THE CRAFT GUILDS AND TRADERS’ INNS
Of the writing of books about the mediæval guilds there seems to be no
end, and each new contribution serves to mystify rather than to throw
light on the difficulties of the subject. From the earliest times, it was
an inherent tendency of the Teutonic races to combine and form guilds.
There were guilds for the building of bridges, for the relief of poor
pilgrims, and for almost every imaginable purpose, ranging from the
organisation of a municipality to the Saxon “frith-gild,” which undertook
the punishment of thieves and the exacting of compensation for homicides.
As to the craft guilds of the Middle Ages, some are content to regard them
as trade unions, others as similar to our modern clubs, and a third class
of writers assert that they were purely religious. As a matter of fact,
they were capable of becoming all three in turn.
No doubt the original motive of these guilds was to create a monopoly and
artificial control over the particular trade, and also to obtain that
security which only an organised association is able to give against
tyranny and corruption. They comprised all ranks, wage-earners,
manufacturers, and merchants. The weakness of such a body was that there
was no community of interests as regards the internal economy of the
industry. That is to say, the merchants and masters would not be induced
to improve the position of their apprentices or to raise the wages of
journeymen. The only common ground would lie in attempts to assert the
interests of the trade at large against the whole body of consumers, or
against competing trades.
On the other hand, the Corporation itself was originally a guild which had
succeeded in obtaining a charter and thus becoming the administrative
authority. It would regard with anxiety the creation of other bodies which
might follow in its footsteps and become very dangerous rivals. Charters,
indeed, were in the twelfth century being bought from the King, which
rendered fraternities dependent for their existence on the royal will
alone. The weavers of London lived in a quarter by themselves, with their
own courts and raised their own taxes, suffering no intrusion from the
City officials. Only by an expensive process of boycotting was this abuse
brought to an end. When once the municipalities perceived their danger,
they proceeded ruthlessly to reduce the craft guilds into subjection and
to limit the purposes for which they were permitted to combine.
And this brings us to the second period in the history of the craft
guilds, when we find each trade forming itself into an association to
provide a burial fund for its deceased members, masses for the repose of
their souls, and to organise a solemn procession and miracle play on the
annual festival. Behind the religious association the union for trade
purposes remained. When the secular powers of the craft guild were more
clearly defined, in the fifteenth century, under the style of a company,
the observance of the mystery was often allowed to fall into desuetude.
The Companies became mere trustees of the endowments belonging to the
religious guilds and treated with equanimity the abolition of these trusts
at the Reformation.
In the third period the craft guilds as Companies became a useful adjunct
of the Corporation, protecting the community from overcharges, settling
disputes in the trade, and generally forming courts of reference on
technical matters. The City companies of to-day, though not under any
compulsion to do so, still occasionally render service of a kindred
nature. The work of the Plumbers’ Company, a few years ago, in arranging
for the examination and registration of plumbers will be called to mind;
the Apothecaries’ Company has also done good service. Out of the guilds of
the Holy Trinity at Hull and at Deptford has grown the Corporation of
Trinity House, that wealthy philanthropic body that builds lighthouses,
licenses pilots, and ministers in various ways to the welfare of our
merchant shipping.
At Headcorn and Cranbrook, in the Weald of Kent, and again at Lavenham and
Sudbury, in Suffolk, may be seen many beautiful examples of the halls of
the craft guilds now derelict and converted to less noble purposes. Part
of the _King’s Head_ at Aylesbury is supposed by experts to have been
anciently a Guildhall. We shall refer more fully to this building in
another chapter.
We have seen that the guilds afforded very few advantages to the
wage-earners, and according to the natural tendency of all such bodies,
they ended in becoming aristocratic and exclusive. They were for a long
period masters of the labour of the country, preventing any attempts at
strikes, and securing that all disputes as to the rate of pay should be
settled by the arbitration of their own warden. Vainly the serving-men of
the Saddlers strove to form a guild of their own on the harmless pattern
of a religious body with their own festival at Our Lady of
Stratford-le-Bow. It was complained of them that in thirteen years their
hire had more than doubled the ordinary rate, and their meetings were
ruthlessly repressed. The May-Day festival of the Journeymen Shearers in
Shrewsbury was suppressed for a similar reason.[7]
Only one refuge remained for the oppressed workmen--the inn, which for
centuries was to be the place where he could hold these more or less
illegal meetings with his comrades. In the houses of call for artisans,
the workers discussed their grievances, hatched conspiracies and strikes,
or devised less drastic methods for the betterment of their condition. At
Kidderminster there is an inn called _The Holy Blaise_, after the patron
of weavers; another, _Bishop Blaise_, exists in the heart of the City of
London in New Inn Yard. The _Boar’s Head_, by the way, was a commonly
accepted emblem of St. Blaise. Many _St. Crispins_ or _Jolly Crispins_
survive to represent the shoemaker. St. Hugh was another patron of the
shoe trade, and there was once a _St. Hugh’s Bones_ in Clare Market.
_Simon the Tanner_ is an old house in Long Lane, Bermondsey. A later age
absurdly re-named inns frequented by the labouring class as _The Weavers’
Arms_, _Carpenters’ Arms_, _Bricklayers’ Arms_, etc., etc. These inns, a
common occurrence in every large town, are often of old foundation, and
incidentally commemorate the fact that in the public-house it was that the
wage-earners first learnt the art of combination for their own betterment.
Here the earliest trade unions found a welcome and a home, with which many
of their successors are still content. The club room at the inn was the
cradle of the Friendly Societies. The Freemasons have given name to a
whole series of taverns. All the numerous and generally well managed
benefit Societies on the pattern of the Foresters, Hearts of Oak and
Oddfellows owe their very existence to the public-house.
[Illustration: Bricklayers’ Arms, Caxton]
It was anciently the custom for workmen to be paid at the nearest inn, and
out of this, during the bad period at the beginning of the nineteenth
century grew a very serious abuse. Those to whom was entrusted the duty of
engaging and paying various forms of precarious and unskilled labour, such
as coal whippers and porters, found it profitable to become owners of
public-houses where the unfortunate men were kept waiting for a job which
was generally awarded to the individual whose score was the largest. When
the men returned from their work they were expected to spend a
considerable portion of their earnings for the good of the house. The
Truck Act of 1843 put an end to this heartless scandal.
[Illustration: Golden Fleece, South Weald]
The _Woolpack_ and _Fleece_ were, of course, the signs of inns frequented
by the merchants who came to buy wool. At Guildford all the alehouses were
at one time required to exhibit a Woolpack as a token of the leading
commodity in the town. There is a very fine old _Golden Fleece Inn_ at
South Weald in Essex, broad-fronted and roomy, Jacobean in style, but
fallen sadly from its old estate since the coach traffic ceased on the
Ipswich road.
The _Three Kings_ was anciently the sign of the mercers, because in the
Middle Ages linen thread materials brought from Cologne had the highest
reputation, and were probably stamped either with the figures of the three
wise men, or with three crowns. But the _Three Crowns_ are asserted to be
more commonly emblematic of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and
Ireland. The _Golden Ball_ was another mercers’ sign, from the arms of
Constantinople, which was formerly the centre of the silk trade. The
_Elephant and Castle_ was the crest of the Cutlers’ Company. However, the
_Elephant and Castle_, at the corner of Newington Causeway, has a quite
different origin. The skeleton of an elephant was discovered while digging
a gravel-pit near this spot in 1714. Elephants in mediæval heraldry were
invariably represented as carrying a solidly-built castle, a traveller’s
exaggeration of the Indian palanquin. The _Lion and Castle_ indicated a
dealer in Spanish wines, because sherry casks were stamped with the brand
of the Spanish arms.
Foresters resorted for company to the _Green Man_, and the survival of
many old taverns of that name reminds us that there were numerous forests
in the neighbourhood of London. The Northwood, or Norwood, extended from
near the _Green Man_ at Dulwich to Croydon, where there is another _Green
Man Inn_. The _Green Man_ at Leytonstone stands on the verge of Epping
Forest. Wherever a painted sign exists on one of these houses it generally
represents either an archer or a forester clad in Lincoln green.
The _Two Brewers_ does not denote that the ale of the two rival tradesmen
is on sale, but the manner in which beer was anciently carried about
before the invention of brewers’ drays. Two porters are shown bearing the
precious barrel slung between them on a pole.
Last of all to be mentioned among the inns which remind us of disappearing
occupations are those found usually where the ancient green ways join the
main roads to London. The drover and his herd of tired wild-eyed cattle is
no longer a feature on the roadside. It is cheaper and more convenient to
send oxen to market by cattle-train. But the long green lanes, touching
here and there a market town, extend through the Eastern and Midland
counties, right up to the North of England. Lonely and deserted,
practicable only by the pedestrian or the rider of a sure-footed pony,
scarcely ever used except by the county officials, whose duty it is to
maintain the right of way, they remain as an ideal hunting ground for the
naturalist. When the explorer, tired and hungry after many miles of rough
journeying, finds shelter at the _Drover’s Call_, _Butcher’s Arms_, or
_Jolly Drovers_, the purpose of these old half-forgotten by-roads is made
clear to him, and he can meditate during his hour of rest on the changes
which fifty years have made in the methods of transport.