was generally a gentleman. That good old antiquary, Stow, to whom we owe
so much, not only gives an account of all the monuments in the city
churches, with the inscriptions and verses which were graven upon them,
but he also describes the shields of all those who were
_armigeri_--entitled to carry arms. Remember that a shield was not a
thing which could in those days be assumed at pleasure. The Heralds made
visitations of the counties, and examined into the pretensions of every
man who bore a coat of arms. You were either entitled to a coat of arms
or you were not. To parade a shield without a proper title was much as
if a man should in these days pretend to be an Earl or a Baronet. If one
wants a shield it is only necessary now to invent one; or the Heralds'
College will with great readiness connect a man with some knightly
family and so confer a title: formerly the Herald could only invent or
find a coat of arms by order of the Sovereign, the Fountain of Honor. By
granting a shield, let us remember, the king admitted another family
into the first rank of gentlehood. For instance, when the news of
Captain Cook's death reached England, King George III. granted a coat of
arms to his family, who were thereby promoted to the first stage of
nobility. This, however, seems to have been the last occasion of such a
grant.
What do we find, then? This very remarkable fact. The churches are full
of monuments to dead citizens who are _armigeri_. Take two churches at
hazard. The first is St. Leonard's, Milk Street. Here were buried, among
others, John Johnson, citizen and butcher, died 1282, his coat of arms
displayed upon his tomb; also, with his family shield, Richard Ruyener,
citizen and fish-monger, died 1361. The second church is St. Peter's,
Cornhill. Here the following monuments have their shields: that of
Thomas Lorimer, citizen and mercer; of Thomas Born, citizen and draper;
of Henry Acle, citizen and grocer; of Henry Palmer, citizen and
_pannarius_; of Henry Aubertner, citizen and tailor; and of Timothy
Westrow, citizen and grocer. In short, I do not say that the retail
traders were of knightly family, but that the great merchants, the
mercers, adventurers, and leaders of the Companies were gentlemen by
descent, and admitted to their close society only their own friends,
cousins, and sons.
The residence and yearly influx of the Barons and their followers into
London not only, as we have seen, kept the city in touch with the
country, and prevented it from becoming a mere centre of trade, but it
also kept the country in touch with the City. The livery of the great
Lords compared their own lot, at best an honorable servitude, with that
of the free and independent merchants who had no over-lord but the King,
and were themselves as rich as any of the greatest Barons in the
country. They saw among them many from their own country, lads whom they
remembered in the hunting-field, or playing in the garden before the
timbered old house in the country, of gentle birth and breeding; once,
like themselves, poor younger sons, now rich and of great respect. When
they went home they talked of this, and fired the blood of the boys, so
that while some stayed at home and some put on the livery of a Baron,
others went up to London and served their time. So that, when we assign
a city origin to the families of Coventry, Leigh, Ducie, Pole, Bouverie,
Boleyn, Legge, Capel, Osborne, Craven, and Ward, it would be well to
inquire, if possible, to what stock belonged the original citizen, the
founder of each. Trade in the fourteenth century, and long afterwards,
did not degrade a gentleman. That idea was of an earlier and of a later
date. It became a law during the last century, when the county families
began to grow rich and the value of land increased. It is fast
disappearing again, and the city is once more receiving the sons of
noble and gentle. The change should be welcomed as helping to destroy
the German notions of caste and class and the hereditary superiority of
the ennobled House.
As for the political power of London under the Plantagenets, it will be
sufficient to refer to Froissart. "The English," says the chronicler,
unkindly, "are the worst people in the world, the most obstinate, and
the most presumptuous, and of all England the Londoners are the leaders;
for, to say the truth, they are very powerful in men and in wealth. In
the city and neighborhood there are 25,000 men, completely armed from
head to foot, and full 30,000 archers. This is a great force, and they
are bold and courageous, and the more blood is spilled the greater is
their courage." The deposition of King Edward II. and that of King
Richard II. illustrate at once the "presumption and obstinacy" and the
power of the citizens. Later on, the depositions of Charles I. and of
James II. were also largely assisted by these presumptuous citizens.
The first case, that of Edward II., is thus summed up by Froissart:
When the Londoners perceived King Edward so besotted with the
Despencers, they provided a remedy, by sending secretly to Queen
Isabella information, that if she would collect a body of 300 armed
men, and land with them in England, she would find the citizens of
London and the majority of the nobles and commonalty ready to join
her and place her on the throne. The Queen found a friend in Sir
John of Hainault, Lord of Beaumont and Chimay, and brother to Count
William of Hainault, who undertook, through affection and pity, to
carry her and her son back to England. He exerted himself so much in
her service with knights and squires, that he collected a body of
400 and landed them in England, to the great comfort of the
Londoners. The citizens joined them, for, without their assistance,
they would never have accomplished the enterprise. King Edward was
made prisoner at Bristol, and carried to Berkeley Castle, where he
died. His advisers were all put to death with much cruelty, and the
same day King Edward III. was crowned King of England in the Palace
of Westminster.
When, in the case of Richard II., the time of expostulation had passed,
and that for armed resistance or passive submission had arrived, the
Londoners remembered their action in the reign of Edward II., and
perceived that if they did not move they would be all ruined and
destroyed. They therefore resolved upon bringing over from France,
Henry, Earl of Derby, and entreated the Archbishop of Canterbury to go
over secretly and invite him, promising the whole strength of London for
his service. As we know, Henry accepted and came over. On his landing he
sent a special messenger to ride post haste to London with the news. The
journey was performed in less than twenty-four hours. The Lord Mayor
sent the news about in all directions, and the Londoners prepared to
give their future king a right joyous welcome. They poured out along the
roads to meet him, and all men, women, and children clad in their best
clothes. "The Mayor of London rode by the side of the Earl, and said,
'See, my Lord, how much the people are rejoiced at your arrival.' As
the Earl advanced, he bowed his head to the right and left, and noticed
all comers with kindness.... The whole town was so rejoiced at the
Earl's return that every shop was shut and no more work done than if it
had been Easter Day."
The army which Henry led to the west was an army of Londoners, twelve
thousand strong. It was to the Tower of London that the fallen King was
brought; and it was in the Guildhall that the articles drawn up against
the King were publicly read; and it was in Cheapside that the four
knights, Richard's principal advisers, were beheaded. At the Coronation
feast the King sat at the first table, having with him the two
archbishops and seventeen bishops. At the second table sat the five
great peers of England. At the third were the principal citizens of
London; below them sat the knights. The place assigned to the city is
significant. But London had not yet done enough for Henry of Lancaster.
The Earls of Huntingdon and Salisbury attempted a rebellion against him.
Said the Mayor, "Sire, we have made you king, and king you shall be."
And King he remained.
It was in this fourteenth century that the city experienced the most
important change in the whole history of her constitution, more
important than the substitution of the Mayor and Aldermen for the
port-reeve and sheriff, though that was nothing less than the passage
from the feudal county to the civic community. The new thing was the
formation of the city companies, which incorporated each trade formally,
and gave the fullest powers to the governing body over wages, hours of
labor, output, and everything which concerned the welfare of each
craft.
There had been many attempts made at combination. Men at all times have
been sensible of the advantages of combining; at all times and in every
trade there is the same difficulty, that of persuading everybody to
forego an apparent present advantage for a certain benefit in the
future; there are always black-legs, yet the cause of combination
advances.
The history of the city companies is that of combination so successfully
carried out that it became part of the constitution and government of
the city; but, which was not foreseen at the outset, combination in the
interests of the masters, not of the men.
The trades had long formed associations which they called guilds. These,
for some appearance of independence, began to arouse suspicion. Kings
have never regarded any combination of their subjects with approbation.
The guilds were ostensibly religious; they had each a patron saint--St.
Martin, for instance, protected the saddlers; St. Anthony, the
grocers--and they held an annual festival on their saint's day. But they
must be licensed; eighteen such guilds were fined for establishing
themselves without a license. Those which were licensed paid for the
privilege. The most important of them was the Guild of Weavers, which
was authorized by Henry II. to regulate the trades of cloth-workers,
drapers, tailors, and all the various crafts and "mysteries" that belong
to clothes. This guild became so powerful that it threatened to rival in
authority the governing body. It was therefore suppressed by King John,
the different trades afterwards combining separately to form their own
companies.
We are not writing a history of London, otherwise the rise and growth
of the City companies would form a most interesting chapter. It has been
done in a brief and convenient form by Loftie, in his little book on
London (_Historic Towns Series_). Very curious and suggestive reading it
is. At the period with which we are now concerned, the end of the
fourteenth century, the companies were rapidly forming and presenting
regulations for the approval and license of the Mayor and Aldermen. By
the year 1363 there were thirty-two companies already formed whose laws
and regulations had received the approbation of the King. Let us take
those of the Company of Glovers. They are briefly as follows:
(1) None but a freeman of the City shall make or sell gloves.
(2) No glover shall be admitted to the freedom of the City unless with
the assent of the Wardens of the trade.
(3) No one shall entice away the servant of another.
(4) If a servant in the trade shall make away with his master's chattels
to the value of twelvepence, the Wardens shall make good the loss; and
if the servant refuse to be adjudged upon by the Wardens, he shall be
taken before the Mayor and Aldermen.
(5) No one shall sell his goods by candlelight.
(6) Any false work found shall be taken before the Mayor and Aldermen by
the Wardens.
(7) All things touching the trade within the City between those who are
not freemen shall be forfeited.
(8) Journeymen shall be paid their present rate of wages.
(9) Persons who entice away journeymen glovers to make gloves in their
own houses shall be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.
(10) Any one of the trade who refuses to obey these regulations shall be
brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.
Observe, upon these laws, first, that the fourth simply transfers the
master's right to chastise his servant to the governing body of the
company. This seems to put the craftsmen in a better position. Here,
apparently, is combination carried to the fullest. All the glovers in
the City unite; no one shall make or sell gloves except their own
members; the company shall order the rate of wages and the admission of
apprentices; no glover shall work for private persons, or for any one,
except by order of the company. Here is absolute protection of trade and
absolute command of trade. Unfortunately, the Wardens and court were not
the craftsmen, but the masters. Therefore the regulations of trade were
very quickly found to serve the enrichment of the masters and the
repression of the craftsmen. And if the latter formed "covins" or
conspiracies for the improvement of wages, they very soon found out that
such associations were put down with the firmest hand. To be brought
before the Mayor and Aldermen meant, unless submission was made and
accepted, expulsion from the City. So long as the conditions of the time
allowed, the companies created a Paradise for the master. The workman
was suppressed; he could not combine; he could not live except on the
terms imposed by his company: if he rebelled he was thrust out of the
City gates. The jurisdiction of the City, however, ceased at the walls;
when a greater London began to grow outside Cripplegate, Bishopsgate,
and Aldgate, and on the reclaimed marshes of Westminster and along the
river-bank, craftsmen not of any company could settle down and work as
they please. But they had to find a market, which might be impossible
except within the City, where they were not admitted. Therefore the
companies, as active guardians and jealous promoters of their trades,
fulfilled their original purposes a long while, and enabled many
generations of masters to grow rich upon the work of their servants.
Every company was governed by its Wardens. The Warden had great powers;
he proved the quality, weight, or length of the goods exposed for sale;
the members were bound to obey the Warden; to prevent bad blood, every
man called upon to serve his time as Warden had to undertake the office.
The Warden also looked after the poor of the craft, assisted the old and
infirm, the widows and the orphans. He had also to watch over the
fraternity, to take care that there should be no underselling, no
infringement of the rate of wage, no overreaching of one by the other.
He was, in short, to maintain the common interest of the trade. It was a
despotism, but, on the whole, a benevolent despotism. The Englishman was
not yet ready for popular rule; doubtless the jealousies of the
sovereign were allayed by the discovery that the association of a trade
was a potent engine for the maintenance of order and the repression of
the turbulent craftsman. How turbulent they could be was proved by the
troubles which arose in the reign of Henry III.
The great companies were always separate and distinct from the smaller
companies. For a long time the Mayor was exclusively elected from the
former. Even at the present day, unless the Mayor belongs to one of the
great companies, he labors under certain disadvantages. He cannot, for
instance, become President of the Irish Society.
By the end of the fourteenth century, then--to sum up--the government of
London was practically complete and almost in its present form. The
Mayor, become an officer of the highest importance, was elected every
year; the Sheriffs every year; the Aldermen and the Common Councilmen
were elected by wards. The Mayor was chosen from the great companies,
which comprised all the merchant venturers, importers, exporters, men
who had correspondence over the seas, masters, and employers. Every
craft had its own regulations; no one could trade in the City who did
not belong to a company; no one could work in the City, or even make
anything to be sold, who did not belong to a company. Wages were ordered
by the companies; working-men had no appeal from the ruling of the
Warden. From time to time there were attempts made by the craftsmen to
make combinations for themselves. These attempts were sternly and
swiftly put down. No trades-unions were suffered to be formed; nay, even
within the memory of living man trades-unions were treated as illegal
associations. The craftsman, as a political factor, disappears from
history with the creation of the companies. In earlier times we hear his
voice in the folkmote; we see him tossing his cap and shouting for
William Longbeard. But when Whittington sits on the Lord Mayor's chair
he is silenced. And he remains silent until, by a renewal of those
covins and conspiracies which Whittington put down so sternly, he has
become a greater power in the land than ever he was before. Even yet,
however, and with all the lessons that he has learned, his power of
combination is imperfect, his aims are narrow, and his grasp of his own
power is feeble and restricted.
For my own part, I confess that this repression, this silencing of the
craftsman in the fourteenth century, seems to me to have been necessary
for the growth and prosperity of the City. For the craftsman was then
incredibly ignorant; he knew nothing except his own craft; as for his
country, the conditions of the time, the outer world, he knew nothing at
all; he might talk to the sailors who lay about the quays between
voyages, but they could tell him nothing that would help him in his
trade; he could not read, he could not inquire, because he knew not what
question to ask or what information he wanted; he had no principles; he
was naturally ready, for his own present advantages, to sacrifice the
whole world; he believed all he was told. Had the London working-man
acquired such a share in the government of his city as he now has in the
government of his country, the result would have been a battle-field of
discordant and ever-varying factions, ruled and led each in turn by a
short-lived demagogue.
It was, in short, a most happy circumstance for London that the
government of the City fell into the hands of an oligarchy, and still
more happy that the oligarchs themselves were under the rule of a
jealous and a watchful sovereign.
So far it was well. It would have been better had the governing body
recognized the law that they must be always enlarging their borders.
Then they would have begun in earnest the education of the people. We,
who have only taken this work in hand for twenty years, may not throw
stones. The voice of the educated craftsman should have been heard long
ago. Then we might have been spared many oppressions, many foolish wars,
many cruelties. But from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century the
craftsman is silent. Nay, in every generation he grows more silent, less
able to say what he wants; more inarticulate, more angry and
discontented, and more powerless to make his wants heard until he
reaches the lowest depth ever arrived at by Englishmen; and that, I
think, was about a hundred years ago.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Especially Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_.
V
PLANTAGENET
III. THE PEOPLE
Through broad Chepeside rode the great lord--haply the King
himself--followed by his regiment of knights, gentlemen, and
men-at-arms, all wearing his livery. The Abbot, with his following,
passed along on his way to Westminster in stately procession. The
Alderman, in fur gown and gold chain, with his officers, walked through
the market inspecting weights and measures and the goods exposed for
sale. Priests and friars crowded the narrow ways. To north and south, in
sheds which served for shops, the prentices stood bawling their wares.
This was the outward and visible side of the City. There was another
side--the City of the London craftsman.
[Illustration: OLD CHARING CROSS]
Who was he--the craftsman? Whence did he come? London has always opened
her hospitable arms to foreigners. They still come to the City and
settle, enjoying its freedom, and in the next generation are pure
English. In the days of Edward the Confessor the men of Rouen and of
Flanders became citizens with rights equal to the English. Later on, the
names of the people show their origin and the places whence they or
their forefathers had come. Then William Waleys is William the Welchman;
Walter Norris is Walter of Norway; John Francis is John the Frenchman;
Henry Upton is Henry of that town; William Sevenoke, Lord Mayor of
London, took his name from the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent, where he
was born. The first surnames were bestowed not only with reference to
the place of birth, but partly to trades, partly to the place of
residence, partly to personal defects or peculiarities. But it is
obvious from the earliest names on record how readily London received
strangers from any quarter of western Europe, Norway, Denmark, Flanders,
Lorraine, Picardy, Normandy, Guyenne, Spain, Provence, and Italy. It is
noteworthy in studying the names, first, that, as was to be expected,
there is not in the fourteenth century a single trace of British or
Roman-British name, either Christian or surname, just as there was not
in the Saxon occupation a single trace of Roman customs or institutions;
next, that the Saxon names have all vanished. There are no longer any
Wilfreds, Ælfgars, Eadberhts, Sigeberts, Harolds, or Eadgars among the
Christian names. They have given place to the Norman names of John,
Henry, William, and the like. The London craftsman was therefore a
compound of many races. The dominant strain was Saxon--East Saxon; then
came Norman, then Fleming, and then a slight infusion of every nation of
Western Europe.
In the narrow lanes leading north and south of the two great streets of
Thames and Chepe the craftsmen of London lived in their tenements, each
consisting of a room below and a room above. Some of them followed their
trade at home, some worked in shops. There were those who sold and those
who made. Of the former, the mercers and haberdashers kept their shops
in West Chepe; the goldsmiths in Guthrun's Lane and Old Change; the
pepperers and grocers in Soper's Lane; the drapers in Lombard Street and
Cornhill; the skinners in St. Mary Axe; the fish-mongers in Thames
Street; the iron-mongers in Ironmongers' Lane and Old Jewry; the
vintners in the Vintry; the butchers in East Chepe, St. Nicolas
Shambles, and the Stocks Market; the hosiers in Hosiers' Lane; the
shoemakers and curriers in Cordwainer Street; the paternoster-sellers in
Paternoster Row; patten-sellers by St. Margaret Pattens; and so forth.
It is easy, with the help of Stow, and with the names of the streets
before one, to map out the chief market-places and the shops. It is not
so easy to lay down the places where those dwelt who carried on
handicrafts. Stow indicates here and there a few facts. The Founders of
candlesticks, chafing-dishes, and spice mortars carried on their work in
Lothbury; the coal-men and wood-mongers were found about Billingsgate
stairs; since the Flemish weavers met in the church-yard of Lawrence
Pountney, they lived presumably in that parish. For the same reason the
Brabant weavers probably lived in St. Mary Somerset parish. The furriers
worked in Walbrook; the curriers opposite London Wall; upholsterers or
undertakers on Cornhill; cutlers worked in Pope's Head Alley;
basket-makers, wire-drawers, and "other foreigners" in Blond Chapel, or
Blanch Appletone Lane. In Mincing Lane dwelt the men of Genoa and other
parts who brought wine to the port of London in their galleys. The
turners of beads for prayers lived in Paternoster Row; the bowyers in
Bowyer Row; other crafts there are which may be assigned to their
original streets. Sometimes, but not always, the site of a company's
hall marks the quarter chiefly inhabited by that trade. Certainly the
vintners belonged to the Vintry, where is now their hall, and the
weavers to Chepe, where they still have their hall. When, however, the
management of a trade or craft passed into the hands of a company, there
was no longer any reason, except where men had to work together, why
they should live together. Since there could be no combined action by
the men, but, on the contrary, blind obedience to the Warden, they might
as well live in whatever part of the City should be the most convenient.
From the absence of great houses, whether of nobles or princes, in the
north of the City, one is inclined to believe that great numbers of
craftsmen lived in that part, namely, between what is now called Gresham
Street and London Wall.