Hist. MSS. Com.

viii. 423-4.

[48] The Fair of Wycombe was held on the Day of S. Thomas the Martyr

from time out of mind. It had begun to decline by 1527, and the Mayor

and Bailiffs bitterly complained that now scarcely any one came to

keep up the fair and that the shopkeepers kept their shops and stalls

at home in the town as usual. A strict order was made by the Council

in 1527 that “no manner of man nor woman” should keep open shop in the

town on that day or show their goods in the street, but should “resort

unto the Fair there as it is wont to be kept.” Parker’s Hist. of

Wycombe, 29.

[49] Rep. Royal Com. on Markets, 1, 7, 9.

[50] Ibid. 19, 25.

[51] The grants of fairs and markets in the thirteenth century were

about 3,300; in the fourteenth century about 1,560; in the fifteenth

century to 1482 about 100; Report on Markets, 108-131.

[52] Rep. on Markets, 9. On the other hand in Scotland the right of

market was one of the ordinary privileges of a trading town. Ibid. 26.

[53] Ibid. 19. Sometimes not till the fifteenth century, as in Norwich.

[54] Ibid. 9. For the setting up of the beam and directions about

weighing, Ibid. 57, 25. Paston Letters, ii. 106. Kingdon’s Grocers’

Company, I. xiii-xv., xviii., xix., xxiv.-xxxiii. Schanz, i. 579-82.

Towns were compelled to keep standard measures by Stat. 8 Henry VI.

cap. 5; 11 Henry VI. cap. 8; 7 Henry VII. cap. 3. The Commons asked

Henry VII. to have measures made at his own cost; he agreed, but

refused to take the cost. When they were made in 1495 members of

Parliament had to carry them back to their several towns from London.

11 Henry VII. cap. 4.

[55] Boys’ Sandwich, 431, 496, 498, 509.

[56] Report on Markets, 25. Cutts’ Colchester, 154-7. Nott. Rec. i.

314-16.

[57] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 152. For the uncertainty as to the stone of

wool, Rogers, Agric. and Prices, i. 367.

[58] Plumpton Correspondence, 21.

[59] Rogers’ Agric. and Prices, i. 660. The introduction of carriers

and posts was later in England than in France. Denton’s Lectures, 190-5.

[60] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 489. In very many towns the churchyard was

without any enclosure even in the fifteenth century. For the overseer

of the streets and his hog-man see Boys’ Sandwich, 674.

[61] Nottingham Records, iv. 190.

[62] Blomefield, iii. 183.

[63] Parker’s Manor of Aylesbury, 14-15.

[64] In 1388 town officers were ordered to clean their towns of all

that could corrupt and infect the air and bring disease. 12 Richard II.

cap. 13. The shambles were commonly at the very corner of the Tol-booth

or Moot Hall. Hewitson’s Hist. of Preston, 36. See Shillingford’s

Letters, 89. But in 1487 the Londoners after sixteen years continual

remonstrance obtained a statute that no butcher was to kill any beast

within the walls of the town, and that the same law was to be observed

in all walled towns of England except Berwick and Carlisle. 4 Henry

VII. cap. 3.

[65] A grant for paving was given to Liverpool in 1329. Picton’s Mun.

Rec. of Liverpool, i. 10. Southampton appointed in 1482 a “pavyour” who

should dwell in a house of the town at a price of 13_s._ 4_d._ rent

free “and to have yearly a gown.” Davies, 119, 120. Nottingham decided

in 1501 to have a town paviour at a salary of 33_s._ 4_d._ and a gown;

and gave order that the chamberlains were to find stones and sand.

Nottingham Records, iii. 309. See vol. i. p. 18, note.

[66] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 493. In Canterbury, where the inns were very

numerous, there was a law that no hosteler should “disturb no manner

of strange man coming to the city for to take his inn, but it shall

be lawful to take his inn at his own lust without disturbance of any

hosteler.” Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 172.

[67] Married women might become merchants on their own account and

carry on trade, hold property and answer in all matters of business

before the law as independent traders. (Eng. Gilds, 382. Mun. Records,

Carlisle, ed. Ferguson and Nansen, 79. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 174.) Women

might become members of the Merchant Gild at Totnes by inheritance, by

purchase, or by gift. (Hist. MSS. Com. iii. 342-3.) Their property was

carefully guarded, and no tenement held by the wife’s right could be

alienated or burdened with a rent unless the wife had given her free

consent openly in the Mayor’s Court. (Nott. Records, i. 83, 265.)

[68] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 540. Boys’ Sandwich, 498.

[69] The brokers were paid by a fixed tax on the merchants’ goods which

passed through their hands. Boys’ Sandwich, 497, 506-7.

[70] Hist. Preston Guild, 16.

[71] Blomefield, iii. 168. Gross, ii. 43, 175, 220. Nott. Records, i.

445-6, 159, 201; ii. 47, 241. See also the serjeant-at-mace in Sandwich

(Boys, 504-5), at Nottingham (Rec. iii. 73).

[72] For typical market rules see Reading, Gross, ii. 204-7.

Southampton, Ibid. 220.

[73] See Schanz, i. 621-2.

[74] The loaf was changed in weight not in price with the price of

corn; the lowest rate conceived by ancient writers was 12_d._ a quarter

of corn; the unit of bread was 1/4_d._ loaf. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 175.)

Twelve kinds are mentioned in the fifteenth century, but in the Assize

only three sorts were recognized—Wastel or white or well-baked bread;

Coket (seconds); Simnel, twice baked bread, used only in Lent. (English

Guilds, 102. Boys’ Sandwich, 543.)

[75] Manorial Pleas, Selden Soc. xxxviii. For control of bread and beer

at the time of Domesday see Rep. on Markets, 18. In Norwich supervisors

of bread were appointed before 1340. The system seems to have worked

well, for no troubles as to the assize of bread are recorded, as in

other towns. Leet. Jur. of Norwich, Selden Soc. xxxvi.

[76] Rep. on Markets, 25.

[77] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 288. In certain departments, as in the fixing

of the prices of bread and ale, in measures, in various rules about

buying and selling, the towns simply carried out laws made by the

central government; while in other things such as the regulation of the

price of meat, poultry, fish, and wine, they were from time to time

given authority to fix their own standard.

[78] Andover, Gross, ii. 310. Cutts’ Colchester, 154-7.

[79] In 1383 the price of unsweetened wine was practically left to the

towns for about a hundred years. Schanz, i. 647. For common consumption

wine was sweetened with honey and flavoured with blackberries. Archæol.

Cantiana, vi. 328.

[80] Liber Albus, 289, 373-86, 686-91, Liber Custumarum, 117-120,

385-6. Statutes 22 Edward IV. cap. 2. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 172.

[81] Ricart’s Kalendar, 81-84.

[82] Piers Ploughman. Pass. xxii. 398-404.

[83] Nott. Rec. iii. 357.

[84] Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Soc. 88-9. Hist. MSS. Com. ix.

172. Gross, i. 45. English Guilds, 353, 381-4.

[85] English Guilds, 353.

[86] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 476. English Guilds, 392.

[87] Gross, ii. 1 175. Rep. on Markets, 16.

[88] English Guilds, 390, 392, 406.

[89] The town liberties did not always extend over the whole town

territory. The liberties of Carlisle were confined to a small district

in the centre of the modern town, and did not extend beyond the

limits of this “ancient city.” Hereford up till 1830 was divided

into two parts, the In-Borough where the inhabitant householders had

the elective franchise and the Out-Borough comprising all beyond the

In-Borough that was under the corporate jurisdiction. Papers relating

to Parl. Representation, 1829-32.

[90] Collectanea, ii. (Oxford. Hist. Soc.), 13.

[91] Freeman’s Exeter, 143.

[92] Gross, ii. 262. Rot. Hund. i. 356, 3 Ed. i. When an unusual press

of people was drawn to the town by some festival or public occasion

orders were issued to allow country dealers to bring food within the

walls and sell it without paying toll or any other manner of charge.

Davies’ York, 167.

[93] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 606-7. Gross, i. 48-9. See Vol. I. p. 182, n.

4. Sometimes the monopoly was given to the townspeople (Gross, i. 46;

ii. 28, 46, 205, 255); in other cases to the Merchant Guild which had

power to enroll non-residents among its numbers. (Gross, i. 47, 52,

122, 139, 153, 191, 218.) In cases of abuse there was an appeal to the

king. (Rep. on Markets, 25, 60.)

[94] Picton’s Municipal Records of Liverpool, i. 17, 18, 28. It is

evident that the system of protection was not universally popular,

for when in 1515 a commission was sent to examine why Liverpool had

so decayed that its contributions to the Exchequer had fallen off, a

complaint was made that the mayor had caused the decline in the customs

revenue by the enfranchisement of strangers living in the borough, who

were thus freed from the payment of dues that had once gone to the

Crown. (Picton’s Memorials, i. 38.) Leland writing in 1533 says: “Irish

merchants come much thither as to a good haven,” and in the margin he

adds, “at Liverpool is a small custom paid that causeth merchants to

resort.” The trade of later days had even then begun: “Good merchants

at Liverpool, much Irish yarn that Manchester men do buy there.” (Ibid.

i. 46.)

[95] Fosbrooke’s Gloucestershire, i. 204-8. For the trade with Wales,

ibid. 156-7. See also the rovers of the Forest of Dean and the troubles

of Tewkesbury and Gloucester, in Stat. 8 Henry the Sixth, cap. 27.

There were similar disputes between Shrewsbury and Worcester as to the

limits of their jurisdiction over the Severn. (Owen’s Shrewsbury, i.

300.)

[96] To encourage the carriage of corn in some places, probably in

many, while the toll on every horse laden with a pack of marketable

goods was 1_d[.]_, a corn-laden beast was charged only one farthing.

(Materials for Hist. Henry VII. vol. ii. 332.) For a case of toll

illegally levied on victuals see Rep. on Markets 57.

[97] Collectanea (Oxford Hist. Soc.), ii. 120; 50-51. In the sixteenth

century when the victuallers’ laws were no longer enforced to any

extent, other measures were found necessary to keep a constant supply

of corn in the bigger towns.

[98] See Collectanea (Oxford Hist. Soc.), ii. 49.

[99] Riley’s Mem. 180.

[100] Ibid. 181.

[101] Nottingham Records, iii. 354. Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 172-5. Ibid. v.

531.

[102] Preamble of Canterbury regulations for brewers and bakers drawn

up in 1487. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 173.)

[103] Ibid. For suburban trades see girdlers and embroiderers in

London. (Schanz i. 608. Rolls Parl. iv. 73.)

[104] For the attempt at free trade in Winchester in 1430, following

the example of Coventry and New Sarum, see Gross, ii. 261. Another rule

of the assembly in the same direction was passed in 1471, apparently

in the attempt to find a new source of income for payment of the ferm.

Ibid. 262.

[105] Muniments of Canterbury. In Southampton there was a class of

Out-burgesses who did not live in the town; they were allowed to vote

for a mayor and members of Parliament, but might not be present at a

common council. (Davies’ Southampton, 197.)

[106] Preston Guild Rolls, xvi. xx.

[107] For breach of this custom see Rep. on Markets, 57 (Wallingford),

60-61. (Bosworth, Lafford.)

[108] Preston Guild Rolls, xii.

[109] Ibid. xii. xxiv. xxix. xxx.

[110] Rep. on Markets, 61.

[111] In 1209 there were fifty-six foreigners in the Shrewsbury Guild;

forty years later they had increased to 234. (Hibbert’s Influence and

Development of English Gilds, 18.)

[112] Many merchants of Lynn were made freemen of Canterbury and also

admitted to the Brotherhood of the Monastery, by letters of fraternity

which gave them a share in certain spiritual benefits. Is it possible

that any trading privileges were connected with this?

[113] As far away as Nottingham oxen and sheep were forestalled and

sold to butchers of London. Nott. Rec. iii. 48.

[114] Leet Jurisdiction of Norwich (Selden Soc.), lxxiv.

[115] Select Pleas of the Crown (Selden Soc.), 88-9.

[116] Case of the Abbot of Westminster against Southampton. Rot. Parl.

i. 20-21. Trial before the King’s Bench at Westminster in 1201 where

the Burgesses of Northampton claim that unjust toll is taken from them

by the Abbot of Thorney, which he defends by virtue of custom and an

older charter than Northampton. Select Civil Pleas (Selden Soc.), i.

11. See a case at Plymouth, 1495; Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 273. Leicester

and Nottingham; Ibid. viii. 416-417. Southampton and Bristol; Report

on Markets, 56. Winchester; Ibid. 55. See also Ibid. 62; Gross, ii.

257-8; 177-182; 147; 379. A merchant from the Cinque Ports who insisted

on the privilege of burgesses to pay no toll with regard to some wool

in Blackwell Hall, in the time of Henry the Eighth, had to defend his

rights and won his case.

[117] Retaliation in taking of toll is expressly mentioned in the

charter of London. Stubbs’ Select Charters, 104.

[118] 1238. Gross, ii. 173-174.

[119] Gross, ii. 256.

[120] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 16. For agreement between Southampton

and Portsmouth 1239, Marlborough 1239, Bristol 1260, Netley Abbey 1288,

Bishop of Winchester 1312, Lymington 1324, New Sarum 1329, Coventry

1456, see Davies’ Southampton, 225-228; Abbot of Westminster Rot. Parl.

i. 20-21. Other instances Rep. on Markets, 40-41. Select Civil Pleas

(Selden Soc.), i. 11. Nottingham Rec. i. 55, ii. 349, 362. Gross, ii.

389-90, Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 212.

[121] Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 416-7. When a gun was made for Lydd,

metal for it was bought at Winchelsea and Hastings. (Hist. MSS. Com. v.

516-517, 521.) The Nottingham founder sent to Lincolnshire for his bell

metal. (Nott. Rec. ii. 143, 145).

[122] Ibid. ii. 179; iii. 19, 21, 29.

[123] Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 414.

[124] Select Pleas of the Crown (Selden Soc.), i. 89. Rep. on Markets,

50-52.

[125] See Calendar of Letters from Corporation of London. 1350-1370,

ed. by Dr. Sharpe.

[126] Piers Ploughman. Pass vii. 250.

[127] These can be traced from 1285 to the time of James I.; they were

probably Jews who had come with the Conqueror and were allowed to get

land. Survey of Birmingham, 50.

[128] For example William Hollingbroke of Romney, whose wife Joanna

sold blankets in 1373, was one of the members sent to Parliament and

headed the list of taxpayers in a ward named after him Hollingbroke

Ward from 1384 till 1401. Then his widow took his place till she

retired from business in 1404, and the once opulent family, for a time

represented by a single trader Stephen, seems finally to have become

extinct in 1441. The chief position in local trade then passed to the

Stuppeneys who settled in the town in 1436 and whose local fame is

still recalled by the fact that even now the yearly election of the

Mayor of Romney takes place in the church of S. Nicholas at the tomb of

one of them who was Jurat of the town.

[129] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 523-531.

[130] Between 1353 and 1380. Ibid. vi. 545. Ibid. iv. 1, 424-8. Ibid.

v. 533. The mayor of Liverpool, who in 1380 had property to the value

of £28 6_s._ 4_d._, made up of domestic utensils, grain in store, wheat

sown, nine oxen and cows, six horses, and eighteen pigs, was no doubt a

very rich man in his own borough. Picton’s Mem. Liverpool, i. 30.

[131] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 534, 535, 536, 539, 541-3.

[132] Piers Ploughman. Pass. iv. 83. A prosperous cook at Oxford in

1400 married his daughter to one Lelham “Dominus de Grove.” By the

marriage contract the cook was to give to Lelham twenty marks to be

paid at intervals; to the bride and bridegroom he was to give three

tenements in Oxford; he was to make provision for them in his own house

for eight years, and when after that they were to be set up in a house

of their own he was to provide them with a bed, blankets, sheets, and

all other furniture needful for the same bed, a vessel for water, a

wine vase, two tablecloths, two towels, twelve silver spoons, two

cups, two brass pots, one chawfre, four plates, one dozen vessels for

garnishing the supper, two salts, two candle-sticks. Hist. MSS. Com.

xi. 3, 75-6.

[133] See Nott. Rec. iii. 74-76, 342, 353, 358-60, 461, 463. The

holding offices of all kinds by victuallers and brewers was forbidden

(Stat. 12, Ed. II. cap. 6. 6 Ri. II. st. 1, cap. 9, H.M.C. ix. 174, xi.

3, 19), as a protection to the people from fraudulent administration of

the laws concerning food; but these statutes were everywhere broken.

[134] (See pp. 352-3.)

[135] H.M.C. ix. 173-4.

[136] According to Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, iv. 502-5) about

20 per cent. in excess. Skilled workmen, such as architects, artists,

trained clerks, &c., were paid at very modest rates, though sometimes

they were given honour by being boarded as gentlemen.

[137] Statutes, 12 Richard II. cap. 3.

[138] Riley’s Liber Albus, 261-2.

[139] For particulars of truck wages see Stat. 4 Edward IV. cap. 1.

This payment on the truck system was spoken of as a new thing in the

middle of the fifteenth century (Wright’s Political Songs, ii. 285),

and is referred to in Libel of English Policy. It was forbidden by town

ordinance in Winchester and Worcester. (English Guilds, 352, 383.)

[140] Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 213-14.

[141] Piers Ploughman. Passes vii. 215-249.

[142] For a description of the various deceits practised in

cloth-making see 3 Richard II. stat. cap. 2. Stat. of Westminster 7

Richard II. cap. 9; 15 Richard II. cap. 10. In 1221 the jurors of

Worcester were already complaining that the assize of the breadth of

cloth was not observed. Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Soc. 97.

[143] Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 33-4.

[144] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 259; xi. 3, 70-73, 111. Davies’ Southampton,

82. Hunt’s Bristol, 74, 97-8.

[145] Survey of Birmingham, 50, 51, 52. See above, p. 63.

[146] Journ. Archæol. Ass. xxvii. 110-148. This as one among many

proofs tends to show how wealth was passing not so much to the mere

land-owners as to the new tenants who were combining the cloth trade

with big sheep farms—the enterprising speculators who were on the

watch for the cheap lands of ruined lords to increase their own

business.

[147] Members of the Pepperers Company began to replace the Jews at the

King’s exchange in the thirteenth century (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company,

i. x-xii.)

[148] Von Ochenkowski, 112, 125. The upgrowth of the true class of

merchants is shewn in the Hull Guild whose ordinances date from 1499

(Lambert’s Guild Life, 157-160) and the York Mistery of Mercers of

1430, (Ibid. 167).

[149] For the forbidding of exportation of gold and silver and the

consequent regulations about travellers by sea, see 5 Richard II. St.

i. cap. 2.

[150] The Chancellor of England was given power to enquire and judge

on dealings of “dry exchange,” and also Justices of the Peace of the

neighbouring counties. Stat. 3 Henry VII. cap. 6. Compare Luchaire,

Communes Françaises, 242-4.

[151] When in the parable of Piers Ploughman the wicked Lady Mede

defends corrupt gain by the argument that merchandise cannot exist

without meed or reward the answer of Conscience is that trade is

nothing but pure barter.

“In merchandise is no meed I may it well avow It is a permutation

apertelich [evidently] one penny-worth for another.”—Piers Ploughman.

Pass. iv. 282, 315, 316.

See also the limits set even on barter—

“For it is simony to sell what sent is of grace That is wit and water,

wind, and fire the forth: These four should be free to all folk that it

needeth.”

Ibid. Pass. x. 55-7. Here, however, he has doubtless in his mind

the lord’s mill on the hill or by the stream, the rights of turbary

and of gathering wood in the forest, and the great need of the

people—protection in the law-courts.

[152] Von Ochenkowski, 165, 167, 245-9.

[153] Piers Ploughman. Passus x. 26.

[154]

“And though they wend by the way the two together, Though the messenger

make his way amid the wheat Will no wise man wroth be, nor his wed

take; Is not hayward yhote [ordered] his wed for to take; But if the

merchant make his way over men’s corn, And the hayward happen with

him for to meet, Either his hat or his hood, or else his gloves The

merchant must forego, or the money of his purse.”

—Piers Ploughman. Pass. xiv. 42-50.

[155] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 443. For merchants’ marks in S. George’s

Church, Doncaster, see Hunter’s Deanery of Doncaster, i. 14.

[156] Plummer’s Fortescue, 235.

[157] Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 278-285.

[158] Ibid. Pass. xiv. 50-51.

[159] See Ship of Fools, Barclay, 43, st. 4.

[160] Lib. Eng. Pol. Wright’s Political Poems, ii. 178.

[161] Hist. MSS. Com. v. 601-4.

[162] Hunt’s Bristol, 75, 93-5; 126-8.

[163] Hunt’s Bristol, 94-5, 108. A Bristol grocer left 350 ounces of

silver plate to be divided among his children. Ibid. 108. The first

fork we hear of in England in 1443 belonged to a citizen family in

York. “Unum par cultellorum vocat’ ‘karving knyves’ et unum par

forpicum argenteorum.” (Plumpton Correspondence, xxxiv.)

[164] Piers Ploughman. Passus, xv. 90. For Wood’s account of Oxford

houses, see Boase’s Oxford, 48-9.

[165] Boys’ Sandwich, 149, 185, 186.

[166] The plate of S. Mary’s, Sandwich, amounted to about 724 ounces

of silver, and there was a good deal of silver gilt; it had splendid

brocade of gold of Venice and of Lucca, and a mass of vestments of

white damask powdered with gold of Venice, and blue velvet powdered

with fleurs de lis, or with moons and stars, and so on. (Boys’

Sandwich, 375.) A burgess of Wycombe, Redehode, fitted up the church

with beautiful screens of carved wood, and added other gifts to its

store of jewels and gilt crowns for Our Lady, and other ornaments of

amber, silver, jet, turquoises, with rich garments and ermine fur,

damasks, velvets, silks, a baldachino bearing green branches with birds

of gold, magnificent robes of cloth of gold, &c., and splendid plate.

(Hist. MSS. Com. v. 554-5.)

[167] An ironmonger, Richard Fallande, set up a tablet in Hospital Hall

to remind the townsfolk of the dangers and terrors of the old ford, of

passengers drowned, of poor people pitilessly turned back, or wayfarers

robbed of hood or girdle to satisfy the ferry-men’s greed. People were

constantly drowned and

“Few folke there were coude that way wende But they waged a wed or

payed of her purse And if it were a begger had breed in her bagge He

schulde be ryght soone i bid for to goo aboute And of the poor penyles

the hireward wold habbe A hood or a girdel and let him goo withoute.”

(English Illustrated Magazine, May 1889, p. 951.) For Rochester Bridge,

see Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 285.

[168] Davies’ Southampton, 115.

[169] Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 247. For similar bequests, Ibid. x. 4, p.

529-30. Ibid. ix. 208-10. The Common Weal (ed. E. Lamond), 18, 19.

[170] Ibid. xi. 7, 169, 174, 175, 180-1. Ibid. ix. 57, 275, 137, 145.

Davies’ Walks through York, 30-1.

[171] Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 22.

[172] See the surprising lists of these stores in the Paston Letters,

iii. 312, 270-4, 297-8, 282-9, 436, 313. Compare vol. i. p. 259.

[173] Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, 297. Paston Letters, iii. 23, 35, 46, 49,

219, 258. See vol. i. 260-2.

[174] Paston Letters, iii. 114-15.

[175] Paston Letters, iii. 194. Hist. MSS. Com. vii. 599.

[176] Richard the Redeless, Passus iii. 145, &c.

[177] Plumpton Correspondence, xxxix. xl.

[178] Sometimes their servants also reached posts of importance. John

Russel, one of Fastolf’s servants, paid a sum down to be appointed

Searcher at Yarmouth. And Thomas Fry, a steward of the Berkeleys

under Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, was “raised by them

to be of principal authority and in commission of the peace of the

city of Coventry, and a steward of great power in that Corporation.”

(Berkeleys, ii. 215.)

[179] The Poles of Hull were rising into importance. (Paston Letters,

ii. 210.) Sir John Fastolf possibly sprang from this class, for

his relation Richard Fastolf was a London tailor. (Hist. MSS. Com.

viii. 265.) Two London drapers, a mercer and a grocer were among the

forty-seven Knights of the Bath created at the coronation of Elizabeth,

queen of Edward the Fourth. (Three XV. century Chronicles, 80.) See

the marriage of Whittingham, Mayor of London, whose son entered the

Royal Household (Verney Papers, 15-17); of Verney, mayor in 1465 and

knighted in 1471 (Ibid. 13, 22); of Sir William Plumpton (Plumpton

Correspondence, xxvii.); of Sir Maurice Berkeley (Hunt’s Bristol, 101).

[180] Paston Letters, iii. 383.

[181] For the whole story see Paston Letters, ii. 341, 347, 350, 363-5.

[182] Paston Letters, iii. 109, 219, 278.

[183] Nottingham Records, i. 169.

[184] Plumpton Correspondence, 12. The lady was sister to Godfrey

Green, who seems to have been of good family, possibly a connexion of

Sir William Plumpton (17 note). Green did a good deal of business for

Plumpton (22-3), and was one of the trustees of a settlement, lxxii.

note.

[185] See Clément, Jacques Cœur.

[186] Ibid. 134.

[187] Clément, Jacques Cœur.

[188] (See p. 327).

[189] See Hist. of Eng. People, ii. 142-3, 151, 164-6, 170-2, 188.

Brinklow’s writings afford a very good illustration of the radical

temper in politics which at this time was developed in the towns.

[190] Stat. 3 Henry VII. cap. 11. The Common Weal, 88-90.

[191] It was often forbidden to employ any woman save the wife or

daughter of the master (Hunt’s Bristol, 82; Riley’s Mem. 217).

[192] Lambert’s Guild Life, 238-9; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11, 87.

[193] Kent had sunk from the fifth to the tenth place in wealth

among counties during the Hundred Years’ War. In 1454 the wool of

Lincolnshire, Shropshire, and the Cotswolds, represented the best, and

that of Kent almost the worst quality; this may account for the decline

of Canterbury. The difference in quality would of course tell much more

on the prosperity of a district when the home manufacture of cloth was

developed.

[194] Schanz, i. 610-11 (1455); 33 Henry VI. cap. 4; Rot. Parl. v. 324.

[195] Schanz, i. 600; Stat. 11 Henry VII. cap. 27.

[196] Lib. Cus. 127. I suspect that the question of these fulling-mills

in London was much complicated by the supply of water becoming

inadequate to the needs of the growing city, and the great resentment

felt by the fullers of cloth against the intrusion of the cap-makers on

their domain over the running streams. There is some evidence that this

was the case, and it is probable that the want of water-power was one

of the causes which drove the woollen manufacture from certain towns.

[197] 22 Edward IV. cap. 5. There had been trouble about fulling

machinery in London as early as 1298. (Lib. Cust. Rolls, Series, 127-9.)

[198] In 1416 £22 6_s._ 8_d._ was received as a fine for offences from

foreigners in Romney. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539.) In Sandwich the tax on

foreigners was assessed by the mayor and jurats. Every indweller having

aliens in his service was to keep back as much of their wages as would

pay his tax. (Boys’ Sandwich, 787.)

[199] See Schanz, i. 414-6.

[200] Hunt’s Bristol, 82, 93, 111. The complaint seems to have been

against master-weavers who employed their own servants and not the

Bristol journeymen. See Rymer’s Fœdera, v. 137.

[201] See Hibbert’s Influence of Eng. Gilds, 64.

[202] See the Commons’ Petition in Parliament, 50 Edward the Third

(1376), Rolls of Parliament, vol. ii., p. 332. “Et come les bones gentz

des touz Citees & Borghs parmy ceste terre si pleignent durement, ̃q

... toute manere de gentz Aliens, & autres qi ne sont pas Frauncs

en les dites Citees & Borghs, poent venir illeõqs demourrer auxi

longement come lour plest, & tenir overtz Hostiels, & recepter ̃q

coñqs persones qe lour plerra: Et s’ils eiount ascunes Marchandises

ils les vendent as autres Estraungers, pur revendre si ̃bn par retail

come autre ̃qcoñq manere ̃q lour mieltz semble pur lours Profitz

demeisne. Par qi les Marchauntz Denizeins sont trop anientiz, la Terre

voide de Moneie, les closures des Citees & Borghs desapparaillez, la

Navye de la terre ̃bn pres destruite, le Conseil de la terre par tout

descovert, toute manere d’estraunge Marchaundise grandement encherie;

& qe pys est, par tieles privees receites les Enemys auxint priveez ou

̃q les loialx Liges: De qi n’ad mestier de autres tesmoignes fors ̃q

sentir & vewe ̃q molte app’tement en touz degreez la provent.”

[203] Stat. 1 Richard III. cap. 9.

[204] Stat. 1 Richard III. cap. 9. About 1528 the London shoemakers

complain that whereas the King had granted leave that a fraternity of

forty-four foreigners might exercise the craft of shoemakers in the

city, by colour of this grant 220 foreign householders employing over

400 apprentices and servants, had set up in the business. An amusing

account is given of the attitude of this foreign company to the English

searchers of the craft. There had once been 140 Englishmen of the

cordwainers’ livery but now there were only twenty, and the wives and

children of those who had been ruined were turned into water-carriers

and labourers. These foreigners did not come to settle, but having made

their fortunes went off home, while others took their places. (Schanz,

ii. 598-600.)

[205] Schanz, ii. 596-8. They pray that the former laws may be put in

force, ordering strangers only to dwell in the houses of Englishmen, to

sell only in gross and not by retail, and to remain only a month in any

town after their first coming.

[206] In the same way Bristol in 1461 forbade its weavers to employ

their wives, daughters, and maidens at the loom, lest the King’s people

likely to do the King service in his wars should lack employment.

(Hunt’s Bristol, 82.)

[207] The customs of Coventry in this respect are exceedingly

interesting.

[208] Stat. 25 Henry VIII. cap. 18.

[209] Stat. 21 Henry VIII. cap. 12. In the reign of Henry the

Eighth there were complaints that Worcester, Evesham, Droitwich,

Kidderminster, and Bromsgrove, had fallen into decay from the growth of

the free-traders. (Stat. 25 Henry VIII. cap. 18.) See also the coverlet

makers of York. (34 and 35 Henry VIII. cap. 10.)

[210] Piers Ploughman. Passus ix. 187.

“‘It is nothing for love they labour thus fast, But for fear of famine,

in faith,’ said Piers.”

Passus ix. 214, 215.

[211]

“Fridays and fasting days a farthingworth of mussels Were a feast for

such folk, or so many cockles.”

Pass. x. 94, 95; see 72-87. Pollard’s Miracle Plays, 31-2.

[212] Children who had served in husbandry till the age of twelve

“shall abide at the same labour without being put to any mystery or

handicraft” (Stat. 12 Rich. II. cap. 5).

[213] It is important in the town ordinances to observe the effect of

local circumstances. For instance, in Coventry the weavers were allowed

in 1424 to take as many apprentices as they liked, “sine contradictione

alicujus,” while the number in other trades was limited. This was just

such an order as might be expected of a town council of rich merchant

clothiers and drapers.

[214] See Chap. V.

[215] The customs of Norwich, 1340, forced some responsibility for

these servants on the masters. (Leet Jurisdiction (Selden Soc.), lxvi.)

[216] No general laws for the whole kingdom which seriously limited the

employment of apprentices were passed before the sixteenth century,

but the various towns made such local laws as seemed necessary. In

most cases masters were bound to enrol their apprentices in the town

court; and at the end of the fifteenth century the Town Councils and

the Guilds were making serious efforts to enforce the law. Miss Dormer

Harris tells me that the capper’s apprentices in Coventry were bound

by surety for £5 to fulfil their covenant. If an apprentice left his

master before the seven years were over, the master might not take

another till the time had expired unless he delivered the £5 to the

keepers for the use of the craft. The masters of crafts there appear to

have been very reluctant to take apprentices, especially after 1494.

[217] In Norwich in spite of the statutes of 1436 and 1503 (15 Henry

VI. cap. 6; 19 Henry VII. cap. 7) the crafts persisted in making rules

by which apprentices were compelled to pay 20_s._ or 30_s._ for entry

into the common hall (compare the composition of 1415 in the Norwich

documents)—a fine which meant that the craftsmen were practically

denied the freedom of the city, and therefore the position of master,

and were thus forced to swell the body of journeymen. An Act passed

in 1531 ordered that no apprentice should pay more than 2_s._ 6_d._

for entry into the common hall; or 3_s._ 4_d._ at the end of the term

for the freedom of the company; but the companies evaded this law by

asking only the statute sum for the freedom of the company, but making

the candidates swear they would not trade without license, for which

they had to pay at the company’s pleasure. This was again forbidden by

Henry in 1537 (Blomefield, iii. 181-2). Among the weavers of Newcastle

in 1527 all who had finished their apprenticeship were admitted to

membership on payment of 13_s._ 4_d._, but any man of the craft

desirous to be of the fellowship a brother thereof, with power to set

up shop, had to pay £20 (Newcastle Guilds). The London grocers in 1345

paid 20_s._ for each apprentice; the apprentice who wished to belong to

the fraternity paid 40_s._ on leaving his master (Kingdon’s Grocers’

Company, i. 11, 12).

[218] Compare Riley’s Mem. Lond. 244, 181, 278, 354. Black’s

Leathersellers, 39.

[219] In London no apprentice after his term was to use his trade till

he had been sworn to the franchise. (Liber Albus, 272.)

[220] Journeymen among the cutlers and founders who had not served

their time as apprentices could only get such wages as the overseers

of the trade allowed to them after examination. (Riley’s Mem. Lond.

439, 514.) The system was probably widespread to judge from the many

ordinances concerning wages. Unskilled journeymen must be spoken

of in the ordinances of the bladesmiths. (Riley’s Mem. 570.) For

serving-men who worked by the day for the glovers see ibid. 246. In

1449 at Coventry a reasonable wage seems to have been 4_d._ a day; but

a capper’s journeyman in 1496 got 12_d._ a week working twelve hours a

day (reference to Coventry records given me by Miss Dormer Harris).

[221] 7 Henry IV. cap. 17.

[222] The law was done away with when it turned to the hurt of the

employers. In a later state of the cloth industry some of the old

centres of industry such as London and Norwich and Bristol found their

wealth decayed; and decided that their trade was starved for want

of workmen while the young people were growing up to idleness and

vice. Then the masters, actually threatened with the loss of their

manufacturing industries, insisted on new laws allowing them to take

apprentices without regard to the Act of Henry the Fourth (11 Henry

VII. cap. 11; 12 Henry VII. cap. 1).

[223] Hudson’s Notes about Norwich; in Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc.

vol. xii.

[224] English Guilds, 284-6, 337, 350. See in Exeter the relations of

the Tailors’ Guild to the suburbs. (Ibid. 310.) Possibly the system may

even then have been like the ordinary system which generally prevailed

till the end of the last century. In Dereham in Norfolk the site of a

line of hovels is still marked in which a group of shoemakers lived and

worked for the Norwich masters, whose collector came round every week

to collect the finished work. A rich farmer seems to have served as a

sort of contractor in the tailoring trade; the upper floor of his house

immediately below the roof formed a long room without any partitions in

which ten or twelve tailors worked by day and slept by night, and the

contractor dispatched their work to the Norwich dealer.

[225] Chap. XII. p. 385. See also the monopoly of the York weavers in

the twelfth century, with the control of trade in the whole county

which it must have implied. (Gross, i. 108, note.)

[226] English Guilds, 383.

[227] Von Ochenkowski (Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, 128-133)

scarcely seems to distinguish sufficiently between the objections to

the competition of the dealers or masters from the suburbs, and to

the employment by town manufacturers of labour outside the town. The

resistance would necessarily have come from different quarters and for

different reasons.

[228] Cf. The Common Weal (ed. E. Lamond), 49.

[229] The well-known rioter is described by Skelton. Poems (ed. Dyce),

ii. 43-4.

[230] This was sometimes done by royal charter. (Hibbert’s Influence

of Eng. Guilds, 96.) All the facts are against the theory of Marx that

the merchant was by some hostile force prevented from buying labour,

though allowed to buy other commodities. The limitations were of the

merchants’ and dealers’ own making for their own purposes. It is

equally improbable that the guild organization excluded division of

labour in the workshop. (Marx, Capital, &c. i. 352.)

[231] This uniformity is well illustrated in the later ordinances of

the Hull Guilds. (Lambert, Two Thousand Years of Guild Life; Gross, ii.

272.)

[232] Clode, Merchant Tailors, p. 2.

[233] In 1311 the “hatters” and the “dealers who bought and sold hats”

in London were two quite distinct callings. (Riley’s Mem. 90.) The

distinction was well known in 1327 between the saddlers and the various

orders of workmen employed in manufacturing for them. (Ibid. 157-8.)

[234] A separation of the guilds into these groups is sufficient of

itself to shew of how little value the generalizations of Marx are as

to the relations of the crafts to capital; and how misleading it is to

represent the guilds as providing the main opposition to merchants or

capitalists, especially in the matter of refusing the supply of labour.

(See Marx i. 352.)

[235] Seligman (Two Chapters on Mediæval Guilds, 69) states that

the crafts were not charitable associations giving relief to poor

members till the fifteenth century. Out of twelve crafts mentioned in

English Guilds, nine gave relief to poor, and three do not mention

it. For the Braelers in London, 1355, see Riley’s Mem. 277; the White

tawyers, 1346, ibid. 232; the Lorimers, 1261, Liber Cust. 78-80.

Most of the ordinances in Riley’s Mem. make no mention of relief,

but the ordinances are so manifestly incomplete—merely additions or

alterations made for some special purpose—that no argument can be

drawn from them. The vast majority of religious or social guilds had

some charitable provisions, and in many cases these were certainly

trade guilds. The probability seems to lie on the side of help given to

poor members from the first.

[236] The way in which the guilds fought in defence of their voluntary

courts of arbitration, and the objection of the towns to these, is in

itself proof enough of the importance to their members of a tribunal,

however voluntary and arbitrary, which might relieve them from the

interference on every occasion of the local magistrates, and the

party politics of the town. The advantages of association in case of

being called before the greater courts is evident from the account of

mediæval procedure given in Sir J. Stephen’s History of the Criminal

Law. The illustrations afforded by the Paston Letters are without

number. See Manorial Pleas (Selden Soc.), 136. For the heavy cost

involved by the corrupt practices of lawyers, judges, pleaders, and

attorneys, see the action brought in 1275 by an advocate against an

employer who had withdrawn from the case; the advocate sues for his

fees and also for having been prevented by the stopping of the case

from getting a very large sum of money out of the other side. (Ibid.

155-6.)

[237] It was a disgrace to the lord if any of his “livery” appeared in

the law courts. The protection extended to the members of a craft was

really efficient. See the punishment of a grocer who in 1404 had turned

another of the company out of his house. (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company,

i. 93.)

[238] The grocers in London claimed control over every one who kept

a shop of spicery even if he did not wear their livery (Kingdon’s

Grocers’ Company, i. 66); but those who refused the livery were fined.

The liveried members paid 2_s._ 6_d._ for the dinner, and “every man

out of the clothing as us seemed they might bear.” (Ibid. ii. 239,

258.) A list was kept of those who wore the livery, those who wore

gowns, and householders and bachelors not in livery. (Ibid. 175-177.)

[239] These divisions must be taken in a general sense. Five orders are

mentioned among the Merchant Taylors (Clode, 8-9); but these really

fall into three main groups. For our present purpose the “Bachelors,”

an intermediate rank formed in some of the richer crafts, may be

omitted.

[240] See Du Cange.

[241] Riley’s Mem. Lond. 258. See the case of the London bakers where a

special ordinance was needed to make the servants liable to punishment

for the grossest frauds in the absence of the masters. (Ibid. 181-2.)

[242] If a craftsman not admitted to the freedom of the guild took

work, the customer in case of fraud had only the protection of the

common law, and could not appeal to the town or guild ordinances.

(English Guilds, 322.)

[243] From time to time there were protests on the part of the members

of the craft against the power of the oligarchy. There was such a case

in the London Grocers’ Company, when an attempt was made in 1444 to

limit the power of the wardens in appointing new members. (Kingdon’s

Grocers’ Company, i. 123.)

[244] English Guilds, 30, 35, 289. Twelve of the discreetest of the

smiths at Coventry elected the keepers, and formed the court to try

offenders.

[245] Lambert’s Guild Life, 113, 129; English Guilds, 156, 159, 162,

217, 160, 169, 31, 164, 167, 318, 445. The weavers’ guild was governed

by a council of twenty-four as early as the thirteenth century. (Lib.

Cus. 424.) In religious or social guilds there were cases where the

election of officers was made by the assent of all the brethren

(English Guilds, 47, 49, 148, 213, 232), or “with the assent of the

_elder part_ of the brethren and sistern of the guild” (ibid. 150); but

the prevailing custom was the appointment of picked men to choose the

officers. (English Guilds, 62, 64, 71, 75, 83, 89, 91, 97, 119, 266.)

In one case “all the brethren whom the alderman should send for” were

to elect officers. (Ibid. 35.) In another the alderman chose two men,

the company chose two others, these four chose two more, and the six

elected officers. In a later form copied for another craft instead of

the “company” the “masters of the guild” chose two men. (Ibid. 276.)

In one case a new provost was chosen by the four provosts of the past

year. (Ibid. 186.) In the Grocers’ Company the wardens appointed their

successors. (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i. 10, 14, 18.) A similar

custom prevailed in the Southampton Guild Merchant.

[246] Riley’s Mem. 348. In the Cordwainers’ Guild of Exeter (1481)

two of the wardens were chosen from the shop-holders, and two from

the journeymen. (English Guilds, 332.) It would seem that among the

coruesers of Bristol the journeymen had a certain recognized position,

the visible sign of which was their having the right to provide lights

carried in the municipal processions at certain feasts; and when in

1454 “divers debates and murmurs had arisen between the masters and

crafts of the coruesers and the journeymen,” and the masters and

craft-holders sought to deprive the journeymen of this right, the

attempt was vigorously and successfully resisted.

[247] In Ipswich when a youth in 1448 was apprenticed to a barber for

seven years it was stipulated that he should get suitable clothing,

shoes, bedding, board, and chastisement. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 259.)

At Romney in 1451 it was decreed that at the end of his service the

apprentice should receive from his master 10_s._ or a bed of that

value. (Ibid. v. 543). A decree against using daggers or knives or

making any affray was limited by the phrase, “provided always that it

shall be lawful to any inhabitant to correct his servant or apprentice

according to the law.” (English Guilds, 390.) But on the other hand

when a master among the tailors at Exeter chastised his servant so far

as to bruise his arm and break his head, he had not only to give a fine

to the craft but to give the servant 15_s._ and a month’s board and to

pay his doctor. (Ibid. 322.)

[248] A master retiring from trade might sell and devise the services

of his apprentice to a new master, but if there was any suspicion that

a sale had been so managed that the apprentice lost credit for one

or two years of the service which he had actually fulfilled both the

masters were deprived of the freedom of the city and craft. (Paston

Letters, i. 378.)

[249] See note A at end of chapter.

[250] Statutes 6 Henry VI. cap. 3.

[251] Statutes 12 Richard II. cap. 3.

[252] English Guilds, 395, 285-6; Hist. MSS. Com. v. 530; Riley’s Mem.

Lond. 246.

[253] Riley’s Mem. Lond. 307; English Guilds, 285-6. Piece-work was

common in many trades. In Newcastle the guild of fullers and dyers in

their ordinances of 1477 regulated the price of fulling and shearing

the various kinds of cloth by piece-work at so much a yard. The weavers

also worked by the piece. The Newcastle slaters had been formed into

a guild and had ordinances in 1451 with similar regulations; the

bricklayers and plasterers were in a guild in 1454 (Newcastle Guilds).

There was piece-work among the tawyers. (Riley’s Mem. Lond. 330-1.) In

Winchester the weavers probably worked at from 3_d._ to 4_d._ a day, as

they were ordered to take from Hallow Eve to the Annunciation for their

work but 1_s._ 6_d._, and from the Annunciation to Hallow Eve but 2_s._

[254] In 1265 Leicester weavers were allowed by the guild to weave by

night as well as by day. (Gross, ii. 144.)

[255] Riley’s Mem. Lond. 232-3. This was true of a great number of

trades. (Ibid. 244, 245-7, 258, &c. For Lincoln tailors, English

Guilds, 183. Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i. 20-21.) In this last

company public notice was given of a servant who had left his master to

prevent his being engaged by another.

[256] Hibbert’s Influence of English Guilds, 64.

[257] Riley’s Mem. 247-8, 250-1, 256.

[258] Lib. Cus. 84.

[259] Riley’s Mem. 495.

[260] Mem. Lond. 495-6. The friars from time to time appear as

supporters of the poorer people. In Coventry the White Friars was the

meeting place for the fellowship of the crafts and for the tilers’

company in the fifteenth century; and Friar John Bredon played

the part of a local agitator. The policy of the Friars was often,

as in Canterbury, part of a general antagonism to other religious

establishments. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 98.)

[261] Mem. Lond. 543-4. The suppression of the May-day festival of the

journeymen shearmen in Shrewsbury was very possibly a similar putting

down of confederations and conspiracies. (Hibbert’s Inf. and Dev. of

Eng. Gilds, 120-2.) See also the Bristol Coruesers, p. 119, n. 1.

[262] Riley’s Mem. Lond. 609-12, 653. Clode, 4, 22-29.

[263] The town records of Shrewsbury note in 1516 a reward to the

king’s messenger bearing letters concerning the insurrection of the

apprentices of the City of London. (Owen’s Shrewsbury, i. 284.)

[264] See p. 102, note 2.

[265] See Note A, p. 160.

[266] English Guilds, cxxi. For an exception at Hull see Lambert’s

Guild Life, 188. For Canterbury see H.M.C. ix. 173-4.

[267] “The people must cheerfully maintain the government, within whose

functions however it does not lie to support the people.” Cleveland’s

Presidential Address. Mar. 6, 1893.

[268] Stat. 11 Henry VI. cap. 12.

[269] Nott. Rec. i. 268-272, 316-318. See also Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 582.

[270] Piers Ploughman. Pass. iv. 80-118. There is an instance of a

guild in which no parson, baker, or wife, was admitted. (Eng. Gilds,

271).

[271] Piers Ploughman. Pass. iii. 222.

[272] Riley’s Mem. 182. A summary of the conflict on the price of wine

is given in Schanz, i. 642-50. By 5 Richard II. Stat. i. cap. 4 if a

vintner refused to sell at the right price the mayor might deliver the

wine to any buyer at statute cost.

[273] Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i., xvii., xviii.; Schanz, i. 651.

[274] Norwich Town Close Evidences (Brit. Museum.), 16.

[275] Riley’s Memorials, 174-5. Many other examples might be given. A

later instance occurs when the London Corporation brought a complaint

against the society of hoastmen in 1603 about the raising of the price

of coals in London and the scanty supply, so that “without great

difficulty the city cannot be provided sufficiently of sea-coals for

the poor.” The fraternity of hoastmen make a statement of their reasons

concerning the prices of sea-coals to the Privy Council in answer to

the complaint of the Mayor and Aldermen. (Newcastle Guilds, 44.)

[276] The chief objection of the public to the “unreasonable

ordinances” by which the crafts closed their corporations was the

“common damage to the people,” probably as tending to raise prices. (P.

102, n. 2.) The Coventry Leet opposed the crafts in this matter.

[277] These grants were all of early date, in the twelfth century.

Ashley, Woollen Industry, 15-17; Madox, 26, 191, etc., 212, etc.,

283-4. The Nottingham weavers paid a rent of 40_s._ for their guild

to the King from the time of Henry the Second. For this they raised a

contribution from each loom, and obtained a grant that those who paid

might work in the outskirts of the town. (Nott. Rec. iii. 27, 58, ii.

36.)

[278] Riley’s Lib. Cus. 130 etc.

[279] Ibid. 121, 123. The survival of the weavers’ court may be seen in

1321. In certain cases where the bureller was fined by the Mayor, the

weaver was punished by the bailiffs of his own guild. (Ibid. 422-3.)

[280] Riley’s Lib. Cus. 423.

[281] In 1327 Edward the Third granted a charter to the girdlers of

London, which took in all the girdlers of the kingdom, ordered them

under the same rules, and set them under the Mayors of whatever city

they might be in. (Riley’s Mem. 154-5).

[282] Some charters were given by Edward the Fourth and later Kings

to companies of Tailors, Merchants, and so on, which gave them an

existence independent of the town, and power to make their own

ordinances. (See p. 173.) No list has been made out of these companies,

and the subject needs investigation. From the cases which I have met

with I think it may probably turn out that such charters were generally

given to companies with a foreign trade, and given for reasons

referring to that trade. The second charter of the Merchant Tailors in

1390 allowed them to make ordinances among themselves and of their own

authority. (Clode, 3.) This charter seems to have freed them from the

Mayor, but if so they were again put under his control in 1436. (Ibid.

5, see pp. 189-191, 193.) This was followed by a violent attempt in

1442 to have a Mayor of their own company, which failed and caused much

anger. It is evident from the charter of Henry the Seventh, in 1502,

which confirmed their independence, that they dealt in “all and every

kinds of merchandises” “in all quarters and kingdoms of the world.”

(Ibid. 7, 195.) By this they were again given full power to make

ordinances for themselves without interference, so long as these were

not contrary to the laws of the kingdom nor to the prejudice of the

Mayor; and the Mayor was wholly deprived of the power of search among

their subjects—a most important measure, since the master and wardens

“had a great number of householders with their servants to rule and

govern.” (Ibid. 197-200.)

[283] Though guilds were forbidden in Norwich they existed, doubtless

by the payment of annual fines. In the case of the tanners the

complaint in 1287 against them was clearly that in case of disputes

they “made plaint” to their own aldermen and not to the bailiffs.

(Hudson’s Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich (Selden Soc.) p. 13.) The

cobblers had apparently an important guild from the money paid; the

saddlers, tanners, and fullers had also guilds in 1292. (Ibid. 39,

42, 43.) The King reserved the power of creating guilds, and it was

possibly to prevent his exercising it that towns like Norwich and

Coventry obtained by charter the right to have no guilds. Such a

privilege freed them from the fear of fraternities independent of

the municipality, while it left them free to recognise informally

associations whose recurring fines were really the tribute paid for

existence.