the merchants of Liverpool was privateering, which, during the latter
half of the 18th century, was a favourite investment. After the outbreak
of the Seven Years' War with France and Spain, in 1756, the commerce of
Liverpool suffered severely, the French having overrun the narrow seas
with privateers, and the premiums for insurance against sea risks rose
to an amount almost prohibitive. The Liverpool merchants took a lesson
from the enemy, and armed and sent out their ships as privateers. Some
of the early expeditions proving very successful, almost the whole
community rushed into privateering, with results of a very chequered
character. When the War of Independence broke out in 1775 American
privateers swarmed about the West India Islands, and crossing the
Atlantic intercepted British commerce in the narrow seas. The Liverpool
merchants again turned their attention to retaliation. Between August
1778 and April 1779, 120 privateers were fitted out in Liverpool,
carrying 1986 guns and 8745 men.
See W. Enfield, _Hist. of Leverpool_ (1773); J. Aikin, _Forty Miles
round Manchester_ (1795); T. Troughton, _Hist. of Liverpool_ (1810);
M. Gregson, _Portfolio of Fragments relating to Hist. of Lancashire_
(1817); H. Smithers, _Liverpool, its Commerce_, &c. (1825); R. Syers,
_Hist. of Everton_ (1830); E. Baines, _Hist. of County Palatine of
Lancaster_, vol. iv. (1836); T. Baines, _Hist. of Commerce and Town of
Liverpool_ (1852); R. Brooke, _Liverpool during the last quarter of
18th Century_ (1853); J. A. Picton, _Memorials of Liverpool_ (2 vols.,
1873); Ramsay Muir and Edith M. Platt, _A History of Municipal
Government in Liverpool_ (1906); Ramsay Muir, _A History of Liverpool_
(1907). (W. F. I.)
LIVERSEDGE, an urban district in the Spen Valley parliamentary division
of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 7 m. S.S.E. of Bradford, on
the Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Northern, and London & North Western
railways. Pop. (1901) 13,980. The industries are chiefly the manufacture
of woollen goods, the making of machinery, chemical manufactures and
coal mining.
LIVERY, originally the provision of food, clothing, &c., to household
servants. The word is an adaptation of the Anglo-French _livrée_, from
_livrer_, to deliver (Late Lat. _liberare_, to set free, to serve, to
give freely), in the special sense of distributing. In the sense of a
fixed allowance of provender for horses, it survives now only in
"livery-stable," _i.e_. an establishment where horses and carriages are
kept or let out for hire. From the meaning of provision of food and
clothing the word is applied to a uniform worn by the retainers and
servants of a household. In the 15th century in England a badge, collar
or other insignia, the "livery," was worn by all those who pledged
themselves to support one of the great barons in return for his promise
of "maintenance," i.e. of protection against enemies; thus arose the
custom of "livery and maintenance," suppressed by Henry VII. The members
of the London city companies wore a distinctive costume or "livery,"
whence the term "livery companies." In law, the term "livery" means
"delivery," the legal handing of property into the possession of
another; for "livery of seisin" see FEOFFMENT.
LIVERY COMPANIES, the name given to particular companies or societies in
the city of London. They belong to a class of institutions which at one
time were universal in Europe. In most other countries they have
disappeared; in England, while their functions have wholly changed, the
organization remains. The origin of the city companies is to be found in
the craftgilds of the middle ages. The absence of a strong central
authority accounts for the tendency of confederation in the beginning of
modern societies. Artificial groups, formed in imitation of the family,
discharged the duties which the family was no longer able, and the state
was not yet able, to undertake. The inhabitants of towns were forced
into the societies known as gild-merchants, which in course of time
monopolized the municipal government, became exclusive, and so caused
the growth of similar societies among excluded citizens. The craftgilds
were such societies, composed of handicraftsmen, which entered upon a
struggle with the earlier gilds and finally defeated them. The
circumstances and results of the struggle were of much the same
character in England and on the continent. In London the victory of the
crafts is decisively marked by the ordinance of the time of Edward II.,
which required every citizen to be a member of some trade or mystery,
and by another ordinance in 1375 which transferred the right of election
of corporate officers (including members of parliament) from the
ward-representatives to the trading companies. Henceforward, and for
many years, the companies engrossed political and municipal power in the
city of London.
The trading fraternities assumed generally the character of corporations
in the reign of Edward III. Many of them had been chartered before, but
their privileges, hitherto exercised only on sufferance and by payment
of their terms, were now confirmed by letters patent. Edward III.
himself became a member of the fraternity of Linen Armourers, or
Merchant Taylors, and other distinguished persons followed his example.
From this time they are called livery companies, "from now generally
assuming a distinctive dress or livery." The origin of the Grocers'
Company is thus described: "Twenty-two persons, carrying on the business
of pepperers in Soper's Lane, Cheapside, agree to meet together, to a
dinner, at the Abbot of Bury's, St Mary Axe, and commit the particulars
of their formation into a trading society to writing. They elect after
dinner two persons of the company so assembled--Roger Osekyn and
Lawrence de Haliwell--as their first governors or wardens, appointing,
at the same time, in conformity with the pious custom of the age, a
priest or chaplain to celebrate divine offices for their souls" (Heath's
"Account of the Grocers' Company," quoted in Herbert's _Twelve Great
Livery Companies_, 1836, i. 43). The religious observances and the
common feasts were characteristic features of those institutions. They
were therefore not merely trade unions in the current meaning of that
phrase, but may rather be described as forms of industrial
self-government, the basis of union being the membership of a common
trade, and the authority of the society extending to the general
welfare, spiritual and temporal, of its members. It must be remembered
that they flourished at a time when the separate interests of master and
servant had not yet been created; and, indeed, when that fundamental
division of interests arose, the companies gradually lost their
functions in the regulation of industry. The fact that the craftsmen
were a homogeneous order will account for the wide authority claimed by
their societies, and the important public powers which were conceded to
them. In the regulation of trade they possessed extensive powers. They
required every one carrying on the trade to join the company. In 1363,
in answer to a remonstrance against the mischief caused by "the
merchants called grocers who engrossed all manner of merchandize
vendable, and who suddenly raised the prices of such merchandize within
the realm," it was enacted "that all artificers and people of mysteries
shall each choose his own mystery[1] before next Candlemas, and that,
having so chosen it, he shall henceforth use no other." L. Brentano (_On
Gilds_) holds that it is wrong to represent such regulations as
monopolistic, inasmuch as there was no question whatever of a monopoly
in that time nor until the degeneration of the craftgilds into limited
corporations of capitalists. In the regulation of trade the right of
search was an important instrument. The wardens of the grocers are to
"assayen weights, powders, confeccions, platers, oyntments and all other
things belonging to the same crafte." The goldsmiths had the assay of
metals, the fishmongers the oversight of fish, the vintners of the
tasting of wine, &c. The companies enforced their regulations on their
members by force. Many of their ordinances looked to the domestic
affairs and private conduct of the members. The grocers ordain "that no
man of the fraternite take his neyghbor's house y^t is of the same
fraternite, or enhaunce the rent against the will of the foresaid
neyghbor." Perjury is to be punished by the wardens and society with
such correction as that other men of the fellowship may be warned
thereby. Members reduced to poverty by adventures on the sea, increased
price of goods, borrowing and pledging, or any other misfortune, are to
be assisted "out of the common money, according to his situation, if he
could not do without."
Following what appears to be the natural law of their being, the
companies gradually lost their industrial character. The course of decay
would seem to have been the following. The capitalists gradually assumed
the lead in the various societies, the richer members engrossed the
power and the companies tended to become hereditary and exclusive.
Persons might be members who had nothing to do with the craft, and the
rise of great capitalists and the development of competition in trade
made the regulation of industry by means of companies no longer
possible. For an account of the "degeneration of craftgilds" a general
reference may be made to Brentano, _On Gilds_ (1870), and C. Gross, _The
Gild Merchant_ (2 vols., 1890). The usurpation of power on the part of
the richer members was not always effected without opposition. Brentano
refers to a pamphlet on the Clothworkers' Company, published in 1649,
which asserts that "the commonalty" in the old charters meant, not the
whole gild, but only the masters, wardens and assistants. Herbert
records a dispute in the Goldsmiths' Company in 1529. The mode of
electing officers, and the system of management generally, was
challenged by three members who called themselves "artificers, poor men
of the craft of goldsmiths." The company, or rather, the wardens, the
assistants and livery presented a petition to the lord mayor, which was
answered by the discontented craftsmen. The dispute was carried into the
court of chancery and the star chamber. The artificers accused the
company of subverting their grants, misappropriating the funds and
changing the constitution of the society, and they complain of this
being done by the usurpation of persons who "were but merchant
goldsmiths, and had but little knowledge in the science." In 1531 the
three complainants were expelled from the company, and then the dispute
seems to have ended. In the last stage of the companies the members have
ceased to have any connexion with the trades, and in most cases their
regulative functions have disappeared. The one characteristic which has
clung to them throughout is that of owners of property and managers of
charitable trusts. The connexion between the companies and the
municipality is shortly as follows. The ordinance of Edward II. required
freemen of the city to be members of one or other of the companies. By
the ordinance of 49 Edw. III. (1375), the trading companies were to
nominate the members of common council, and the persons so nominated
alone were to attend both at common councils and at elections. An
ordinance in 7 Richard II. (1383) restored the elections of common
councilmen to the wards, but corporate officers and representatives in
parliament were elected by a convention summoned by the lord mayor from
the nominees of the companies. An act of common council in 7 Edw. IV.
(1467) appointed the election of mayor, sheriffs, &c., to be in the
common council, together with the masters and wardens of the companies.
By 15 Edw. IV. masters and wardens were ordered to associate with
themselves the honest men of their mysteries, and come in their best
liveries to the elections; that is to say, the franchise was restricted
to the "liverymen" of the companies. At this time the corporation
exercised supreme control over the companies, and the companies were
still genuine associations of the traders and householders of the city.
The delegation of the franchise to the liverymen was thus, in point of
fact, the selection of a superior class of householders to represent the
rest. When the corporation lost its control over the companies, and the
members of the companies ceased to be traders and householders, the
liverymen were no longer a representative class, and some change in the
system became necessary. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 reformed the
representation in several particulars. The liverymen of the companies,
being freemen of the city, have still, however, the exclusive power of
electing the lord mayor, sheriffs, chamberlain and other corporate
officers.
The contributions made by the companies to the public purposes of the
state and the city are interesting points in their early history. Their
wealth and their representative character made them a most appropriate
instrument for the enforcement of irregular taxation. The loan of
£21,263, 6s. 8d. to Henry VIII. for his wars in Scotland, in 1544, is
believed by Herbert to be the first instance of a pecuniary grant to the
crown, but the practice rapidly gained ground. The confiscation of
ecclesiastical property at the time of the Reformation affected many of
the trusts of the companies; and they were compelled to make returns of
their property devoted to religious uses, and to pay over the rents to
the crown. In course of time the taxation of the companies became "a
regular source of supply to government." The historians of the city have
for the most part described these as unjust and tyrannical exactions,
but, looking at the representative and municipal character of the
companies, and the purposes to which their contributions were applied,
we may regard them as a rough but not unfair mode of taxation. The
government, when money was wanted for public works, informed the lord
mayor, who apportioned the sums required among the various societies,
and issued precepts for its payment. Contributions towards setting the
poor to work, erecting the Royal Exchange, cleansing the city ditch,
discovering new countries, furnishing military and naval armaments, for
men, arms and ammunition for the defence of the city, are among what
Herbert calls the sponging expedients of the government. The crown
occasionally interfered in a more unjustifiable manner with the
companies in the exercise of their patronage. The Stuarts made strenuous
efforts to get the control of the companies. Terrified by the
proceedings in the _quo warranto_ case, most of the companies
surrendered their charters to the crown, but such surrenders were
annulled by the act of 2 William and Mary (1690) reserving the judgment
in _quo warranto_ against the city. The livery companies now in
existence are the following:
Apothecaries. | Fellowship Porters. | Needlemakers.
Armourers and | Feltmakers. | Painters.
Brasiers. | Fishmongers. | Pattern Makers.
Bakers. | Fletchers. | Pewterers.
Barbers. | Founders. | Plaisterers.
Basket Makers. | Framework Knitters. | Playing Card
Blacksmiths. | Fruiterers. | Makers.
Bowyers. | Girdlers. | Plumbers.
Brewers. | Glass Sellers. | Poulters.
Broderers. | Glaziers. | Saddlers.
Butchers. | Glovers. | Salters.
Carmen. | Gold and Silver | Scriveners.
Carpenters | Wyre-drawers. | Shipwrights.
Clockmakers. | Goldsmiths. | Silkthrowsters.
Clothworkers. | Grocers. | Skinners.
Coach and | Gunmakers. | Spectacle makers.
Coach-Harness | Haberdashers | Stationers.
Makers. | Horners. | Tallow Chandlers.
Cooks. | Innholders. | Tin Plate Workers.
Coopers. | Ironmongers. | Turners.
Cordwainers. | Joiners. | Tylers and
Curriers. | Leathersellers. | Bricklayers.
Cutlers. | Loriners. | Upholders.
Distillers. | Masons. | Wax Chandlers.
Drapers. | Mercers. | Weavers.
Dyers. | Merchant Taylors. | Wheelwrights.
Fanmakers. | Musicians. | Woolmen.
Farriers. | |
The following are the twelve great companies in order of civic
precedence: Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths,
Skinners, Merchant Taylors, Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmongers,
Vintners, Cloth-workers. The "Irish Society" was incorporated in the 11
James I. as "the governor and assistants of the new plantation in
Ulster, within the realm of Ireland." The twelve companies contributed
in equal portions the sum of £60,000 for the new scheme, by which it was
intended to settle a Protestant colony in the lands forfeited by the
Irish rebels. The companies divided the settlement into twelve nearly
equal parts, assigning one to each, but the separate estates are still
held to be under the paramount jurisdiction of the Irish Society. The
charter of the society was revoked by the court of star chamber in the
reign of Charles I., but a new one was granted by Charles II., under
which the society still acts.
Most of the companies administer charities of large value. Many of
them are governors of important schools, _e.g_. the Skinners have the
Tonbridge Grammar School; the Mercers, St Paul's School; the Merchant
Taylors, the school bearing their name, &c. The constitution of the
livery companies usually embraces (a) the court, which includes the
master and wardens, and is the executive and administrative body; (2)
the livery or middle class, being the body from which the court is
recruited; and (3) the general body of freemen, from which the livery
is recruited. Some companies admit women as freemen. The freedom is
obtained either by patrimony (by any person over twenty-one years of
age born in lawful wedlock after the admission of his father to the
freedom), by servitude (by being bound as an apprentice to a freeman
of the company) or by redemption. Admission to many of the companies
is subject to the payment of considerable fees. For example, in the
Merchant Taylors the fees are--upon taking up the freedom, by
patrimony or servitude, £1, 3s. 4d.; by redemption, £84; on admission
to the livery, £80, 8s.; on election to the court of assistants, £115,
10s. At one time the position of the livery companies was a subject of
much political discussion. Two parties threatened to attack them--on
one side those who were anxious for extensive reforms in the municipal
organization of London; on the other, those who wished to carry
forward the process of inspection and revision of endowments, which
had already overtaken the universities, schools and other charities. A
Royal Commission was appointed in 1880 to inquire into all the livery
companies, into the circumstances and dates of their foundation, the
objects for which they were founded, and how far those objects were
being carried into effect. A very valuable _Report and Appendix_ (4
vols., 1884) was published, containing, _inter alia_, information on
the constitution and powers of the governing bodies, the mode of
admission of members of the companies, the mode of appointment, duties
and salaries and other emoluments of the servants of the companies,
the property of, or held in trust for, the companies, its value,
situation and description. The companies very freely made returns to
the commission, the only ones not doing so being the Broderers,
Bowyers, Distillers, Glovers, Tin-Plate Workers and Weavers. The
Commission estimated the annual income of the companies to be from
£750,000 to £800,000, about £200,000 of that amount being trust
income, the balance corporate income.
AUTHORITIES.--In addition to the _Report_ referred to above the
following works may be consulted: H. T. Riley, _Memorials of London
and London Life_ (1868); _Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483_ (ed.
by Sir N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrel, 1827); _Munimenta Gildhallae
Londiniensis_, in Rolls Series, ed. by H. T. Riley (4 vols.,
1859-1862); J. Toulmin Smith, _English Gilds_ (published by Early
English Text Society), with essay by L. Brentano (1870); W. Herbert,
_History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies_ (1837); C. Gross, _The
Gild Merchant_ (2 vols., 1890); W. C. Hazlitt, _The Livery Companies
of the City of London_ (1892), contains a précis of the Royal
Commission; P. H. Ditchfield, _The City Companies of London_ (1904);
G. Unwin, _The Gilds and Companies of London_ (1908). (T. A. I.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Properly the word should be spelled, as it was originally,
"mistery;" it comes through the O. Fr. _mestier_, modern _métier_,
from Lat. _ministerium_, service, employment, and meant a trade or
craft, and hence the plays acted by craftsmen and members of gilds
were called "mystery plays" (see DRAMA). For the word meaning a
hidden or secret rite, with which this has so often been confused,
see MYSTERY.
LIVIA DRUSILLA (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 29), Roman empress, was originally the
wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Drusus and
Tiberius (afterwards emperor). But she attracted the attention of the
future emperor Augustus, who in 38 compelled her husband to divorce her
and married her himself, having first got rid of his own wife Scribonia.
Her two sons, at their dying father's request, were entrusted to the
guardianship of Augustus, to whom she bore no children. Livia was
suspected of committing various crimes to secure the throne for
Tiberius, whereas Augustus naturally favoured the claims of his
blood-relatives. The premature deaths of his nephew Marcellus (whom he
had at first fixed upon as his successor) and of his grandsons Gaius and
Lucius Caesar, the banishment of his grandson Agrippa Postumus, and
even his own death, were attributed to her. But in any case Augustus's
affection for his wife appears to have suffered no diminution up to the
last; by his will he declared her and Tiberius (whom he had adopted in
A.D. 4) his heirs; Livia inherited a third of his property; she was
adopted into the Julian gens, and henceforth assumed the name of Julia
Augusta. The senate also elected her chief priestess of the college
founded in honour of the deified Augustus. She had now reached the
summit of her ambition, and at first acted as joint-ruler with Tiberius.
Tiberius, however, soon became tired of the maternal yoke; his
retirement to Capreae is said to have been caused by his desire to
escape from her. Livia continued to live quietly at Rome, in the full
enjoyment of authority, until her death at an advanced age. Tiberius
appears to have received the news with indifference, if not with
satisfaction; he absented himself from the funeral, and refused to allow
her apotheosis; her will was suppressed for a long time and only carried
out, and the legacies paid, by Caligula.
See Tacitus, _Annals_, i. v.; Dio Cassius liii. 33, lv. 14-22, lviii.
2, lix. 2; Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 50, 51; J. Aschbach, _Livia,
Gemahlin des Kaisers Augustus_ (1864); V. Gardthausen, _Augustus und
seine Zeit_, i. 1018 foll., ii. 631 foll.