The Influence and Development of English Gilds Part 7

[Sidenote: _Need of caution._]

It has been pointed out how the increasing const.i.tutional power of the Commons could make itself felt when the opinion of the nation was at its back. That it undoubtedly was so at the present juncture cannot be doubted. The method which was adopted for carrying out the provisions of the Act demonstrates fully how violently the country had been excited by the measure and by the danger to which the Gild lands had been exposed.

The usual way of putting such an Act into execution would have been to send down commissioners to take particulars of the Gilds and Chantries and of their possessions. But royal commissioners had come to be looked upon, not without ample reason, as merely the formal heralds of state robbery.

If therefore such commissioners were now sent out to manage the dissolution of the Chantries and Hospitals it was feared that disturbance would arise beyond the power of the government to manage. The more politic plan was therefore adopted of enlisting the people themselves in the cause as much as might be.

[Sidenote: _Injunctions._]

Injunctions[120] were issued "to the Parson, Vicar, Curat, Chaunter, Priests, Churchwardens, and two of the most honest Persons of the Parish of ________ being no Founders, Patrons, Donors, Lessees, nor Farmers of the Promotions of Corporations hereafter recited."

These, or four of them, were to make a return as to the number of "Chantries, Hospitals, Colleges, Free Chapels, Fraternities, Brotherhoods, Guilds and Salaries, or Wages of Stipendiary Priests" in their parish, together with all particulars as to the revenues, ordinances, objects, abuses, names and t.i.tles of the same. Full lists were to be drawn up of the lands and possessions of the Chantries, Colleges, and Gilds, and enquiry was inst.i.tuted respecting any recent dissolutions or alienations which might have been made in prospect of the recent Act.

The contingency alluded to in the last article has sufficed to provide some writers with an excuse for the measure destroying the Chantries. No doubt the shock which the action of Henry VIII. in reference to the monasteries had given to all forms of corporate property had led many of the Gilds to attempt the realization of their property. All such transactions were to be null and void.

[Sidenote: _Gilds too powerful and popular to be wholly destroyed._]

Accordingly the commissioners went down to each town and hamlet and took full particulars of all matters concerning the Gilds and Chantries. "All such as have enye vestments or other goods of the Co{y} [of Mercers are ordered] to bring them in," in order to be sold, with the rest of the Chantry fittings, "to the most p'fitt." The fate of the other kinds of property held by the Gilds, such that is as could not be definitely made out to have been intended for the support of obits and the maintenance of lights, seems to have depended considerably on fortuitous circ.u.mstances.

In each individual case the Gild had to secure for itself the best terms it could. Sometimes its property was obtained by the town, either by grant or by purchase[121]. At Shrewsbury the almshouses of the Drapers and Mercers survived[122], and the vicar of S. Almond's Church in the same town still receives the yearly sum which the Shearmen settled on the chaplain they maintained in that church.

[Sidenote: _Perversion of the confiscated revenues._]

[Sidenote: _Disastrous effects on Gilds, and on Craftsmen._]

As for the object which the Act itself alleged to have been the motive for the destruction of the Chantries, namely the desire on the part of the government to devote the revenues to the foundation and improvement of grammar schools, it was forgotten as soon as parliament had separated.

Strype[123] is obliged to confess that the Act was "grossly abused, as the Act in the former King's reign for dissolving religious houses was. For though the public good was pretended thereby (and intended too, I hope), yet private men, in truth, had most of the benefit, and the King and Commonwealth, the state of learning, and the condition of the poor, left as they were before, or worse. Of this, great complaints were made by honest men: and some of the best and most conscientious preachers reproved it in the greatest auditories, as at Paul's Cross, and before the King himself. Thomas Lever, a Fellow, and afterwards Master of St John's College in Cambridge, in a sermon before the King, in the year 1550 showed 'how those that pretended, that (beside the abolishing of superst.i.tion) with the lands of abbeys, colleges, and chantries, the King should be enriched, learning maintained, poverty relieved, and the Commonwealth eased, purposely had enriched themselves.... And bringing in grammar schools, which these dissolved chantries were to serve for the founding of, he told the King plainly ... many grammar schools, and much charitable provision for the poor, be taken, sold and made away; to the great slander of you and your laws, to the utter discomfort of the poor, to the grievous offence of the people, to the most miserable drowning of youth in ignorance.... The King bore the slander, the poor felt the lack. But who had the profit of such things, he could not tell. But he knew well, and all the world saw, that the Act made by the King's Majesty and his Lords and Commons of his Parliament, for maintenance of learning and relief of the poor, had served some as a fit instrument to rob learning, and to spoil the poor.'" The measure was indeed an act of spoliation devoid either of excuse in its cause or benefit in its results. The suppression of the Monasteries could doubtless be amply excused, but no real justification is possible for this attempted wholesale seizure of inst.i.tutions founded and maintained for the benefit of the poor, for the relief of suffering, and for the regulation of industry and police. As regards the last--the regulation of industry and police--the attempt was to a certain extent foiled, but in other respects it succeeded only too well. Even on the Gilds which escaped its effects were disastrous. Their spiritual aspect was taken away; their prestige and authority very materially lessened. For they completely changed their nature. Instead of being brotherhoods of workmen,--masters, journeymen, and apprentices,--striving together for the common good, they now became simply leagues of employers, companies of capitalists. The new powers which the masters obtained were used to still further oppress the craftsman, who was sufficiently degraded already through a variety of causes. He was too poor and powerless to be able to take any part in the new companies, and continued to sink deeper and deeper into degradation and misery. And this, too, in spite of the great and rapid development of trade which came simultaneously with this weakening blow at the authority and stability of the Gilds. Shrewsbury partic.i.p.ated in this expansion of industry, and in the latter portion of the sixteenth century was peculiarly prosperous. There was no migration of its trade to the freer air of the neighbouring villages. The town was successful in retaining its monopoly.

But these two causes, (i) the weakening of the Gilds and their change of character, and (ii) the vast development of trade which the age was witnessing, combined to render the companies which survived the Reformation quite unable to perform the work which the mediaeval Gilds had done. Yet then above all was a controlling and a guiding power essential.

Elizabeth in consequence found that one of her first measures must be in remedy of this condition of affairs.

CHAPTER V.

REORGANISATION OF THE GILD-SYSTEM.

[Sidenote: _Reign of Elizabeth._]

Elizabeth, on her accession, found that immediate reform was imperative in almost every department of state. The whole trade of the country was in a condition of agitation. Everything seemed unsettled and insecure.

[Sidenote: _Economic disturbances and industrial activity._]

For the social upheaval which the Reformation had brought about came in the train of a long period of economic disorder. The changes in the mode of cultivation had thrown the ma.s.s of the country population out of work.

These were driven in large numbers by stress of circ.u.mstances into the towns, which were consequently overstocked with hands. At this juncture came the breaking down of the social police within the towns by the weakening of the Gilds, while in the rural districts the dissolution of the monasteries took away from the poor their main hope of sustenance. The evils which such a policy of mere destruction must inevitably have brought upon the nation were averted through the national growth of wealth which the same period had witnessed. In the country parts the ejection of the easy-going old abbots had at least favoured the adoption of newer and improved methods of cultivation, so that a greater number of labourers came in time to be required on the estate[124]. But far more satisfactory for absorbing the surplusage of labour was the development which the period witnessed in manufacture. The woollen trade in the west, the worsted trade in the east, the iron trade in the south, and unmistakeable signs of the cloth trade in the north already showed how the foundations of England's wealth were laid.

The writers of the period abound in notices of the unparalleled growth of trade and commerce. Harrison laments "that every function and several vocation striveth with other, which of them should have all the water of commodity ran into her own cistern[125]." Ample openings for capital broke through the old prejudices against the taking of interest. "Usury" as it was called--"a trade brought in by the Jews--is now perfectly practiced almost by every Christian, and so commonly that he is accompted but for a fool that doth lend his money for nothing[126]." The English workman too was growing rich and lazy in the sunlight of prosperous times, so that "strangers" were frequently preferred to native craftsmen as "more reasonable in their takings, and less wasters of time by a great deal than our own[127]."

This was the commencement of the period of Shrewsbury's greatest prosperity. Edward IV.'s erection of the Court of the President and Marches of Wales (1478) was a material cause of the advent of peace to the Borders. Henry VII. could gratify national sentiment by tracing his descent from Owen Tudor: he gave it a practical turn by placing his son Arthur at Ludlow as ruler of the princ.i.p.ality. The Welshmen had thus begun to feel that their union with England was a real one before Henry VIII.

finally incorporated the country with the English kingdom.

[Sidenote: _Increase of comfort._]

The cessation of Welsh distractions had greatly favoured the advancement of Shrewsbury. Its grammar school--founded by Edward VI.--as the entrance register of Thomas Ashton, its first Headmaster, evidences, attracted scholars from a very wide area, and helped to bring renown and wealth to the town. Shrewsbury too was the market to which the Welsh cloth trade naturally gravitated, though the town had powerful rivals with which to contend. In the reign of Elizabeth it employed six hundred shearmen in the woollen industry. Camden, writing in 1586, describes it as "a fine city, well-inhabited and of good commerce, and by the industry of the Citizens is very rich." From this period date the substantial homes of the tradesmen of Tudor times which still survive in not inconsiderable numbers to give so much picturesqueness to the streets of the town. This was the era of improvements in domestic architecture. "If ever curious building did flourish in England," says Harrison[128], "it is in these our years."

Ireland's mansion, which dates from 1570, and the house at the south-east corner of the Market Square, built by John Lloyd in 1579, are existing examples of this "curious building." Their elegance, no less than their stability, betokens the advancement of manners as well as of wealth.

Though these houses are "yet for the most part of strong timber" "brick or hard stone[129]" were beginning to be largely used. Rowley's mansion (1618) is said to have been the first house in the town built wholly of these materials.

Everything combines to mark the reign of Elizabeth as an epoch in the history of England.

[Sidenote: _Economic policy._]

The foundations of modern society were laid. We seem to come into the range of modern, as distinct from mediaeval ideas and habits. The princ.i.p.al points in which modern society differs from mediaeval are distinctly visible. The problem of poor relief in particular becomes acutely appreciated. The rise of capital is seen both in the modification of the Usury laws, spoken of above, and in the enhancing of rents: prices. .h.i.therto dependent on custom and regulation must now be decided by compet.i.tion.

Not less remarkable is the permanence which attended Elizabeth's legislation. Her economic settlement remained practically unchanged until the development of machinery altered those social conditions for which it had been adapted.

[Sidenote: _The Statute 5 Eliz. a turning-point in Gild history._]

She made trade regulation national instead of local. The Act of 5 Elizabeth, c. 14, is a turning-point in the history of the Gilds. By it the whole system of Gilds was re-modelled. Their experience was by no means thrown away[130]. The information they had been acc.u.mulating was now appropriated by the state, which took over many of the functions they had hitherto performed.

[Sidenote: _Many of the functions of the Gilds taken over by the state._]

What had long been common law now became statute law. The old minimum of seven years' apprenticeship was still enjoined as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of any craft. Such apprentices when bound must be of an age less than twenty-one years, and could only be bound to householders in corporate or market towns. The proportion of journeymen to apprentices was regulated: there were to be three apprentices to one journeyman. The workman was protected from wilful dismissal. The hours of labour were defined, and Justices of the Peace or the town magistrates were to a.s.sess wages yearly at the Easter Sessions. All disputes between masters and servants were to be settled by the same authorities. The statute incorporated everything that was worth taking in the ordinances of the Gilds and applied it nationally to the regulation of the country's trade.

[Sidenote: _Trade-regulation becomes national instead of local._]

[Sidenote: _This allows development of new centres_]

The results of such a revolution in industrial regulation were great both on trade in general and on the Gilds. There was no longer any excuse for attempting to r.e.t.a.r.d the development of the new centres which were springing up. The action of the government in the matter of the Welsh woollen trade to which reference will presently be made shows how its policy was tending more and more towards allowing industry to take its own course, instead of attempting to restrict it to one market.

[Sidenote: _and encourages native workmen._]

Another important result of the Act was the protection henceforth shown to the native in opposition to the alien workman. The aim of the government is now to regulate, protect, encourage, _native_ industry: the objects of its desire in the past had been to provide plenty for the consumer and to increase the strength of the country by extending its capacity for production. The royal support accorded in consequence to Flemish and German traders had made them objects of bitter jealousy to the struggling English merchants[131]. This feeling of antipathy to alien workmen may be traced from the reign of Richard II. It becomes very marked in that of Edward IV.[132] The composition of the Mercers of Shrewsbury, dated 1480-81, had forbidden the apprenticeship of anyone "that is of Frenshe, Flemyshe, Irysh, Douche, Walshe or eny other Nacyones not beyng at Truse w{t} our Sov'ayne Lorde the Kynge, but onlye mere Englysshe borne."

The new policy inaugurated by the statute of Elizabeth is however not more national in its scope than in the preference it gives to native over foreign workmen.

[Sidenote: _Results on Gilds._]

[Sidenote: _Many come to an end._]

[Sidenote: _Many made more comprehensive._]

[Sidenote: _These sometimes come into conflict with royal officers._]

The results on the Gilds were more diverse. Many came to an end. This was brought about through two causes: firstly, the need for many Gilds ceased in consequence of the government now taking over their functions; secondly, in many places the numerous Gilds were organized and amalgamated into one or two larger and amended corporations[133]. On the other hand the encouragement now afforded to native workmen caused a great incorporation of new trades into many old Gilds, which became in consequence more comprehensive. In a large number of cases these performed their duties well for a long period. The new composition granted to the Barbers of Shrewsbury in 1662 places this fact upon record. Occasionally they came in conflict with the royal officers appointed to scrutinise the wares, as was the case with the Mercers and the Anager at one period of the company's existence.

[Sidenote: _Many become state agents._]

Not a few became the authorised agents of the state. Several of the Shrewsbury Gilds were strengthened and encouraged with this object in view. New compositions were granted by Elizabeth to the Tailors and Skinners in 1563 (confirmed in the next year), to the Glovers in 1564 and to the Shearmen in 1566. The Drapers had also figured in the Statute Book on two occasions. The Acts 8 Elizabeth, c. 7, and 14 Elizabeth, c. 12, had both been concerned with the affairs of the Drapers of Shrewsbury in their capacity of state agents for the regulation of industry[134].

In 1605 the company of Drapers was incorporated by James I. and the Smiths in 1621. The Tailors received a composition in 1627 and another in 1686.