Page images
PDF
EPUB

craft that did a coasting trade, or ran across to the Continent in smooth weather.

The extent of piracy was, however, a great drawback to the prosecution of trade by sea, and formed a danger which in these days we can only inadequately realise.1 Organised bands of pirates, called the "Rovers of the Sea," ravaged our coasts in the reign of Henry VI.2 It was quite a common occurrence for Scarborough to be attacked by Scotch, French, and Flemish pirates; and even large towns like London and Norwich made plans of defence against possible attacks from such enemies.4 Merchant vessels had to sail together in fleets for the sake of security; both Henry IV. and Henry VI. empowered merchants in the coast towns to organise defensive schemes 5; and the protection of merchant shipping also occupied the attention of Henry VIII.6 In fact, for many centuries piracy was the curse of our maritime trade.

§ 90. The Temporary Decay of Manufacturing Towns. We have now noticed the chief markets, fairs, ports, and manufacturing towns of medieval England, and it will be seen that commercial prosperity was certainly developing. So, too, were home manufacturing industries, but their growth brought about a curious effect in the decay of certain towns, and the rise of industrial villages in rural districts. To the decay of towns we find frequent reference in the Statutes of Henry VI., Henry VII., and his successor, i.e., from 1490 or 1500 onwards. This decay was due to several causes, among others to the heavy taxation caused by wars with France, to the growth of sheep-farming mentioned above, and also to the fact that the industrial disabilities imposed upon dwellers in towns, in consequence 1 Cf. The Paston Letters, i. 114.

3 Rot. Parl., iii. 162 (46).

6 Ib., xiii. 326.

2 Rot. Parl., iv. 350 (42), 376 (29). Denton, Fifteenth Century, pp. 87, 89. 5 Rymer, Foedera, viii. 438, 439, 455. 7 In 1433 Parliament in voting a tenth and fifteenth had to remit £4000 to poor towns, among which Yarmouth and Lincoln are noted. Rot. Parl., iv. 425. Cf. also R. P., v. 5 and v. 37 for other remissions. For other evidences of decay see Rot. Parl., vi. 390, 438, and 514; Statutes 27 Hen. VIII., c. 1; 32 Hen. VIII., c. 18, and others.

K

of the corporate privileges of the gilds, now far exceeded the advantages of residence there. The days of usefulness for the gilds had gone past; their restrictions, especially as to apprentices and journeymen,1 were now felt only to cramp the rising manufacturing industries. Hence we find the manufacturers of the Tudor period were leaving the towns and seeking open villages instead, where they could develope their trade free from the vexatious restrictions of old

fashioned corporations. Of course laws were passed to check this tendency, and to confine particular industries to particular towns. Thus, in Norfolk, no one was to "dye, shear, or calendar cloth " anywhere but in the town of Norwich 2; no one in the northern counties was to make "worsted coverlets" except in York.3

§ 91. Growth of Industrial Villages. The Germs of the Modern Factory System.

Such protective enactments were, however, as protective enactments must generally be, utterly in vain. Henry VII. tried to remedy the supposed evil by limiting the privileges of interference of the gilds in causing their ordinances to be first approved by the Chancellor or Justices; but even this step was useless. Manufactures were slowly and surely transferred to country villages,5 and in several industries a kind of modern factory system can be traced at this time. Master manufacturers, weary of municipal and gild-made restrictions, organised in country places little communities solely for industrial purposes, and so arranged as to afford greater scope for the combination and division. of labour. The system of apprenticeship was a powerful element in this scheme, and supplied ready labour for these small factories. The goods were made not as formerly only

1 Cf. Statute 28 Hen. VIII., c. 5.

2 Cf. the 5 Hen. VIII., c. 4; 14 and 15 Hen. VIII., c. 3; and 26 Hen. VIII., c. 16.

3 34 and 35 Hen. VIII., c. 10.

4 19 Hen. VII., c. 7.

5 Mrs Green, Town Life, ii. 88, says that this removal was in search of water-power (e.g., in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire). But a more powerful reason was the tyranny of the gilds; Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 52. 6 Cf Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 75, and Gross, u. 8.

for local use, but for the purposes of trade and profit throughout the kingdom. The master was bound to his workmen rather more closely than the mill-owner of the present day to his "hands," for the spirit of personal sympathy and obligation still survived in these small labour communities, nor was there any wide social gulf fixed between master and man.1 But the germs of the modern system were there; for this new system was not that of mere cottage industry, as had been the rule in previous periods, but a system of congregated labour organised upon a capitalistic basis by one man-the organiser, head, and owner of the industrial village—the master clothier.

[ocr errors]

It is, perhaps, interesting to note in this place the exemplification of the four systems or stages through which manufacturing industry usually passes.2 They may be called (1) The family system, under which each worker produces separately, aided only by his wife and children; (2) the system of production under the supervision and arrangements of gilds, as we have already seen, and where small "masters employ a few men to work with them as journeymen and apprentices, while they as manufacturers sell their own goods to the public; (3) the domestic system, which is much the same as the one previous, except that the master manufacturer is no longer a merchant to the public, but simply produces, on a large scale, for purchase by dealers; and lastly (4) we have the factory system of modern times, which is familiar to all. Now the growth of the domestic system and of the great master clothiers may be dated from the middle of the fourteenth century, and it extended through the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. We see now clothiers in a large way of business who buy the wool, cause it to be spun, dyed, and finished, and then sell it to drapers or merchants, who retail it to the public. The great sheep farmers were often clothiers, and made up into cloth the wool they grew." Among these famous "master clothiers" we read of men like

1 Cf. Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 74.

2 Cf. Held, Zur socialen Geschichte Englands, 541 sq. Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 73.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

4 lb.,

7 lb.,

81.

80.

John Winchcombe, or "Jack of Newbury," as he was called, of whom it is recorded that a hundred looms always worked in his house,1 and who was rich enough to send a hundred of his journeymen to Flodden Field in 1513.2 His kerseys were famous all over Europe.3 It was from communities. such as these that the villages of Manchester, Bolton, Leeds, Halifax, and Bury took their rise, and afterwards developed into the great factory towns of to-day. But these workshops, large though they seemed then, were utterly insignificant compared with the huge factories of modern times, where the workmen are numbered in thousands, and are to the capitalist-employer, or joint-stock company that owns the mill, merely a mass of human machines, more intelligent though not so durable as other machines, and possessed of an unpleasant tendency to go out "on strike," for reasons that usually appear to their employer insufficient and subversive of the whole industrial system. However, the industrial system is not subverted, though the workmen can hardly be said to be upon the same pleasant footing with their employers as they used to be in the old industrial village. But even in those days things did not always go smoothly, and there are traces of the existence of a very badly paid class of workmen in manufacturing towns.

1 Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing, p. 69. In 1549 the English envoy at Antwerp advises the Protector, Somerset, to send to Antwerp for sale a thousand pieces of "Winchcombe's kersies."

2 Bischoff, Woollen and Worsted Manufacture, i. 55.

3 Burnley, ut supra, p. 69.

Mrs Green, Town Life, ii. 101. The wages were only one penny a day, which was low even for those times.

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS ECONOMIC EFFECTS

§ 92. Material Progress of the Country.

IN the preceding chapters we have attempted to give an idea of the state of industry and commerce in England in the Middle Ages. We now come to a most important landmark in the history of the social and industrial condition of the people-viz., the Great Plague of 1348 and subsequent years. Almost two centuries had elapsed since the death of Stephen (1154) and the cessation of those great civil conflicts which harried England in his reign. These two centuries bad witnessed on the whole a continuous growth of material prosperity. The wealth of the country had increased; the towns had developed, and their development was partly the effect and partly the cause of the growth of a prosperous mercantile and industrial middle class, who regulated their own affairs in their gilds, and also had a voice in municipal management. No doubt it was true that in the fourteenth century municipal life was still on a small scale,1 but much progress had been made since the twelfth century. Already it was a great advantage to be a "burgher," for the towns opened up to the artisan and shopkeeper a way to take their place among people of privilege. But the country at large was still mainly devoted to agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and the mass of the people were engaged in tilling the ground or feeding cattle. The mass of the people, too, were now better fed and better clothed than those of a similar class on the Continent, and though there were social discontents at intervals, there was nothing in England so terrible and so outrageous as the "Jacquerie" revolt in France. The industrial factor, moreover, was making itself more and more felt in national and 2 Ib., i. 181.

1 Mrs Green, Town Life, i. 13.

« PreviousContinue »