convenient to try and suppress it.1 But it did not receive the public recognition of a charter till the fourteenth century. They arose, of course, first in the towns, and originally seem to have consisted of a small body of the leading men of a particular craft, to whom was confided the regulation of a particular industry, probably as soon as that industry was thought of sufficient importance to be regulated. In the fifteenth century they became so universal that every trade which occupied as many as twenty men in a town had a gild of its own.2 The gild tried to secure good work on the part of its members, and attempted to suppress the production of wares by irresponsible persons who were not members of the craft.1 Their fundamental principle was, that a member should work not only for his own private advantage but for the reputation and good of his trade— "for the honour of the good folks of such misteries." 5 Hence bad work was punished, and it is curious to note that night-work was prohibited as leading to poor work." The gild also took care to secure a supply of competent workmen for the future (and at the same time to restrain competition) by training a limited number of young people in its particular industry. Hence arose the system of each "master" having apprentices; and though in earlier times it does not seem to have been necessary that a person must pass through an apprenticeship before being admitted a member of a craft or mistery, in later days this rule was rigidly enforced. The gild, moreover, exercised some kind of moral control over its members, and secured their good behaviour, thus forming an effective branch of the social police. On the other hand, it had many of the characteristics of a benefit society, providing against sickness and death among those belonging to it, as indeed all gilds did." At the end of the fourteenth century it is noticeable that 5 See the Royal Order of Edward III., quoted by Bain, Merchant and Craft Gilds, p. 40. 6 Cunningham, i. 7 Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. ii. p. 84. 8 Ochenkowski, England's Wirthschaftl. Entwickelung, p. 66. 9 Rogers, Six Centuries, pp. 110, 347. or the custom was growing of erecting special "houses" "halls" for the gilds, these buildings being duly provided with the social and religious appurtenances of kitchen, chapel, and often also almshouses.1 3 These institutions, however, did not apparently only belong to the towns, but were found in country districts also; thus we hear of the carpenters' and masons' rural gilds in the reign of Edward III.2 Even the peasant labourers, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, possessed these associations, which in all cases served many of the functions of the modern trade unions. Later on (1381) we shall come to a very remarkable instance of the power of these peasants' unions in the matter of Tyler's rebellion. § 56. Life in the Towns of this time. The inhabitants of the towns were of all classes of society. There was the noble who held the castle, or the abbot and monks in the monastery, with their retainers and personal dependants; there were the busy merchants, active both in the management of their trade and of civic affairs; and there were artisans and master workmen in different crafts. There were free tenants, or tenants in socage, including all the burgesses, or burgage-tenants, as they were called; and there was the lower class of villeins, who, however, always tended to rise into free men as they were admitted into the gilds. To and fro went our forefathers in the quiet, quaint, narrow streets, or worked at some handicraft in their houses, or exposed their goods round the market cross. And in those old streets and houses, in the town-mead and marketplace, as a picturesque historian says, amid the murmur of the mill beside the stream, and the notes of the bell that sounded its summons to the crowded assembly of the townmote, in merchant-gild and craft-gild was growing up that 4 1 Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. ii. 82. It is also worth noting, as illustrating the close connection between the gilds and municipal life, that at Nottingham the Town Hall is still called the "Guild Hall." 2 This may be inferred from Rogers, ut supra, pp. 236 and 237. 3 Ib., p. 252. See also his Econ. Interpret. of History, p. 306, on Village Guilds. 4 Green, History, i. 212. sturdy industrial life, unheeded and unnoticed by knight or baron, that silently and surely was building up the slow structure of England's wealth and freedom. This life was fostered by the idea of unity which possessed the townspeople of that day quite as much as it does those of our own time; and this unity was promoted not only by the gilds but by the possession of town property in common by the townsmen,1 in the shape of those common fields and pastures that were the relics of the time when the town was merely a village settlement.2 In later times we find the townsmen undertaking common enterprises, such as the proper provision of corn or water for the citizens.3 The decay of municipal life, however, begins to date from the sixteenth century (or about that period), when commerce and trade were becoming more and more national and less local in character, and consequently national regulations of a more far-reaching character were required. But, long before municipal or even gild life began to decay, it had done a very important work. It had caused a radical change in social and political relationships, by its recognition of persons as standing for themselves and not tied to the land or depending on a superior lord. The association of persons as persons had taken the place of the feudal association which was based only on land. Land was now no longer the basis of everything: a new social and economic force had appeared, and slowly but surely feudalism began to give way before it. 1 Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. i. 36. 2 Above, p. 86, and cf. p. 48. More frequently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ashley, ut supra, p. 36. * Cf. Maurer, Städteverfassung, iii. 725. G CHAPTER VII MANUFACTURES AND TRADE: ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES § 57. Economic Effects of the Feudal System. WE shall find that, for some time after the Norman Conquest, English industry does not develope very rapidly, and that for obvious reasons. The feud that existed between Norman and Saxon-although, perhaps, partially allayed by Henry I.'s marriage to an English wife and the social disorder that accompanied this feeling, hardly tended to that quiet and security that are necessary for a healthy industrial life. The frightful disorders that occurred during the fierce struggle for the kingdom between Stephen of Blois and the Empress Maud, and the equally frightful ravages and extortions of their contending barons, must have been serious drawbacks to any progress. As the old annalist remarks-"They fought among themselves with deadly hatred; they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all the provision of bread."2 But this terrible struggle fortunately ended in ruining many of the barons who took part in it, and in the desirable destruction of most of their abodes of plunder. The accession of Henry II. (1154) marks a period of amalgamation between Englishmen and Normans, not only in social life, but in commercial traffic and intercourse.3 But even when we come to look at the feudal system in a time of peace, we see that it did not tend to any great growth of industry. It certainly gave, under a strong ruler (but only then) some security for person and pro 1 The reign of Henry I., however, was on the whole peaceful. "He was a good man, and great was the awe of him: he made peace for man and deer."-English Chron. (Bohn), 1135. 2 Quoted by Green, History, i. 155. * Cunningham, i. 131. 3 Green, History, i. 161. perty, but it encouraged rather than diminished that spirit of isolation and self-sufficiency which was so marked a feature of the earlier manors and townships. In these communities, again, little scope was afforded to individual enterprise, from the fact that the consent of the lord of a manor or town was often necessary for the most ordinary purposes of industrial life.2 It is true, as we have seen, that when the noble owner was in pecuniary difficulties the towns profited thereby to obtain their charters; and perhaps we may not find it altogether a matter for regret that the barons, through their internecine struggles, thus unwittingly helped on the industry of the land. may be admitted also, that though the isolation of communities consequent upon the prevalent manorial system did not encourage trade and traffic between separate communities, it yet tended to diffuse a knowledge of domestic manufactures throughout the land generally, because each place had largely to provide for itself. It The constant taxation, however, entailed by the feudal system, in the shape of tallages, aids, and fines, both to king and nobles, made it difficult for the lower classes to accumulate capital, more especially as in the civil wars they were constantly plundered of it openly. The upper classes merely squandered it in fighting. Agriculture suffered similarly, for the villeins, however well off, were bound to the land, especially in the earlier period soon after the Conquest, and before commutation of services for money rents became so common as it did subsequently; nor could they leave their manor 5 without incurring a distinct loss, both of social status, and, what is more important, of the means of livelihood. The systems of constant services to the lord of the manor. and of the collective methods of cultivation, were also drawbacks to good agriculture. Again, in trade, prices 1 Rogers, Econ. Interp. History, p. 283. 2 Cf. the Court Leet Records of Manchester (pub. 1884), and Pearson, Hist. of England, i. 594. 3 On taxation, see Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. ch. xiii. pp. 576-586. 4 On the other hand this had its advantages as giving the agriculturist security of tenure (cf. Bracton, De Leg., ch. viii. f. 24b; Vol. I. p. 198-209 (ed. Twiss). 5 Excepton payment of a fine; cf. p. 151, below. 'Cunningham, i. 132. |