Life in a Mediaeval City Part 3

It was at York that Henry VI. awaited the news of the result of the battle of Towton. Edward IV. entered York as victor after the battle.

York, like other cities at the time, took care to maintain the good graces of both sets of combatants. Although through the Wars of the Roses national parliamentary government ultimately broke down and gave way to the strong personal kingship of Henry VII., the towns, which actually suffered little, increased their local powers. Civic government developed much and trade flourished during the century.

York had a good friend in Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The city was very loyal to him and helped him by raising troops in his support.

When he visited York he was received with immense festivity and magnificence. The Mayor and Corporation in their correspondence with him addressed him as "our full tender and especial good lord." They had to thank him "for his great labour now late made unto ye king's good grace for the confirmation of the liberties of this city." But for his death at Bosworth, York would have benefited greatly by his munificence.

Henry VII. was in York in 1487. After Bosworth (1485) the city had a.s.sured him of its loyalty. The marriage of Henry of Richmond, who represented the House of Lancaster, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. Duke of York, fittingly followed the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses. With Henry VII.'s reign a new era began in English history.

Throughout the century the city could not avoid contact with rival parties and powers. In spite, however, of rebellions and the Wars of the Roses, the capital of the north managed generally to steer a safe course through many storms.

Other links with national affairs were the periodic visits of the King's judges who travelled on circuit over the country, stopping at important centres to hold a.s.size there. Their duties consisted not only in settling matters of litigation, but also in reviewing the way in which all the King's affairs were being conducted in each locality.

They supervised the work of the sheriffs.

Galtres Forest and the Fish Pond, both royal property, helped to furnish the king's table with food. From the royal Larder at York such foodstuffs as venison, game, and fish were despatched salted to wherever the King required them.

C. BUSINESS LIFE

Business, in one form or another, was the occupation of the majority of the citizens. There were a few capitalist merchants, many traders, and thousands of employed workpeople, skilled and unskilled. Such street names as Spurriergate, Fishergate, Girdlergate, Hosier Lane, and Colliergate would suggest that men in the same trade had their premises in the same quarter, possibly in the same street.

The English middle cla.s.s, which had taken form in the fourteenth century, was well established in the fifteenth century, when it became so important as to be an appreciable factor in the national life. The middle cla.s.s arose through currency, the use of money to bring in more money by trading. Trade became the monopoly of the middle cla.s.s, the successful master-traders. It was men of this cla.s.s, the capitalist employers, the merchants and traders who were the mayors and aldermen, who ruled the city. The exclusiveness, which was eminently characteristic of this cla.s.s, appeared especially in their att.i.tude towards national taxation and in that towards trade organisations.

With regard to taxation the towns persistently avoided the a.s.sessment of individual traders, who did not wish to disclose the amount of their wealth, by agreeing that the whole town should pay to the Exchequer a sum to be raised by the Mayor and Corporation. The middle cla.s.s achieved its aims politically by transformation from within.

Instead of making a direct a.s.sertive attack, these master-traders usually so developed their own interests within the established inst.i.tutions (such as the guilds) that they ultimately gained their object quietly and shrewdly. This cla.s.s established itself against the King and the n.o.bles on the one hand, and during the century in effective fashion against the workers on the other. This appears in the more definite distinctions of cla.s.s among the citizens that arose.

The masters had got the control of the guilds into their own power.

While maintaining the original outward appearance of the guilds as societies of men affected by the same interests in daily life, the employers had actually become a powerful vested cla.s.s that ruled both city and guild life. In the fifteenth century the workmen were founding fraternities of their own.

Memory of the Jews, the money-dealers of other times, survived if only from the harrowing stories of the various persecutions that had taken place all over England, and not least in York. The Jews had been expelled from the country by Edward I., with the encouragement of the Church, in 1290, partly for economic, partly for religious reasons.

Their supplanters, the Italian bankers, whom Edward favoured, soon acquired from their trading an unpopularity equal to that of the Jews as traders. The rise of the middle cla.s.s had coincided with the release of money in coin from the h.o.a.rds of the Jews, and from the coffers of the Knights Templars, whose order was abolished in 1312.

The merchant and trading cla.s.s, apart from the n.o.bility and the Church, formed the bulk of the people of the nation. They were the solid part of the nation, that paid taxes, that supplied clerks, monks, and priests, that liberally supported the Church, that kept the nation progressive and solvent by commercial undertakings.

The professions, as we use the term to-day, had not as yet attained sufficient importance for them to form a distinct cla.s.s division.

There were a few capable physicians, but generally the practice of medicine was shared by the Church and the barber-surgeons. Priests and officers of the Church had the privilege peculiar to the Church by which even a poor but intellectually capable man could rise to high office and become the social equal of n.o.bles. Architecture was practised by master-masons under the patronage of leading ecclesiastics and n.o.bles. Teaching was nearly all the work of the Church. The lawyers, however, were already to be distinguished from those who gained profit by dealing in goods, for they made profit from transactions on paper, from managing the interests of others, from trading in their own acute mental powers.

The wool trade was by far the most extensive and flourishing trade of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was the trade that made England great commercially. Wool was England's raw material and the source of most of her wealth. The numerous monasteries had huge sheep-farms. Edward III. had encouraged foreign clothworkers to settle in England (in York, as in other places). The first York craftsmen to be incorporated were the weavers, who received a charter from Henry II., in return for which they paid a tax to the King for the customs and liberties he granted them. The weavers were the largest and wealthiest body of traders.

Guilds had developed from societies of masters and men engaged in the same trade, to the trade-guilds, which in the fourteenth century were trade corporations, the lower ranks of members being the workers, the higher ranks, including the office-holders, the richer merchants, the capitalist employers. The ruling committees of the trade-guilds made regulations and generally governed their particular trades. Despite the power of the guilds the munic.i.p.al authority maintained its supremacy in civic government because it enforced the ordinances of the trades. Moreover, disputes between the guilds themselves gave the city authority opportunities of increasing its power, of which it availed itself.

The system of serfdom, by which serfs were bound to a particular domain and owned by their overlord, had not yet ceased. Nearly all the workmen of York, however, were freemen, _i.e._ they had full and complete citizenship. The members of the councils of aldermen and councillors, the mayors and city officials, the members of the trade-guilds, were all freemen.

In the fifteenth century the wealthy and important employers and traders governed the guilds. They were in the position and had the power to regulate the conduct in every way of their own trades. Thus, rules were laid down as to the terms of admission of men to the practice of a trade; the government of the guild and the meetings of the members and ruling committees; the moral standard of the members in their work and trafficking; the payments of masters to workers; the prices of goods to be sold to the public or other traders; the rates of fines and the amount of confiscations inflicted on those who broke the rules of their guild; the terms on which strangers, English and foreign, were to be allowed to pursue their trade in the city; whether Sunday trading was to be permitted or not; the duties of the searchers; everything incident to the share of the guild in the city's production of pageant plays.

The question of the terms of the residence and trading of strangers received constant consideration. The city had, in many respects, complete local autonomy and rules were made with regard to strangers who came to carry on their trades in the city. From 1459 aliens had, by munic.i.p.al law, to live in one place only, at the sign of the Bull in Coney Street, unless they received special permission from the Mayor to reside elsewhere. The guilds were ruled by masters and wardens. They had their various officials. The searchers were officers appointed to observe that the rules of the trade were being carried out properly. They took care that only authorised members pursued the trade of the guild of which they were the officers. They vigilantly watched the conduct of the members, and it was their duty to take action in case of infringement of the rules and to bring offenders before the Mayor in his court.

The wealthy trading cla.s.s all over the country did great and lasting work in founding grammar schools and building or rebuilding cathedrals and churches or parts of them. There was a social side to the guilds.

This appeared in the public processions and the performances of plays, the morality and mystery plays of mediaeval England. There was also a strong religious side to the guilds. The processions and plays were fundamentally religious. The Church's festivals were recognised as holidays. Much money was given and bequeathed for the foundation of chantries, which with their priests have their place also in the educational life of the city.

The merchants lived well. They were rich from trade, and through the corporate guilds governed their own trades both legislatively and executively; the highest offices in civic life were theirs; they lived in houses as splendid as they cared to have them; they furnished their homes with quant.i.ties of silver plate, both for use and for ornament, for this was the most suitable outlet for superfluous wealth in days when modern facilities for investment did not exist; they wore clothes of fine material, richly trimmed; they were honoured citizens; they were earnest in religion and their benevolence to the Church is very remarkable. They were forming a lesser aristocracy now that they were becoming owners of agricultural land as well as town property. They had the benefits of wealth and comfort, while they were shrewd enough to avoid the penalties of advertised riches. A typical instance of a successful merchant who rose to high positions was that of Sir Richard Yorke, who was Mayor of the staple of Calais and Lord Mayor of York in 1469 and 1482, and member of Parliament. A window in St. John's Church, Micklegate, in commemoration of him is still to be seen. A shield bearing his arms (azure, saltire argent) appears in the gla.s.s; another bears the arms of the Merchants of the Wool staple of Calais.

He was knighted by Henry VII. when that king was in York in 1487.

Masters took apprentices, who themselves generally became masters in their turn. The conditions of apprenticeship were ruled in detail by the guilds.

When a workman became a skilled artisan he was called a journeyman,[3]

that is, a man who earned a full day's pay for his work. The legal hours of work were, from March to September, from 5 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., with half an hour for breakfast, and an hour and a half for dinner.

Sat.u.r.day was universally a half-holiday. There were 44 working weeks in a year and, consequently, a total of holidays and non-working times of eight weeks. The burden of the very long hours was increased by the great physical exertion required from men who had to do much that is now done with the help of machinery. The strain was not always unrecognised, for the Minster workmen were allowed a period of rest during the working day.

Some of the men engaged in the construction of the Minster were not York men. The men employed there were by exception under ecclesiastical control. They were not governed by any of the city trade guilds. The master-mason was in charge of the whole of the building operations.

A list of trades in the city will suggest the kinds of business there were. Some of the names will go far to explain some modern surnames.

_Wool Trades_:-- Mercers.

Tapiters and couchers (makers of tapestry, hangings, carpets, and coverlets).

Fullers.

Cardmakers.

Littesters (dyers, listers).

Shermen (shearmen).

Sledmen.

Dyers.

Weavers of woollen.

_Leather Trades_:-- Barkers (tanners).

Curriers.

_Building Trades_:-- Carpenters, wrights and joiners.

Plasterers.

Tilers.

Ironmongers.

Painters.

Glaziers.

_Food Trades_:-- Spicers (grocers--_Cf._ French _epicier_).

Cooks and waterleaders.

Baxters (bakers).

Vintners and taverners.

Bouchers (butchers).

Pulters (poultry-dealers).

Wine-drawers (carters of wine).

Sauce-makers.[4]

_Outfitting Trades_:-- Tailors.

Skinners (vestment makers).

Glovers.

Hosiers.

Hatmakers.

Capmakers.

Cordwainers (cobblers).

Saddlers.

Girdlers and nailers.

Spuriers and lorimers (makers of spurs, bits for bridles, etc.).