The Influence and Development of English Gilds Part 1

The Influence and Development of English Gilds.

by Francis Aiden Hibbert.

PREFACE.

I should explain that, in the present Essay, I have restricted myself to a.s.sociations which had for their object the regulation of trade. Frith Gilds and Religious or Social Gilds have received only pa.s.sing notice.

The Merchant Gild is too wide a subject to be treated in an Essay such as this. Moreover the records of the Shrewsbury Merchant Gild are too meagre to afford much information, and I would therefore have gladly pa.s.sed over the whole question in silence but that without some notice of it the Essay would have seemed incomplete.

My attention has thus been concentrated on the Craft Gilds, and on the later companies which arose out of these.

It is greatly to be regretted that we have no work on Gilds which deals with the subject from an English point of view, and traces the development of these pre-eminently English inst.i.tutions according to its progress on English soil.

The value of Dr Brentano's extremely able Essay is very largely diminished, for Englishmen, not only because he is continually attempting to trace undue a.n.a.logies between the Gilds and Trades Unions, but still more because he has failed to appreciate the spirit which animated English Merchants and Craftsmen in their relations with one another, and so has missed the line of Gild development in England. If he had not confined his attention, so far as English Gilds are concerned, solely to the London Companies he could hardly have failed to discover his mistake.

Something has been done to set the facts of the case in a clearer light by Dr Cunningham briefly in his _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_[1].

But it is to be feared that Mr J. R. Green's _History_ is so deservedly popular, and Mr George Howell's _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_ is so otherwise reliable, that views differing from those which these writers set forward--following Dr Brentano as it appears--stand little chance of being generally known.

Great as is the weight which must attach to such important authorities, I have endeavoured--by looking at the facts in my materials from an independent standpoint--to avoid being unduly influenced by their conclusions, or by a desire to find a.n.a.logies where none exist.

The materials from which I have worked call for but little description.

They are simply the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds--either in their original form as preserved in the town Museum and Library, or as printed in the Shropshire Archaeological Society's _Transactions_.

Though my view has been thus confined it has been kept purposely so.

English local history is its own best interpreter, and although in some instances the doc.u.ments have required ill.u.s.trating and supplementing from extraneous sources, these occasions have been few. At the same time I have not omitted to notice how the effects of national events were felt in provincial changes, and I have especially striven to point out how the Shrewsbury records bear upon the various theories which have been put forward respecting Gilds. Writing thus in a historical rather than an antiquarian spirit I have not considered it necessary to overburden the pages with needless footnotes referring repeatedly simply to the records of the Shrewsbury Gilds.

_October, 1890._

NOTE.--_The Gild Merchant_, by Charles Gross, Ph.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890), appeared after the above had been written and the Essay sent in. I have since had the advantage of reading it. The general conclusions at which the writer arrives are so similar to those I had already formed, that I have not found it necessary to alter what I had written. I have however to some extent made use of the material he has brought together in Vol. II., chiefly by way of strengthening the authorities in the footnotes to which reference is made in the text.

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CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

[Sidenote: _Local life in England always varied._]

In these days of convenience and easy transit, when distance has been annihilated by the telegraph wire and the express train, we can hardly realise, even with an effort, the extent to which such changes have revolutionised the social life of Englishmen. Of local sentiment there can be now but little, yet local sentiment has played a greater part in our history than perhaps any other motive. The England of to-day is little more than a great suburb of its capital. Yet it is a peculiar feature of the England of the past that its local life was always singularly varied, not only in the Middle Ages but down to quite recent times. Indeed the characteristic is still more than traceable in some of our less busy districts.

In the past, too, some parts possessed the feature in a more marked degree than others. We should naturally expect that few towns would have a stronger infusion of local feeling than Shrewsbury. Through all its history it has indeed been marked by strong individuality.

[Sidenote: _Early growth of Shrewsbury._]

Situated in the midst of the Marches of Wales, the centre round which long waged the struggle for the fair lands westward of the Severn, its strong walls and insular position soon gave it a marked commercial superiority over the surrounding country. In consequence we find Shrewsbury at an early date considerably more advanced than the unprotected land outside, which lay open to the ravages of the Welsh. This condition of affairs, the reverse of favourable for commercial advancement, continued to depress the neighbourhood after Edward the First's conquest of the Princ.i.p.ality, for the disorders of the Lords Marchers kept the Borders in a state of continual alarm, and prevented the inhabitants from settling down to any regular and profitable industry[2].

Henry IV. on the death of Glendower effected the reconquest of Wales, and enacted severe laws against the inhabitants. The only result was, however, the organisation of robber bands whose definite object was to plunder and hara.s.s more completely their English neighbours. The evil became so intolerable that a special court had to be erected to remove it, and in 1478 was formed the Court of the President and Marches of Wales.

By dint of powers of summary jurisdiction over disturbers of the public peace, a diminution was effected in the disorders, and the border lands were able to partic.i.p.ate in the increase of trade which was such a marked feature of the fourteenth century. In spite of the temporary shock given to industry by the Reformation, the district had, by the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, quite recovered from the Welsh ravages, and its prosperity at this time was very remarkable.

The fertility of the district brought wealth to the market towns, and provided a wide area of comfortable purchasers for the products of their industries. The expansion of the Welsh cloth trade gave rise to a twofold struggle. There was firstly a strenuous effort of the border towns to keep it to themselves, and secondly a private quarrel as to which of them should engross the market. Shrewsbury eventually secured the monopoly after an arduous contest, and the importance of the town was thus considerably enhanced.

[Sidenote: _Its later prosperity._]

The internal history of its Gilds will show how peculiarly the state of Shrewsbury ill.u.s.trates the period of quiet prosperity before the introduction of machinery broke in upon the comfortable life of provincial England.

The county towns then possessed an importance of which they have since been shorn by various causes[3]. Each was the capital of its district, filling the part of a distant metropolis to which neither the country gentleman nor the wealthy burgess could expect to go more than once or twice in a lifetime. Shrewsbury, in particular, was possessed of features which serve not only to make it especially typical of the social habits of the period, but which at the same time give it an interest exceptionally its own[4].

[Sidenote: _Its stationary condition in recent times._]

And when the introduction of machinery transformed the face of England to such a large extent, the changes which it brought to Shrewsbury were extremely slight. Local life was strong. The town was slow to accommodate itself to new conditions of industry. Its Gilds and companies maintained their vigour to the end. Their yearly pageant continued to our own day.

The timbered houses which the substantial tradesmen built in the days of their prosperity are still, many of them, standing. The streets of the town have been only gradually altered and improved. They still follow the old lines, often inconvenient, but always interesting: they still are called by their old names, full of confusion to the stranger, full of significance to the student.

[Sidenote: _Importance of history of its Gilds._]

[Sidenote: _Their quiet development._]

Shrewsbury, then, exhibits a character eminently its own, from whatever point we view its history. But it is a distinction of similarity rather than the prominence of singularity. The progress of the town has gone on quietly and calmly, seldom interrupted and never forced. The history of its Gilds must of necessity present similar features. It will be a record of silent development, often leaving few traces, yet not the less evident to careful observation.

[Sidenote: _Peculiarities._]

But it is also a history in studying which we must be particularly on our guard against being led astray by the a.n.a.logy of similar inst.i.tutions in other parts of England or on the Continent. The desire to arrive at, or to conform to, general conclusions often blinds writers to the fact to which we have already drawn attention, namely, that local life in England was always varied; that each town and district had its own strongly-marked peculiarities. Bearing this in mind, deviations--apparent or real--from the ordinary course of Gild history will cause us no surprise. The shearmen's maypole quarrel[5] with the bailiffs is almost the only trace of serious conflict at Shrewsbury between the munic.i.p.al authorities[6] and the companies until the seventeenth century. There are no signs of the rise of Yeomen Gilds[7] in earlier or later years, though evidence in plenty is found of the complete disregard shown by the masters for the interests of the journeymen[8]. On the other hand, so far from the Court of a.s.sistants being a late creation we meet with it at Shrewsbury very early in Gild history.

[Sidenote: _Especial points of value._]

It will also be a record rich in ill.u.s.trations of contemporary social life[9]. The closeness of relationship between religion and the ordinary business pursuits of the mediaeval burgess; the wide public influence exercised by the Gilds in their earlier years, and the remarkable family feeling they maintained within the boundaries of the old towns even down to the time when the companies had become utterly demoralised, will be exemplified not less remarkably than the continuity of the Gild sentiment through the shocks of the Reformation period, through the economic changes of Elizabeth, and even (in some sort) through the Reforms of 1835.

It is a history too which will help us to understand a problem of considerable difficulty. We shall not only see the degenerated societies of capitalists in full vigour down to the date of their enforced termination as trading companies, but we shall also be enabled to perceive how it was that they managed to retain their prejudicial and antiquated privileges to the very end of their existence.