Part 1

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_.

The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.

A Paper ON CRAFT GILDS, READ BY THE REV. W. CUNNINGHAM, D.D.,

_At the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings._

There is, as I understand it, a double object in the work of this Society; it interests itself in the preservation of ancient buildings, partly because they are monuments which when once destroyed can never be replaced, and which bear record of the ages in which they were made and the men who reared them; and in this sense all that survives from the past, good and bad, coarse or refined, has an abiding value. But to some folks there seems to be a certain pedantry in gathering or studying things that are important merely because they are curiosities, a certain fancifulness in the frame of mind which concentrates attention on the errors of printers, or the sports of nature, or the rubbish of the past. And much which has been preserved from the past is little better than rubbish, as the poet felt when he wrote:

"Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of the present and future."

Still, the view Clough takes is very superficial; there is a real human interest about even the rubbish heaps of the past if we have knowledge enough to detect it; the dulness is in us who fail to recognise the interest which attaches to trifles from the past or to read the evidence they set before us.

But there is another reason why the vestiges of bygone days claim our interest--not as mere curiosities, but as in themselves beautiful objects, excellently designed and skilfully fashioned. There are numberless arts in which the men of the past were adepts; their skill as builders is patent to all, but specialists are quite as enthusiastic over the work that was done by mediæval craftsmen in other departments. Their wood-carving, and working in metals, the purity of their dyes, the beauty of their glass, these are things which move the admiration of competent critics in the present day. Machinery may produce more rapidly, more cheaply, more regular work, of more equal quality, and perhaps of higher finish, but it is work that has lost the delicacy and grace of objects that were shaped by human hands and bear the direct impress of human care, and taste, and fancy. We may be interested in the preservation of the relics of the past, not merely as curiosities from bygone ages, but as examples of beautiful workmanship and skilled manipulation to which the craftsmen of the present day cannot attain.

Most Englishmen--all those whose opinions are formed by the newspapers they read--are so proud of the vast progress that has been made in the present century, that they do not sufficiently attend to the curious fact that there are many arts that decay and are lost. In this country it appears that the art of glass-making was introduced more than once, and completely died out again; the same is probably true of cloth dressing and of dyeing. It seems to me a very curious problem to examine what were the causes which led to the disappearance of these particular industries. In each single case it is probably a very complicated problem to distinguish all the factors at work--what were the social or economic conditions that destroyed this or that useful art once introduced? But into such questions of detail I must not attempt to enter now. I wish to direct your attention to-day to a more general question, to an attempt to give a partial explanation, not of failure here and there, but of conspicuous success. In the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a very high degree of skill was attained, not in one art only, but in many. It is at least worth while to look a little more closely at one group of the conditions which influenced the work of the times, and examine the organisations which were formed for controlling the training of workmen, for supervising the manner in which they lived, and maintaining a high standard of quality in the goods produced. There is no need to idealise the times when they were formed, or the men who composed them; the very records of craft gilds show that the mediæval workman was quite capable of scamping his work and getting drunk when opportunity tempted him. But the fact remains that a very great deal of first-rate work was done in many crafts, for portions of it still survive, and I cannot but believe that some of the credit is due to the gilds which set themselves to rule each craft, so that the work turned out should be a credit to those who made it.

Herein, as it seems to me, lies the secret of the importance of the craft gilds during the period of their useful activity. They were managed on the principle that "honourable thing was convenable;" that honesty was the best policy; the good of the trade meant its high reputation for sound work at fair prices. It has got another meaning to our ears; a time when trade is good means a time when it is more possible than usual to sell any sort of goods at high prices, and the craft gilds in their later days were contaminated by this lower view of industry. The ancient anecdote of the Edinburgh glazier who was caught breaking the windows of peaceful inhabitants for "the good of the trade," may illustrate the modern sense of the phrase, while the conduct of the stalwart citizen who thrashed him within an inch of his life, and said at every blow "it's all for the good of the trade," was in closer accord with the disciplinary character of mediæval rules.

I trust I have said enough to justify my selection of this topic as one which is not unfitting the attention of this society; the subject is a very wide one, and I think the treatment may be somewhat less diffuse if I draw most of my illustrations from a single centre of industry, and speak chiefly of the craft gilds of Coventry. It is a town which I visited recently, and where, through the kindness of the Town Clerk and Mr. W. G. Fretton, the antiquary, I was able to make good use of the few hours I had to spend. It may be convenient too, to arrange the matter under the following heads:--

I. The introduction of craft gilds.

II. The objects and powers of mediæval craft gilds.

III. The resuscitation of craft gilds.

I. There is a certain amount of assumption in talking about the introduction of craft gilds, because it suggests the belief that they were not a native development. The word gild is, after all, a very vague term, much like our word association, and though we can prove the existence of many gilds before the Conquest,--at Cambridge and Exeter and elsewhere,--their laws contain nothing that would justify us in regarding them as craft gilds. It is much more probable, though Dr. Gross, the greatest living authority on the subject, speaks with considerable reserve, that the hall where the men of Winchester drank their own gild, or the land of the knights' gild at Canterbury, belonged to bodies which had some supervision over the trade of the town--in fact, were early gilds merchant. But I know of no hint in any of the records or histories of the period before the Norman Conquest, that can be adduced to show that there were any associations of craftsmen formed to control particular industries. The earliest information which we get about such groups of men comes from London, where, as we learn, Henry I. granted a charter to the Weavers. It is pretty clear that by this document some authority was given to the weavers to control the making of cloth (and it possibly involved conditions which affected the import of cloth). It is certain that there was a long continued struggle between the weavers' gild and the citizens, which came to a peaceful close in the time of Edward I. There were weavers' gilds also in a considerable number of other towns in the reign of Henry II.; Beverley, Marlborough, and Winchester may be mentioned in particular, as the ordinances of these towns have survived, and there are incidental references which seem to show that the weavers, and the subsidiary crafts of fullers and dyers had, even in the twelfth century, considerable powers of regulating their respective trades. The evidence becomes more striking if we are justified in connecting with it the cases of other towns, where we find that regulations had been enforced with regard to cloth, and that the townsmen were anxious to set these regulations aside, and buy or sell cloth of any width.

So far what we find is this; while we have no evidence of craft gilds before the Conquest, we find indications of a very large number of gilds among the weavers and the subsidiary callings shortly after that date. But there is a further point; so far as we can gather, weaving before the Conquest was a domestic art; we have no mention of weavers as craftsmen; the art was known, but it was practised as an employment for women in the house; but in the time of the Conqueror and of his sons there was a considerable immigration of Flemings, several of whom were particularly skilled in weaving woollen cloth; they settled in many towns in different parts of the country, and it seems not unnatural to conclude that weaving as an independent craft was introduced from the Continent soon after the Norman Conquest.

Institutions analogous to craft gilds appear to have existed in some of the towns of Northern France time out of mind, and some can apparently trace a more or less shadowy connection with the old Roman Collegia. Putting all these matters together, it appears that craft organisation first shows itself in England in connexion with a trade which was probably introduced from abroad; and it seems not impossible that the Continental artisans brought not only a knowledge of the art of weaving but certain habits of organisation with them.

Some sort of organisation was probably necessary for police and fiscal purposes if for none others. Town life was a curiously confused chaos of conflicting authority; in London each ward was an independent unit, in Chester and Norwich the intermingling of jurisdictions seems very puzzling. The newcomers were not always welcomed by the older ratepayers, and they might perhaps find it convenient to secure a measure of _status_ by obtaining a royal charter for their gild. Just as the Jews or the Hansards were in the city and yet not citizens, but had an independent footing, so to some extent were the weavers situated, and apparently for similar reasons; they seem to have had _status_ as weavers, which they held directly from the King, which marked them out from other townsmen, and which possibly delayed their complete amalgamation with the other inhabitants.

There is yet another feature about these weavers' gilds; the business in which they are engaged was one which was from an early time regulated by royal authority. King Richard I. issued an assize of cloth defining the length and breadth which should be manufactured.[1] The precise object of these regulations is not clear; they may have been made in the interests of the English consumer; they may have been made in the interest of the foreign purchaser, and the reputation of English goods abroad; they may have been framed in connexion with a protective policy, of which there are some signs. But amid much that is uncertain these three things seem pretty clear:--

[1] Richard of Hoveden, Rolls Series, iv. 33.

1. That there were no craft gilds before the Conquest.

2. That there were many craft gilds in connexion with the newly introduced weavers' craft in the twelfth century.

3. That they exercised their powers under royal authority in a craft which was the subject of royal regulation.

So far for weavers; I wish now to turn to another craft in which we hear of craft gilds very early--the Bakers. There is a curious parallelism between these two callings. In the first place baking was, on the whole, a domestic art before the Conquest, not a separate employment; in the next place, it was a matter of royal regulation; the King's bakers doubtless provided the Court supplies, and the gave their experience for the framing of the assize of bread, under Henry II. and under King John.[2] It may, I think, be said that in both of the trades in which gilds were first formed, there was felt to be a real need for regulation as to the quality of the goods sold to the public; and it also appears that this regulation was given under royal authority. So far the fact seems to me to be pretty clear; and it is at least more than probable that the form of association adopted--analogous as it was to associations already existing on the Continent--had come over in the train of the Conqueror. These few remarks may suffice in justification of the phrase the "introduction of craft gilds."

[2] Cambridge University Library, Mm i. 27.

II. In the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century there was a very rapid development of municipal life in England, and the burgesses in many towns obtained much larger powers of self-government than they had previously possessed. They became responsible for their own payments to the Exchequer, and they obtained larger rights for regulating their own affairs; the town of Coventry had indeed possessed very considerable municipal privileges from the time of Henry I., but it shared in the general progress a century later, and the new requirements were marked by new developments. I have tried to show how the earlier craft gilds were formed under royal authority, but as the powers of local self-government increased and were consolidated, there was no need, and there was, perhaps, less opportunity, for direct royal interference in matters of internal trade. We thus find a new order of craft gilds springing up--they were called into being, like the old ones, for the purpose of regulating trade--but they exercised their powers under municipal, and not under royal authority.

One craft gild of this type which still exists, and which is said to have been formed by the authority of the leet in the sixth year of King John, is the Bakers' Gild at Coventry; it still consists of men who actually get their living by this trade, for it does not appear to have received so many love brothers as to destroy the original character of the body; it still has its hall--or, at least, room--and chest where the records are kept. There are, probably not many other bodies in the kingdom that have so long a history, and that have altered so little from their original character during all those centuries. None of the other Coventry gilds, so far as I know, can at all compare with it. The weavers were a powerful body there in later times, but I doubt if there is any evidence of the existence of this and the allied trades in Coventry before the fourteenth century; we may, perhaps, guess that it was one of the places where this trade settled under Edward III. But, apart from the question of origin, the Bakers have a unique position. Of some half-dozen other crafts which still maintain a formal existence, none can trace their history back beyond the time of Edward III., their members have no interest in the craft which they were empowered to regulate, and a tin box in a solicitor's office is the only outward and visible sign of their existence. Such are the Walkers and Fullers, the Shearmen and Weavers, the Fellmongers, the Drapers, the Mercers, and the Clothiers. Of the Tanners I cannot speak so decidedly, as during a hurried visit to Coventry I had no opportunity of examining their books.

In looking more closely at the powers of mediæval craft gilds, it is necessary to distinguish a little; a craft gild was a gild which had authority to regulate some particular craft in a given area. I do not, therefore, want to dwell on the features which were common to all gilds, and which can be traced in full detail in the admirable volume edited by the late Mr. Toulmin Smith for the Early English Text Society. I desire to limit consideration to the powers that were special to craft gilds. Like other gilds they had a religious side, in some cases strongly developed, and the members engaged in common acts of worship, especially in common prayers and masses for departed brethren. Like other gilds they had the character of a friendly society, and gave loans to needy brethren, or bestowed alms on the poor. Like other gilds they had their feasts, when the brethren drank their gild, and they had hoods, or livery, which they wore at their assemblies. Like other gilds they took their share in civic festivities and provided pageants at considerable cost; but all these common bonds, important as they were in cementing men into a real fellowship, and in calling forth such different interests and activities among the members, were of a pious, social, or charitable character. There was no reason why such associations should not be multiplied on all sides; even when a gild consisted of men who followed the same craft it was not a craft gild. The case of the journeymen tailors in London who assembled at the Black Friars Church may be taken as conclusive on this point. A gild was not a craft gild unless duly empowered to regulate a particular craft; it might be called into existence for this purpose, or an existing gild might be empowered to exercise such functions, much as the brotherhood of S. Thomas à Becket was changed into the Mercers' Company. The important thing about a craft gild was that it had been empowered to exercise authority in a given area and over certain workmen, as the weavers' gilds had been empowered by charter from Henry I., and as the bakers were empowered by the Court Leet at Coventry, in the sixth year of King John.

Two points were specially kept in view in framing any set of regulations. They were, first, the quality of the goods supplied; and, second, the due training of men to execute their work properly--admirable objects certainly. The machinery which was organised for attaining these objects was also well devised; the men who were thoroughly skilled, and were masters in the craft, had the duty of training apprentices, and the wardens had the right of examining goods exposed for sale, and of making search in houses where the trade was being carried on--again, an excellent arrangement where it could be satisfactorily carried out. And on the whole it seems as if the scheme had worked well, for this simple reason--that while it was maintained, so much work of excellent design and quality was executed. I wish to lay stress on this, because the historian of craft gilds is apt to overlook it. When craft gilds appeared on the stage of history, it was because something was out of gearing, and the institution was working badly. One is apt to infer that since they worked badly whenever we hear of them, they also worked badly when we do not; but I am inclined to interpret the periods of silence differently, and to regard them as times when the organisations were wisely managed, and when the craft gilds enjoyed the proverbial happiness of those who have no history.

There were, however, three different dangers of disagreement, and possible quarrel:--(1) Between a craft gild on one hand and the municipal authorities on the other; (2) between one craft gild and another; (3) between different members of a craft gild.

1. It is obvious that the gilds, if they were to exercise any real authority, required to have _exclusive_ powers within a given district; it is also obvious that these exclusive powers might be misused, so as to be mischievous to the consumers of the goods; a craft gild might take advantage of its monopoly to the gain of the members and the impoverishing of the citizens. The feeling of the citizens would be that the goods supplied by the members of the gild were bad and were dear at the price. It was therefore of the first importance that the citizens should be, in the last resort, able to control the gild, and resume the privileges which their officers exercised. There is a well-known case, which is detailed in Mr. Toulmin Smith's book, which shows how the tailors of Exeter enjoyed a charter from the Crown, and how much trouble they gave to the local authorities under Edward IV.; but it was a matter of common complaint that in many places the gilds had charters from great men which exempted them from proper control.[3] Even in Coventry, where there does not appear to have been interference from without, it was necessary for the leet to keep a tight hand on the craft gilds. An ordinance of 8 Henry V. runs as follows:--"Also that no man of any craft make laws or other ordinance among them but it be overseen by the mayor and his council; and if it be reasonable ordinance and lawful it shall be affirmed, or else it shall be corrected by the mayor and his peers."[4] At a later date we have another entry of the same kind:--"Also that the mayor, warden, and bailiffs, taking to the mayor eight or twelve of the General Council, to come afore them the wardens of all the crafts of the city with their ordinances, touching their crafts and their articles, and the points that be lawful, good, and honest for the city be allowed them, all other thrown aside and had force none, and that they make new ordinances against the laws in oppression of the people, upon pain of imprisonment." In some other towns the craftsmen had to yield up their powers annually and receive them back again from the municipal authority; this was the case with the cordwainers at Exeter,[5] but the Coventry people did not insist on anything so strict.

[3] Rot. Parl., II. 331.

[4] Leet Book, £37.

[5] Toulmin Smith, "English Gilds," p. 332.

2. The difficulties between one craft gild and another might arise in various ways; as time went on or trade developed there was an increasing differentiation of employment, and it was not always clear whether the original gild had supervision over all branches of the trade. Thus in London the weavers' gild claimed to exercise supervision over the linen as well as over the woollen cloth manufactures, and this claim was insisted on on the ground that the two trades were quite distinct. In Coventry the worsted weavers, the linen weavers, and the silk weavers were one body, in later times at any rate, though the arts cannot be precisely similar. In other cases there was a question as to whether different processes involved in the production of one complete article should be reckoned as separate crafts or not. Thus the Fullers were organised in independence of the Shearmen in 1438; and during the fifteenth century the sub-division of gilds appears to have gone very rapidly at Coventry, as there were something like twenty-three of them at that time; at the same time from the repeated power which is given to the Fullers to form a fellowship of their own,[6] it appears that they were from time to time re-absorbed by the parent gild. Perhaps an even better illustration of the difficulty of defining the precise processes which certain gilds might supervise would be found in the history of the leather trades in London--Tanners, Cordwainers, Saddlers, and so forth. But enough may have been said to show how easy it was for disputes to arise between one or more craft gilds as to their respective powers.

[6] Leet Book, f. 400; May 3, 1547. Quoted by Mr. Fretton, Memorials of Fullers' Guild, page 11.

3. There were also disputes within the gilds between different members.