PRE-REFORMATION GUILD LIFE
It would be impossible to fully understand the conditions of life on
the eve of the Reformation without some knowledge of the working and
purposes of mediæval guilds. These societies or brotherhoods were so
common, formed such a real bond of union between people of all ranks
and conditions of life, and fulfilled so many useful and even necessary
purposes before their suppression under Edward VI., that a study of
their principles of organisation and of their practical working cannot
but throw considerable light on the popular social life of the period.
To appreciate the position, it is necessary to bear in mind the very
real hold the Gospel principles of the Christian brotherhood had over
the minds of all in pre-Reformation days, the extinction of the general
sense that man did not stand alone being distinctly traceable to the
tendencies in regard to social matters evolved during the period of
turmoil initiated by the religious teachings of the Reformers. What
M. Siméon Luce says about the spirit of common life existing in the
villages of Normandy in the fourteenth century might be adopted as a
picture of English life in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
“Nobles, priests, religious clerks, sons of the soil who laboured
at various manual works,” he writes, “lived then, so to say, in
common, and they are found continually together in all their daily
occupations. So far from this community of occupations, this familiar
daily intercourse, being incompatible with the great inequality of
conditions which then existed, in reality it resulted from it. It was
where no strict line of demarcation divided the various classes that
they ordinarily affected to keep at a distance one from the other.”[328]
There can be no doubt as to the nature of the teaching of the English
Church in regard to the relation which, according to true Christian
principles, should exist between all classes of society. In particular
is this seen in all that pertained to the care of the poorer members
of the Christian family. The evidence appears clear and unmistakable
enough in pre-Reformation popular sermons and instructions, in formal
pronouncements of Bishops and Synods, and in books intended for the
particular teaching of clergy and laity in the necessary duties of the
Christian man. Whilst fully recognising as a fact that in the very
nature of things there must ever be the class of those who “have,”
and the class of those who “have not,” our Catholic forefathers in
pre-Reformation days knew no such division and distinction between
the rich man and the poor man as obtained later on, when pauperism,
as distinct from poverty, had come to be recognised as an inevitable
consequence of the new era. To the Christian moralist, and even to the
bulk of Catholic Englishmen, whether secular or lay, in the fifteenth
century, those who had been blessed by God’s providence with worldly
wealth were regarded not so much as the fortunate possessors of
personal riches, their own to do with what they listed, and upon which
none but they had right or claim, as in the light of stewards of God’s
good gifts to mankind at large, for the right use and ministration of
which they were accountable to Him who gave them.
Thus, to take one instance: the proceeds of ecclesiastical benefices
were recognised in the Constitutions of Legates and Archbishops
as being in fact as well as in theory the _eleemosynæ et spes
pauperum_--the alms and the hope of the poor. Those ecclesiastics
who consumed the revenues of their cures on other than necessary and
fitting purposes were declared to be “defrauders of the rights of God’s
poor,” and “thieves of Christian alms intended for them;” whilst the
English canonists and legal professors who glossed these provisions
of the Church law gravely discussed the ways in which the poor of a
parish could vindicate their right to their share in the ecclesiastical
revenues of the Church.
This “_jus pauperum_,” which is set forth in such a text-book of
English Law as Lyndwood’s _Provinciale_, is naturally put forth more
clearly and forcibly in a work intended for popular instruction such
as _Dives et Pauper_. “To them that have the benefices and goods of
Holy Church,” writes the author, “it belonged principally to give alms
and to have the cure of poor people.” To him who squanders the alms
of the altar on luxury and useless show, the poor may justly point
and say: “It is ours that you so spend in pomp and vanity!… That thou
keepest for thyself of the altar passing the honest needful living, it
is raveny, it is theft, it is sacrilege.” From the earliest days of
English Christianity the care of the helpless poor was regarded as an
obligation incumbent on all; and in 1342, Archbishop Stratford, dealing
with _appropriations_, or the assignment of ecclesiastical revenues to
the support of some religious house or college, ordered that a portion
of the tithe should always be set apart for the relief of the poor,
because, as Bishop Stubbs has pointed out, in England, from the days of
King Ethelred, “a third part of the tithe” which belonged to the Church
was the acknowledged birthright of the poorer members of Christ’s flock.
That there was social inequality is as certain as it was inevitable,
for that is in the very constitution of human society. But this, as
M. Luce has pointed out in regard to France, and Professor Janssens
in regard to Germany, in no way detracted from the frank and full
acknowledgment of the Christian brotherhood. Again and again in the
sermons of the fifteenth century this truth, with all its practical
applications, was enforced by the priest at the altar, where both poor
and rich alike met on a common footing--“all, poor and rich, high and
low, noble and simple, have sprung from a common stock and are children
of a common father, Adam:” “God did not create a golden Adam from
whom the nobles are descended, nor a silver Adam from whom have come
the rich, and another, a clay Adam, from whom are the poor; but all,
nobles, rich and poor, have one common father, made out of the dust of
the earth.” These and similar lessons were constantly repeated by the
religious teachers of the pre-Reformation English Church.
Equally definite is the author of the book of popular instruction,
_Dives et Pauper_, above referred to. The sympathy of the writer is
with the poor, as indeed is that of every ecclesiastical writer of the
period. In fact, it is abundantly clear that the Church of England in
Catholic days, as a _pia mater_, was ever ready to open wide her heart
to aid and protect the poorer members of Christ’s mystical body. This
is how _Pauper_ in the tract in question states the true Christian
teaching as to the duties of riches, and impresses upon his readers the
view that the owners of worldly wealth are but stewards of the Lord:
“All that the rich man hath, passing his honest living after the degree
of his dispensation, it is other men’s, not his, and he shall give full
hard reckoning thereof at the day of doom, when God shall say to him,
‘Yield account of your bailywick.’ For rich men and lords in this world
are God’s bailiffs and God’s reeves, to ordain for the poor folk and
to sustain them.” Most strongly does the same writer insist that no
property gives any one the right to say “_this is mine_” and that is
“_thine_,” for property, so far as it is of God, is of the nature of
governance and dispensation, by which those who, by God’s Providence
“have,” act as His stewards and the dispensers of His gifts to such as
“have not.”[329]
It would, of course, be affectation to suggest that poverty and
great hardness of life were not to be found in pre-Reformation days,
but what did not exist was pauperism, which, as distinguished from
poverty, certainly sprung up plentifully amid the ruins of Catholic
institutions, overthrown as a consequence--perhaps as a necessary and
useful consequence--of the religious changes in the sixteenth century.
Bishop Stubbs, speaking of the condition of the poor in the Middle
Ages, declares that “there is very little evidence to show that our
forefathers in the middle ranks of life desired to set any impassable
boundary between class and class.… Even the villein, by learning a
craft, might set his foot on the ladder of promotion. The most certain
way to rise was furnished by education, and by the law of the land,
‘every man or woman, of what state or condition that he be, shall be
free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that
pleaseth him within the realm.’” Mr. Thorold Rogers, than whom no one
has ever worked so diligently at the economic history of England, and
whom none can suspect of undue admiration of the Catholic Church,
has also left it on record that during the century and a half which
preceded the era of the Reformation the mass of English labourers
were thriving under their guilds and trade unions, the peasants were
gradually acquiring their lands and becoming small freeholders, the
artisans rising to the position of small contractors and working with
their own hands at structures which their native genius and experience
had planned. In a word, according to this high authority, the last
years of undivided Catholic England formed “the golden age” of the
Englishman who was ready and willing to work.
“In the age which I have attempted to describe,” writes the same
authority, “and in describing which I have accumulated and condensed a
vast amount of unquestionable facts, the rate of production was small,
the conditions of health unsatisfactory, and the duration of life
short. But, on the whole, there were none of those extremes of poverty
and wealth which have excited the astonishment of philanthropists and
are exciting the indignation of workmen. The age, it is true, had
its discontents, and these discontents were expressed forcibly and
in a startling manner. But of poverty which perishes unheeded, of a
willingness to do honest work and a lack of opportunity there was
little or none. The essence of life in England during the days of the
Plantagenets and Tudors was that every one knew his neighbour, and that
every one was his brother’s keeper.”[330]
In regard to the general care of the poorer brethren of a parish in
pre-Reformation England, Bishop Hobhouse, after a careful examination
of the available sources of information, writes as follows: “I can
only suppose that the brotherhood tie was so strongly realised by
the community that the weaker ones were succoured by the stronger,
as out of a family store. The brotherhood tie was, no doubt, very
much stronger then, when the village community was from generation
to generation so unalloyed by anything foreign, when all were knit
together by one faith and one worship and close kindred; but, further
than this, the guild fellowships must have enhanced all the other
bonds in drawing men to share their worldly goods as a common stock.
Covertly, if not overtly, the guildsman bound himself to help his needy
brother in sickness and age, as he expected his fellow-guildsman to do
for him in his turn of need, and these bonds, added to a far stronger
sense of the duty of children towards aged parents than is now found,
did, I conceive, suffice for the relief of the poor, aided only by the
direct almsgiving which flowed from the parsonage house, or in favoured
localities from the doles or broken meat of a monastery.”[331]
To relieve the Reformation from the odious charge that it was
responsible for the poor-laws, many authors have declared that not only
did poverty largely exist before, say, the dissolution of the monastic
houses, but that it would not long have been possible for the ancient
methods of relieving the distressed to cope with the increase in their
numbers under the changed circumstances of the sixteenth century. It is
of course possible to deal with broad assertions only by the production
of a mass of details, which is, under the present circumstances, out
of the question, or by assertions equally broad, and I remark that
there is no evidence of any change of circumstances, so far as such
changes appear in history, which could not have been fully met by the
application of the old principles, and met in a way which would never
have induced the degree of distressing pauperism which, in fact, was
produced by the application of the social principles adopted at the
Reformation. The underlying idea of these latter was property in the
sense of absolute ownership in place of the older and more Christian
idea of property in the sense of stewardship.
Most certainly the result was not calculated to improve the condition
of the poorer members of the community. It was they who were made
to pay, whilst their betters pocketed the price. The well-to-do
classes, in the process, became richer and more prosperous, whilst the
“masses” became, as an old writer has it, “mere stark beggars.” As a
fact, moreover, poverty became rampant, as we should have expected,
immediately upon the great confiscations of land and other property
at the dissolution of the religious houses. To take one example: Dr.
Sharpe’s knowledge of the records of the city of London enables him to
say that “the sudden closing of these institutions caused the streets
to be thronged with the sick and poor.”
“The devil,” exclaims a preacher who lived through all these troublous
times--“the devil cunningly turneth things his own way.” “Examples
of this we have seen in our time more than I can have leisure to
express or to rehearse. In the Acts of Parliament that we have had
made in our days what godly preambles hath gone afore the same; even
_quasi oraculum Apollinis_, as though the things that follow had come
from the counsel of the highest in heaven; and yet the end hath been
either to destroy abbeys or chauntries or colleges, or such like, by
the which some have gotten much land, and have been made men of great
possessions. But many an honest poor man hath been undone by it, and an
innumerable multitude hath perished for default and lack of sustenance.
And this misery hath long continued, and hath not yet (1556) an end.
Moreover, all this commotion and fray was made under pretence of a
common profit and common defence, but in very deed it was for private
and proper lucre.”[332]
In the sixty years that followed the overthrow of the old system, it
was necessary for Parliament to pass no less than twelve acts dealing
with the relief of distress, the necessity for which, Thorold Rogers
says, “can be traced distinctly back to the crimes of rulers and
agents.” I need not characterise the spirit which is manifested in
these acts, where poverty and crime are treated as indistinguishable.
Dr. Jessop writes: “In the general scramble of the _Terror_ under
Henry the Eighth, and of the _anarchy_ in the days of Edward the Sixth
… the monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans.
The almshouses, in which old men and women were fed and clothed, were
robbed to the last pound, the poor almsfolk being turned out in the
cold at an hour’s warning to beg their bread. The splendid hospitals
for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses
and chaplains, whose very _raison d’être_ was that they were to look
after the care of those who were past caring for themselves, these were
stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into
some convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some
barn or house, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences,
by some kindly man or woman, who could not bear to see a suffering
fellow-creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.”[333]
Intimately connected with the subject of the care of the poor in
pre-Reformation days is obviously that of the mediæval guilds which,
more than anything else, tended to foster the idea of the Christian
brotherhood up to the eve of the religious changes.
It would probably be a mistake to suppose that these societies existed
everywhere throughout the country in equal numbers. Mr. Thorold
Rogers, it is true, says--and the opinion of one who has done so much
work in every kind of local record must carry great weight--that “few
parishes were probably without guild lands.” But there is certainly
no distinct evidence that this was the case, especially in counties
say like Hampshire, always sparsely populated as compared with other
districts in the east of England, and where the people largely depended
on agricultural pursuits for a living. It was in the great centres
of trade and manufacture that the guilds were most numerous and most
important, for it was precisely in those parts that the advantages of
mutual help and co-operation outside the parish bond were most apparent
and combination was practically possible.
An examination of the existing records leads to a general division of
mediæval guilds into two classes--_Craft_ or _Trade_ associations, and
_Religious_ or, as some prefer now to call them, _Social_ guilds. The
former, as their name implies, had, as the special object of their
existence, the protection of some work, trade or handicraft, and in
this for practical purposes we may include those associations of
traders or merchants known under the name of “guild-merchants.” Such,
for instance, were the great companies of the city of London, and it
was in reality under the plea that they were trading societies that
they were saved in the general destruction which overtook all similar
fraternities and associations in the sixteenth century. The division
of guilds into the two classes named above is, however, after all more
a matter of convenience than a real distinction founded on fact. All
guilds, no matter for what special purpose they were founded, had the
same general characteristic of brotherly aid and social charity; and
no guild was divorced from the ordinary religious observances commonly
practised by all such bodies in those days.
It is often supposed that, for the most part, what are called
religious guilds existed for the purpose of promoting or encouraging
the religious practices, such as the attendance at church on certain
days, the taking part in ecclesiastical processions, the recitations
of offices and prayers, and the like. Without doubt, there were such
societies in pre-Reformation days--such as, for example, the great
Guild of Corpus Christi, in the city of York, which counted its members
by thousands. But such associations were the exception, not the rule.
An examination of the existing statutes and regulations of ancient
guilds will show how small a proportion these purely _Ecclesiastical_
guilds formed of the whole number of associations known as Religious
guilds. The origin of the mistaken notion is obvious. In mediæval
days--that is, in times when such guilds flourished--the word
“religious” had a wider, and what most people who reflect will be
inclined to think, a truer signification than has obtained in later
times. Religion was then understood to include the exercise of the
two commandments of charity--the love of God and the love of one’s
neighbour--and the exercises of practical charity to which guild
brethren were bound by their guild statutes were considered as much
religious practices as attendance at church or the taking part in an
ecclesiastical procession. In these days, as Mr. Brentano in his essay
_On the History and Development of Guilds_ has pointed out, most of
the objects, to promote which the guilds existed, would now be called
social duties, but they were then regarded as true objects of Christian
charity. Mutual assistance, the aid of the poor, of the helpless, of
the sick, of strangers, of pilgrims and prisoners, the burial of the
dead, even the keeping of schools and schoolmasters, and other such
like works were held to be “exercises of religion.”[334]
If the word “religious” be thought now to give a wrong impression about
the nature of associations, the main object of which was to secure the
performance of duties we should now call “social,” quite as false an
impression would be conveyed by the word “social” as applied to them.
A “social” society would inevitably suggest to many in these days an
association for convivial meetings, and this false notion of the nature
of a mediæval guild would be further strengthened by the fact that in
many, if not most, of them a yearly, and sometimes a more frequent
feast existed under an item in their statutes. This guild feast,
however, was a mere incident in the organisation, and in no case did it
form what we might consider the end or purpose of the association.
By whichever name we call them, and assuming the religious basis
which underlay the whole social life in the fifteenth century, the
character and purpose of these mediæval guilds cannot in reality be
misunderstood. Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies
and the provident associations of the middle ages. They undertook
towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial
clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor.
Not infrequently they acted for the public good of the community in
the mending of roads and the repair of bridges, and for the private
good of their members, in the same way that insurance companies to-day
compensate for loss by fire or accident. The very reason of their
existence was the affording of mutual aid and assistance in meeting
the pecuniary demands which were constantly arising from burials,
legal exactions, penal fines and all other kinds of payments and
compensations. Mr. Toulmin Smith thus defines their object: “The
early English guild was an institution of local self-help which,
before the poor-laws were invented, took the place in old times of the
modern friendly or benefit society, but with a higher aim; while it
joined all classes together in the care of the needy and for objects
of common welfare, it did not neglect the forms and practice of
religion, justice, and morality,”[335] which I may add was, indeed, the
main-spring of their life and action.
“The guild lands,” writes Mr. Thorold Rogers, “were a very important
economical fact in the social condition of early England. The guilds
were the benefit societies of the time from which impoverished members
could be, and were, aided. It was an age in which the keeping of
accounts was common and familiar. Beyond question, the treasurers of
the village guild rendered as accurate an annual statement of their
fraternity as a bailiff did to his lord.… It is quite certain that the
town and country guilds obviated pauperism in the middle ages, assisted
in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre for
those associations which fulfilled the function that in more recent
times trades unions have striven to satisfy.”[336]
An examination of the various articles of association contained in the
returns made into the Chancery in 1389, and other similar documents,
shows how wide was the field of Christian charity covered by these
“fraternities.” First and foremost amongst these works of religion
must be reckoned the burial of the dead; regulations as to which are
invariably to be found in all the guild statutes. Then, very generally,
provisions for help to the poor, sick, and aged. In some, assistance
was to be given to those who were overtaken by misfortune, whose goods
had been damaged or destroyed by fire or flood, or had been diminished
by loss or robbery; in others, money was found as a loan to such as
needed temporary assistance. In the guild at Ludlow, in Shropshire, for
instance, “any good girl of the guild had a dowry provided for her if
her father was too poor to find one himself.” The “guild-merchant” of
Coventry kept a lodging-house with thirteen beds, “to lodge poor folk
coming through the land on pilgrimage or other work of charity,” with
a keeper of the house and a woman to wash the pilgrims’ feet. A guild
at York found beds and attendance for poor strangers, and the guild of
Holy Cross in Birmingham kept almshouses for the poor in the town. In
Hampshire, the guild of St. John at Winchester, which comprised men and
women of all sorts and conditions, supported a hospital for the poor
and infirm of the city.
The very mass of material at hand makes the task of selecting examples
for illustrating some of the objects for which mediæval guilds existed
somewhat difficult. I take a few such examples at haphazard. The
organisation of these societies was the same as that which has existed
in similar associations up to the time of our modern trades unions. A
meeting was held at which officers were elected and accounts audited;
fines for non-acceptance of office were frequently imposed, as well
as for absence from the common meeting. Often members had to declare
on oath that they would fulfil their voluntary obligations, and would
keep secret the affairs of the society. Persons of ill-repute were not
admitted, and members who disgraced the fraternity were expelled. For
example, the first guild statutes printed by Mr. Toulmin Smith are
those of Garlekhithe, London. They begin: “In worship of God Almighty
our Creator and His Mother Saint Mary, and all Saints, and St. James
the Apostle, a fraternity is begun by good men in the Church of St.
James, at Garlekhith in London, on the day of Saint James, the year of
our Lord 1375, for the amendment of their lives and of their souls, and
to nourish greater love between the brethren and sisters of the said
brotherhood.” Each of them has sworn on the Book to perform the points
underwritten.
“First: all those that are, or shall be, in the said brotherhood
shall be of good life, condition, and behaviour, and shall love God
and Holy Church and their neighbours, as Holy Church commands.” Then,
after various provisions as to meetings and payments to be made to
the general funds, the statutes order that “if any of the foresaid
brethren fall into such distress that he hath nothing, and cannot,
on account of old age or sickness, help himself, if he has been in
the brotherhood seven years, and during that time has performed all
duties, he shall have every week after from the common box fourteen
pence (_i.e._ about £1 a week of our money) for the rest of his life,
unless he recovers from his distress.”[337] In one form or other
this provision for the assistance of needy members is repeated in
the statutes of almost every guild. Some provide for help in case of
distress coming “through any chance, through fire or water, thieves or
sickness, or any other haps.” Some, besides granting this kind of aid,
add: “and if so befall that he be young enough to work, and he fall
into distress, so that he have nothing of his own to help himself with,
then the brethren shall help him, each with a portion as he pleases in
the way of charity.”[338] Others furnish loans from the common fund to
enable brethren to tide over temporary difficulties: “and if the case
falleth that any of the brotherhood have need to borrow a certain sum
of silver, he (can) go to the keepers of the box and take what he hath
need of, so that the sum be not so large that any one may not be helped
as well as another, and that he leave a sufficient pledge, or else
find a sufficient security among the brotherhood.”[339] Some, again,
make the contributions to poor brethren a personal obligation on the
members, such as a farthing a week from each of the brotherhood, unless
the distress has been caused by individual folly or waste. Others
extend their Christian charity to relieve distress beyond the circle
of the brotherhood--that is, of all “whosoever falls into distress,
poverty, lameness, blindness, sent by the grace of God to them, even
if he be a thief proven, he shall have seven pence a week from the
brothers and sisters to assist him in his need.”[340] Some of the
guilds in seaside districts provide for help in case of “loss through
the sea,” and there is little doubt that in mediæval days the great
work carried on by such a body as the Royal Lifeboat Society would
have been considered a work of religion, and the fitting object of a
religious guild.
It would be tedious to multiply examples of the purposes and scope of
the old fraternities, and it is sufficient to repeat that there was
hardly any kind of social service which in some form or other was not
provided for by these voluntary associations. As an illustration of the
working of a trade or craft guild, we may take that of the “Pinners” of
the city of London, the register of which, dating from A.D. 1464, is
now in the British Museum.[341] These are some of the chief articles
approved for the guild by the Mayor and Corporation of the city of
London: (1) No foreigner to be allowed to keep a shop for the sale of
pins. (2) No foreigner to take to the making of pins without undergoing
previous examinations and receiving the approval of the guild officers.
(3) No master to receive another master’s workman. (4) If a servant
or workman who has served his master faithfully fall sick he shall be
kept by the craft. (5) Power to the craft to expel those who do ill and
bring discredit upon it. (6) Work at the craft at nights, on Saturdays,
and on the eves of feasts is strictly prohibited. (7) Sunday closing is
rigidly enforced.
It is curious to find, four hundred years ago, so many of the
principles set down as established, for which in our days trades unions
and similar societies are now contending. It has been remarked above,
that even in the case of craft guilds, such as this Society of Pinners
undoubtedly was, many of the ordinary purposes of the religious guilds
were looked to equally with the more obvious object of protecting the
special trade or handicraft of the specific society. The accounts of
this Pinners’ Guild fully bear out this view. For example: We have
the funeral services for departed brethren, and the usual _trentals_,
or thirty masses, for deceased members. Then we find: “4d. to the wax
chandlers’ man for setting up of our lights at St. James.” One of the
members, William Clarke, borrowed 5s. 10d. from the common chest, to
secure which he placed a gold ring in pledge. There are also numerous
payments for singers at the services held on the feast days of the
guild, and for banners and other hangings for processions.
Of payments for the specific ends of the guild there are, of course,
plenty of examples. For instance: spurious pins and “other ware”
are searched for and burnt by the craft officers, and this at such
distances from London as Salisbury and the fair at Stourbridge, near
Cambridge, the great market for East Anglia and the centre of the
Flanders trade. “William Mitchell is paid 8d. for pins for the sisters,
on Saint James’ day.” In 1466, a man is fined 2s. for setting a child
to work before he had been fully apprenticed; and also another had to
pay 2s. for working after seven o’clock on a winter night. Later on in
the accounts we have a man mulcted for keeping a shop before he was
a “freeman” of the society, and another “for that he sold Flaundres
pynnes for English pynnes.” At another time, a large consignment of no
less than 12,000 “pynnes of ware” were forfeited to the craft, and
sold by them for 8s., which went to the common fund. These accounts
show also the gradual rise in importance and prosperity which the
Pinners’ Guild, under the patronage of St. James, manifested. At
first, the warden and brethren at their yearly visit to Westminster
were content to hire an ordinary barge upon the Thames, but after a
few years they had started “a keverid boote” of their own at the cost
of half-a-crown, in place of the sixpence formerly paid. So, too, in
the early days of their incorporation they had their annual dinner
and audited their accounts at some London tavern--the “Mayremayde in
Bread Street” and “the brew house atte the Sygne of the Rose in Old
Jury” are two of the places named. Later on they met in some hall
belonging to another guild, such as the “Armourers’” Hall, and later
still they built their own Guild Hall and held their banquet there.
This building made a great demand upon their capital, and the officers
evidently began to look more carefully after the exaction of fines.
For late working at this time one of the brethren was mulcted in the
sum of twenty pence; another was fined twopence for coming late to the
guild mass, and several others had to pay for neglecting to attend the
meeting. From the period of starting their own hall, ill-fortune seems
to have attended the society. About the year 1499, they got involved in
a great lawsuit with one Thomas Hill, upon which was expended a large
sum of money. A special whip was made to meet expenses and keep up
the credit of the guild; for what with counsel’s fees, the writing of
bills, and the drawing of pleas, the general fund was unable to find
the necessary munitions of war to continue the suit. To the credit of
the members, most of them apparently responded generously to this call,
and, in consequence of this unfortunate litigation, to many subsequent
demands which the empty exchequer necessitated.
There would be no difficulty whatever in multiplying the foregoing
illustrations of the working of these mediæval societies. The actual
account books of course furnish us with the most accurate knowledge,
even to minute details, and any one of them would afford ample material.
The funds at the disposal of the guilds were derived chiefly from
voluntary subscriptions, entrance fees, gifts, and legacies of members.
Frequently these societies became in process of time the trustees
of lands and houses which they either held and administered for the
purposes of the guilds, or for some specific purpose determined by the
will of the original donor. Thus, to take one or two examples from the
account rolls of the Guild of Tailors in the city of Winchester. In the
time of King Richard II.--say 1392--the usual entrance fee for members
was 3s. 4d., and the annual subscription was 1s. There were 106 members
at that time, seven of whom had been enrolled during the previous year.
Among others who had thus entered was one Thomas Warener, or Warner, a
cousin of Bishop William of Wykeham, and the Bishop’s bailiff of the
Soke; his payment was 4s. 8d. instead of the usual entrance fee. In
the same year we find the names of Thomas Hampton, lord of the manor
of Stoke Charity, and Thomas Marleburgh, who was afterwards Mayor of
Winchester. In the following year, seventeen new members were enrolled,
one of them being a baker of Southampton, called Dunster. Turning over
these accounts, we come upon examples of presents either in kind or
money made to the society. Thus in one place Thomas Marleburgh makes a
present of a hooded garment which was subsequently sold for eighteen
pence; and in another, one Maurice John Cantelaw presented for the
service of the guild, “a chalice and twelve pence in counted money,”
requesting the members “to pray for his good estate, for the souls of
his parents, friends, benefactors, and others for whom he was bound to
pray.” In return for this valuable present, the guild granted that it
should be accounted as Cantelaw’s life-subscription.
Having spoken of the sources of income, which were practically the
same in all guilds, something must be said as to the expenditure
over and above the purposes for which the guilds existed. This may
be illustrated from the accounts of this same fraternity of tailors
of Winchester.[342] In the first place, as in almost every similar
society, provision was made for the funerals of members and for the
usual daily mass for thirty days after the death of the deceased
members. The sum set down is 2s. 6d. for each trental of thirty masses.
Then we find mention of alms to the poor and sick; thus in 1403, the
sum of 36s., about one-tenth of the annual revenue, was spent upon this
object. This, of course, was charity of a general kind, and wholly
unconnected with the assistance given by rule to necessitous members of
the guild.[343]
One expense, very common in these mediæval guilds, was the preparation
for taking a fitting part in the great annual religious pageant or
procession on Corpus Christi day. In the case of this Tailors’ Guild
at Winchester, we find sums of money charged for making wax torches
and ornamenting them with flowers and red and blue wax, with card
shields and parchment streamers, or “pencils,” as they are called. The
members of the guild apparently carried small tapers; but the four
great torches were borne by hired men, who received a shilling each for
their trouble. It is somewhat difficult for us nowadays to understand
the importance attached to these great ecclesiastical pageants by our
ancestors four hundred years or so ago. But as to the fact, there
can be no doubt. Among the documents in the municipal archives of
Winchester there exists an order of the Mayor and Corporation as to
the disposition of this solemn procession in 1435. It runs thus: “At
a convocation holden in the city of Winchester the Friday next after
the Feast of Corpus Christi in the thirteenth year of the reign of King
Harry the Sixth, after the conquest; it was ordained by Richard Salter,
mayor of the city of Winchester, John Symer and Harry Putt, bailiffs of
the city aforesaid, and also by all the citizens and commonalty of the
same city: It is agreed of a certain general procession on the Feast of
Corpus Christi, of divers artificers and crafts within the said city:
that is to say the carpenters and felters shall go together first;
smiths and barbers, second; cooks and butchers, third; shoemakers with
two lights, fourth; tanners and japanners, fifth; plumers and silkmen,
sixth; fishers and farriers, seventh; taverners, eighth; weavers,
with two lights, ninth; fullers, with two lights, tenth; dyers, with
two lights, eleventh; chaundlers and brewers, twelfth; mercers, with
two lights, thirteenth; the wives with one light and John Blake with
another light, fourteenth; and all these lights shall be borne orderly
before the said procession before the priests of the city. And the four
lights of the brethren of St. John’s shall be borne about the Body of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the same day in the procession aforesaid.”
The brethren of St. John’s just named, as the chief object of their
association, kept a hospital for the poor and sick in the city. They
paid a chaplain of their own, as indeed did most of the guilds, and
had a master and matron to look after the comfort of the poor. They
provided bed and bedding, and carefully administered not only their
own subscriptions, but the sums of money freely bequeathed to them
to be spent on charity. At every market held within the precincts of
Winchester an officer, paid by the society, attended and claimed for
the support of the poor a tax of two handfuls of corn from every sack
exposed for sale. The mayor and bailiffs were apparently the official
custodians of this guild, and numerous legacies in wills, even in the
reign of Henry VIII., attest its popularity. For example, on February
19, 1503, John Cornishe, alias Putte, late Mayor of Winchester, died
and left to the guardians his tenements and gardens under the penthouse
in the city for the charity, on condition that for ten years they would
spend 6s. 8d. in keeping his annual obit. In 1520, a draper of London,
named Calley, bequeathed ten shillings to the hospital for annually
repairing and improving the bedding of the poor. The accounts of this
Fraternity of St. John’s Hospital for a considerable period in the
fourteenth century are still in existence. They show large receipts,
sometimes amounting to over £100, from lands, shops, houses, and
from the sale of cattle and farm produce, over and above the annual
subscriptions of members. On the other side, week by week we have the
payments for food provided for the service of the poor: fish, flesh,
beer, and bread are the chief items. One year, for instance, the bread
bought for the sick amounted to 36s. 6d.; beer to 36s. 8d.; meat to
32s. 2d.; fish to 28s. 3½d., &c. Besides this seven shillings were
expended in mustard, and 3s. 6d. for six gallons of oil. This same year
the guardians also paid 2s. 2d. for the clothes and shoes for a young
woman named Sibil “who nursed the poor in the hospital.” The above
represents only the actual money expended over the sick patients, and
from the same source, most minute and curious information might be
added as to the other expenses of the house, including, for instance,
even the purchase of grave-clothes and coffins for the dead poor,
the wages and clothing of the matron and servant, and the payment of
the officer who collected the handfuls of corn in the market-place.
At times we have evidence of the arrival and care of strange poor
people--we should perhaps call them “tramps” in our day. For instance,
here is one heading: “The expenses of three poor strangers in the
hospital for 21 days and nights, 15¾d.; to each of whom is given ¾d.
_Item_: the expenses of one other for 5 days, 3¾d. _Item_: the expenses
of the burial of the said sick person, 3d. _Item_: the expenses of four
pilgrims lodged for a night, 2d. _Item_: new straw to stuff the beds of
the sick, 8d. _Item_: paid to the laundress for washing the clothes of
the sick during one year, 12d.”
To speak of guilds without making any mention of the feasts--the social
meetings--which are invariably associated with such societies, would be
impossible. The great banquets of the city companies are proverbial,
and, in origin at least, they arose out of the guild meeting for the
election of officers, followed by the guild feast. As a rule, these
meetings took place on the day on which the Church celebrated the
memory of the Saint who had been chosen as patron of the society, and
were probably much like the club dinners which are still cherished
features of village life in many parts of England.[344]
It has been said that the wardens of guilds were frequently named in
mediæval wills as trustees of money for various charitable purposes.
As an example of property thus left to a guild, take the Candlemas
Guild, established at Bury St. Edmunds: the society was established
in the year 1471, and a few years later one of the members made over
to the brethren considerable property for the common purposes of the
guild and other specified objects. His name was John Smith, a merchant
of Bury, and he died, we are told, on “St. Peter’s even at Midsummer,
1481.” His will, which is witnessed by the Abbot and Prior of St.
Edmund’s Abbey, provides, in the first place, for the keeping of an
obit “devoutly.” The residue of the income was to accumulate till
the appointment of each new abbot, when, on the election, the entire
amount was to be paid over to the elect in place of the sum of money
the town was bound to pay on every such occasion. Whatever remained
over and above this was to be devoted to the payments of any tenth,
fifteenth, or other tax, imposed upon the citizens by royal authority.
This revenue was to be administered by the guardians of the guild, who
were bound at the yearly meeting at Candlemas to render an account of
their stewardship. Year by year John Smith’s will was read out at the
meeting, and proclamation was made before the anniversary of his death
in the following manner: “Let us all of charity pray for the soul of
John. We put you in remembrance that you shall not miss the keeping of
his _Dirge_ and also of his Mass.” Round about the town the crier was
sent to recite the following lines:--
“We put you in remembrance all that the oath have made,
To come to the Mass and the _Dirge_ the souls for to glade:
All the inhabitants of this town are bound to do the same,
To pray for the souls of John and Anne, else they be to blame:
The which John afore-rehearsed to this town hath been full kind,
Three hundred marks for this town hath paid, no penny unpaid behind.
Now we have informed you of John Smith’s will in writing as it is,
And for the great gifts that he hath given, God bring his soul to
bliss. Amen.”[345]
The example set by this donor to the Candlemas Guild at Bury was
followed by many others in the later part of the fifteenth century. For
instance, a “gentlewoman,” as she calls herself, one Margaret Odom,
after providing by will for the usual obit and for a lamp to burn
before “the holie sacrament in St. James’s Church,” desires that the
brethren of the guild shall devote the residue of the income arising
from certain houses and lands she has conveyed to their keeping, to
paying a priest to “say mass in the chapel of the gaol before the
prisoners there, and giving them holy water and holy bread on all
Sundays, and to give to the prisoners of the long ward of the said gaol
every week seven faggots of wood from Hallowmass (November 1) to Easter
Day.”[346]
Intimately connected with the subject of the guilds is that of the
fairs, which formed so great a feature in mediæval commercial life,
and at which the craft guilds were represented. For the south of
England, the great fair held annually at Winchester became the centre
of our national commerce with France. The following account of it is
given in Mr. W. J. Ashley’s most interesting _Introduction to English
Economic History_: “A fair for three days on the eastern hill outside
Winchester was granted to the bishop by William II.; his immediate
successors granted extension of time, until by a charter of Henry II.
it was fixed at sixteen days, from 31st August to 15th September. On
the morning of 31st August ‘the justiciars of the pavilion of the
bishop’ proclaimed the fair on the hilltop, then rode on horseback
through the city proclaiming the opening of the fair. The keys of
the city and the weighing machine in the wool market were taken
possession of, and a special mayor and special bailiffs were appointed
to supersede the city officials during the fair time. The hilltop was
quickly covered with streets of wooden shops: in one, the merchants
from Flanders; in another, those of Caen or some other Norman town; in
another, the merchants from Bristol. Here were placed the goldsmiths in
a row, and there the drapers, &c., whilst around the whole was a wooden
palisade with guarded entrance, a precaution which did not always
prevent enterprising adventurers from escaping payment of the toll by
digging a way in for themselves under the wall.… In Winchester all
trade was compulsorily suspended, and within ‘a seven league circuit,’
guards being stationed at outlying posts, on bridges and other places
of passage, to see that the monopoly was not infringed. At Southampton
nothing was to be sold during the fair time but victuals, and even
the very craftsmen of Winchester were bound to transfer themselves
to the hill and there carry on their occupations during the fair.
There was a graduated scale of tolls and duties: all merchants of
London, Winchester, or Wallingford who entered during the first week
were free from entrance tolls.… In every fair there was a _court of
pie-powder_ (of dusty feet) in which was decided by merchant law all
cases of dispute that might arise, the ordinary jurisdiction being
for a time suspended in the town; at Winchester this was called the
Pavilion Court. Hither the bishop’s servants brought all the weights
and measures to be tested; here the justices determined on an assize,
or fixed scale, for bread, wine, beer, and other victuals, adjudging
to the pillory any baker whose bread was found to be of defective
weight; and here every day disputes between merchants as to debts were
decided by juries upon production and comparison of the notched wooden
tallies.”[347]
A few words must be said about the final destruction of the English
guilds. At the close of the reign of Henry VIII. an act of Parliament
was passed vesting the property of colleges, chantries, fraternities,
brotherhoods and guilds in the Crown (38 Hen. VIII., c. 4). The king
was empowered to send out his commissioners to take possession of all
such property, on the plea that it might be “used and exercised to
more godly and virtuous purposes.” Henry died before the provisions of
the act could be complied with, and a second act was passed through
the first Parliament in the reign of Edward VI. (1 Ed. VI., c. 14).
This went beyond the former decree of destruction, for after providing
for the demolition of colleges, free chapels, and chantries, it
proceeded not only separately by name to grant to the king all sums of
money devoted “by any manner of corporations, guilds, fraternities,
companies or fellowships or mysteries or crafts,” to the support of a
priest, obits or lights (which may be taken under colour of religion),
but to hand over to the crown “all fraternities, brotherhoods and
guilds, being within the realm of England and Wales and other the
king’s dominions, and all manors, lands, tenements, and other
hereditaments belonging to them, other than such corporations, guilds,
fraternities, &c., and the manors, lands, &c., pertaining to the said
corporations, &c., above mentioned.”
The Parliament of Henry VIII. assigned as a reason for this seizure of
the property of the corporate bodies the need “for the maintenance of
these present wars,” and cleverly put into one group “colleges, free
chapels, chantries, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, and guilds.”
“The act of Edward VI.,” writes Mr. Toulmin Smith, “was still more
ingenious, for it held up the dogma of purgatory to abhorrence, and
began to hint at grammar schools. The object of both acts was the same.
All the possessions of all the guilds (except what could creep out as
being mere trading guilds, which saved the London guilds) became vested
by these two acts in the Crown; and the unprincipled courtiers who had
advised and helped the scheme gorged themselves out of this wholesale
plunder of what was, in every sense, public property.”[348]
It is clear that in seizing the property of the guilds the Crown
destroyed far more than it gained for itself. A very large proportion
of their revenues was derived from the entrance fees and the annual
subscriptions of the existing members, and in putting an end to these
societies the State swept away the organisation by which these
voluntary subscriptions were raised, and this not in one or two places,
but all over England. In this way far more harm was in reality done to
the interests of the poor, sick, and aged, and, indeed, to the body
politic at large, than the mere seizure of their comparatively little
capital, whether in land or money.
It is not, of course, meant to imply that the injury to the poor and
sick was not fully recognised at the time of these legal confiscations.
People deeply resented the idea that what generations of benefactors
had intended for the relief of distress should thus be made to pass
into the pocket of some “new” man who had grown great upon the spoils.
The literature of the period affords abundant evidence of the popular
feeling. Crowley, for instance, wrote about 1550--just at this very
time--and although no one would look for any accurate description of
facts in his rhyming satires, he may be taken as a reliable witness as
to what the people were saying. This is what he writes on the point:--
“A merchant, that long time
Had been in strange lands
Returned to his country,
Which in Europe stands.
And in his return
His way lay to pass
By a spittle house not far from
Where his dwelling-house was.
He looked for this hospital,
But none could he see,
For a lordly house was built
Where the hospital should be.
‘Good Lord!’ (said the merchant),
‘Is my country so wealthy
That the very beggars’ houses
Are built so gorgeously?’
Then by the wayside
Him chanced to see
A poor man that craved
Of him for charity.
‘Why’ (quoth the merchant),
‘What meaneth this thing?
Do ye beg by the way,
And have a house for a king?’
‘Alas! sir’ (quoth the poor man),
‘We are all turned out,
And lie and die in corners
Here and there about.’”
It has frequently been asserted that although grave injury was
undoubtedly done to the poor of the land by this wholesale
confiscation, it was done unwittingly by the authorities, or that, at
the worst, the portions of revenue derived from the property which had
been intended for the support of the sick, aged, &c., was so bound up
with those to which religious obligations (now declared superstitious
and illegal) were attached, that it was impossible to distinguish the
latter from the former, and all perished together, or rather passed
undistinguished into the royal pocket. Such a view is not borne
out by facts, and however satisfactory it might be to believe that
this robbery of the poor and sick by the Crown was accidental and
unpremeditated, the historian is bound by the evidence to hold that the
pillage was fully premeditated and deliberately and consciously carried
out. It is of course obvious, that some may regard it as proper that
funds given for the support of priests to say masses or offer prayers
for the souls of the departed should have been confiscated, although
it would have been better had the money been devoted to some purpose
of local utility rather than that it should have been added to the
Crown revenues or have gone to enrich some royal favourite. For example
it may, for the sake of argument, be admitted that the two fields at
Petersfield in Hampshire thus taken by the royal commissioners--one
called _White field_, in the tenure of Gregory Hill, the rent of which
was intended to keep a perpetual light burning in the parish church,
and the other held by John Mill, given to support a priest “called
the Morrow Masse priest” (_i.e._ the priest employed to say the early
morning mass for the convenience of people going to work)--were under
the circumstances fair articles of plunder for the royal officials,
when the mass was prohibited and the doctrine symbolised by the
perpetual light declared superstitious. But this will not apply to the
money intended for the poor. It might have been easy to justify the
Crown’s action in taking the priest’s portion, and even the little
pittance intended for the serving clerk, but the seizure of the
benefactions to the poor cannot be defended. It was not accidental;
for an examination of the original documents relating to the guilds
and chantries now in the Record Office will show not only that the
Royal Commissioners were as a rule careful to distinguish between
the portions intended for religious purposes and those set aside
for perpetual charity to the sick and poor, but in many cases they
actually proposed to the Court of Augmentation to protect the latter
and preserve them for the objects of Christian charity intended by the
original donors. In every such case the document reveals the fact that
this suggestion in the interest of common justice was rejected by the
ultimate Crown officials, and a plain intimation is afforded on the
face of the documents that even those sums intended by the original
donors for the relief of poverty were to be confiscated.
The destruction of the guilds is, from any point of view, a sad and
humiliating story, and, perhaps fortunately, history has so far
permitted the thick veil of obscurity drawn over the subject at the
time to remain practically undisturbed. A consideration of the scope
and purposes of English mediæval guilds cannot but raise our opinion
of the wisdom of our forefathers who fostered their growth, and
convince us that many and useful ends were served by these voluntary
societies. This opinion we can hold, wholly apart from any views we may
entertain about the religious aspects of these societies generally.
Socialistic they were, but their socialism, so far from being adverse
to religion, as the socialism of to-day is generally considered to be,
was transfused and directed by a deeply religious spirit, carried out
into the duties of life, and manifesting itself in practical charities
of every kind.
One or two points suggested by consideration of the working of mediæval
guilds may be emphasized. The system of these voluntary societies
would be, of course, altogether impossible and out of place in this
modern world of ours. They would not, and could not, meet the wants
and needs of these days; and yet their working is quite worth studying
by those who are interested in the social problems which nowadays are
thrusting themselves upon the public notice and demanding a solution.
The general lessons taught by these voluntary associations may be
summed up under one or two heads suggested by Mr. Ashley’s volume
already referred to: (1) It is obvious that, unlike what we find to-day
in the commercial enterprises of the world, capital played but a very
small part in the handicrafts of those times; skill, perseverance, and
connection were more important. (2) The middle ages had no knowledge
of any class of what may be called permanent wage-labourers. There
was no working-class in our modern sense: if by that is meant a class
the greater portion of which never rises. In the fourteenth century,
a few years of steady work as a journeyman meant, in most cases, that
a workman was able to set up as a master craftsman. Every hardworking
apprentice expected as a matter of course to be able to become in time
a master. The collisions between capital and labour to which we are
so much accustomed had no place in the middle ages. (3) There was no
such gulf between master and man as exists in our days. The master and
his journeyman worked together side by side, in the same shop, at the
same work, and the man could earn fully half as much as his master.
(4) If we desire to institute a comparison between the status of the
working-classes in the fourteenth century and to-day, the comparison
must be between the workman we know and the old master craftsman. The
shop-keeping class and the middle-man were only just beginning to
exist. The consumer and producer stood in close relation, and public
control was exercised fully, as the craft guilds were subject to the
supervision and direction of the municipal or central authority of the
cities in which they existed.