come identified with the town corporations, and even the gild "halls" had become the common hall or "town hall" of the city.1 The aldermen of the gild became the aldermen of town wards, and the property of the gild became the property of the town.2 In London, however, the still existing City Companies" represent not merchant but craft gilds, of which the twelve most important availed themselves in the fourteenth century of the power to grant livery to their members, and were then, and are still, distinguished as the Livery Companies.3 § 119. The Decay of Certain Towns. It will be seen from this short summary, therefore, that it is to the growth of industry that we owe the development of our town life and municipal self-government, and that it is in industrial history that the origin of the towns of to-day must be sought. In later years towns take an important share in political history, as well as industrial, but in the period with which we are now dealing it was not so. They did not play, either in or out of Parliament, an important part in the dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century. Probably they were too much occupied with the anxieties and responsibilities of their own development to care much about outside politics, for we must remember that in mediæval England the life both of town and village was very self-centred, and neither citizens or villagers had much interest in affairs outside their own boundaries. In any case, many of the English towns at this time seem to have been in a somewhat depressed condition from the industrial point of view, however much they might be advancing municipally and socially. The older corporate towns seem to have decayed 5 towards the end of the fifteenth century, however prosperous they may have been at its beginning, and early in the reign of Henry VIII. it 1 Stubbs, u. 8., p. 565. One might cite the example of the Nottingham "Gild Hall," which is the name still given to the quite modern building used as a town hall. 2 Stubbs, u. 8., p. 566. 3 Stubbs, u. s., p. 592. 5 This is evident from the remissions of taxation on towns made in 1496. Rot. Parl., vi. 514, 438. Statute 3 Henry VIII., c. 8. is officially noted that "many and the most part of the cities, burghs, and towns corporate within this realm of England be fallen into ruin and decay." At first sight this would seem rather a startling condition of things, and, in fact, one that is almost inexplicable in view of the growth of industry and commerce which we know to have taken place in this age. But the explanation is not far to seek. First of all, we note that the complaint is made only of the old and corporate towns, and that many newer towns were growing up and flourishing with prosperous manufactures. This was certainly the case with Manchester,1 Birmingham,2 and (later) Sheffield; and also with the towns of Leeds, Wakefield, and others in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The fact is that the restrictions made by the gilds in these older towns rendered them obnoxious 5 to the new manufacturers who were everywhere springing up, and who preferred to leave the old cities and carry on their occupations undisturbed elsewhere. Then, again, the heavy taxation necessitated by the wars of Henry VI.'s reign, and the unnecessary but heavy exactions of the grasping Henry VII., had fallen very hardly on the corporate towns, while others had escaped. But still another cause, and one more powerful than either of these, may be assigned. It is that they were at the close of the fifteenth century no longer necessary as places of security for traders and manufacturers." In the troublous days of the Wars of the Roses, and in the old times before them, when the nobility were constantly engaged in private warfare, it would not have been safe for a merchant or a manufacturer, or for anyone with much property and little power, to have lived outside a walled town, as most 8 1 Mentioned as a market in the Rot. Parl., vi. 182 a, in Edward IV.'s reign, but in 1542 mentioned in a statute of Edward VI. as a flourishing manufacturing town (5 and 6 Ed. VI., c. 6). 2 Described by Leland, Itinerary, iv. 114. 3 A company of cutlers was formed here in Elizabeth's reign. * Defoe, Plan of English Commerce, 127, 129, refers to these towns having woollen manufactures under Henry VII. * Cf. Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 452, 455, 461, and above, p. 146. • Ib., i. 461. 7 Cf. Froude's remarks, History, i. 9. 8 For instances of oppression by great nobles, see Denton, Fifteenth Century, pp. 296-301, and the Paston Letters (ed. Arber), Vol. I. 13-15. of them then were. A master workman could not then have migrated with any safety into a country district, either to obtain water-power or to evade gild-made regulations. But now that the Wars of the Roses were over, and the Crown had proved strong enough to establish peace and security throughout the greater part of the kingdom, one great use of the older towns as centres of security for manufactures and trade had become unnecessary; they begin to decline in importance, though commerce and industry are progressing; while newer centres take their place, or urban industrial occupations are spreading even into rural districts. Thus the pacification of the kingdom, which was the work of Henry VII. and the Tudors, and which has lasted with but one serious outbreak into our own times, prevented what might otherwise have happened too prematurely, namely, that concentration of population into the towns which is one of the greatest difficulties of the present age. §120. The Commercial and Industrial Changes Meanwhile, as we have hinted, manufactures and commerce in the fifteenth century, in spite of the decay of certain towns, were certainly progressing. The woollen manufacture received a great impetus from Henry VII., who, as Edward III. had done, encouraged foreigners to settle in England in order to instruct English artisans.1 He directed his attention specially to the West Riding of Yorkshire and the towns of Leeds, Wakefield, and Halifax ; and about the same time the export of wool 2 was forbidden in order that there might be plenty of material for making woollen cloth. In the East of England, Norwich and the county of Norfolk3 generally still remained a flourishing seat of manufactures both of woollen and worsted 1 Defoe, Plan of English Commerce, 127, 129. 24 Henry VII., c. 11. The fact that it was again prohibited by the 22 Henry VIII., c. 2, and the 37 Henry VIII., c. 15, shows that either the prohibition was useless or that it was only temporary. 3 Cf. the information implied in the Statutes 5 Henry VIII., c. 4, and 14 and 15 Henry VIII., c. 3. stuffs. There was an active export trade in wool to Italian 1 as well as to Flemish towns, and other foreign commerce was being entered into that was to lead to great developments in the future.2 In fact, the fifteenth century shows us remarkable progress. It is the beginning in many ways of a new era in more than one branch of industry. For there were at least three great changes that form in themselves a commercial and industrial revolution, almost as important in some ways, though not so striking, as the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. This series of developments was: (1) the change in agriculture, already commented upon,3 from tillage to pasturage for the sake of wool-growing; (2) the change from England being merely a wool-growing to a wool-manufacturing country ; and (3) the change in foreign commerce,5 whereby Englishmen, who in the days of Edward III. had allowed nearly all their foreign commerce to be monopolised by foreign merchants, now began to take it into their own hands. Nor should we omit, as factors of considerable importance, the great discoveries made at this time by Columbus and Cabot, though at first these discoveries had but little effect upon English commerce. Henry VII., indeed, seems to have had more foresight in this matter than most of his subjects, for he more than once granted commissions for the discovery and investment of new lands. It was not his fault that England did not take the place of Spain in the New World 7; but Englishmen were not yet ready for such an enterprise, and perhaps it was as well that they were not. Their success was all the greater for its delay. 1 Namely, Pisa, Venice, and Florence; Rymer, Fadera, XII. 390. 2 E.g. English merchants are now found (1513) doing business in the Levant, to which they had hever traded before. Cf. Cunningham, i. p. 438, which see also for the development of shipping and foreign commerce generally. 3 * Above, p. 184. 4 Cf. Mrs Green, Town Life in Fifteenth Century, i. p. 44. 5 Ib., i. p. 122. Besides his patronage of Cabot (cf. Rymer. Fœdera, XII. 595) he granted patents of exploration in 1501 and later to various Bristol merchants (ib. XIII. 41 and 37). 7 Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, p. 252, puts it thus. Others are inclined to think Henry might have done more than he did. N § 121. The Close of the Middle Ages. The close of the 15th century brings us to the close of the Middle Ages. Henceforth we are treading on modern ground, and industry also begins to develope under more modern ideas. The old order changes and the new grows gradually into its place, till at length we of the nineteenth century look back upon mediæval life as upon something not quite akin to ours. We feel ourselves more in touch with the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with those of the fourteenth, and naturally so, for there is perhaps a greater gulf fixed between the days of Edward III. and Elizabeth than between the days of Elizabeth and Victoria. The old manorial and feudal land system was dying out; the old ideas of regulating crafts, trade, and commerce were giving way to wider and looser methods, more competitive than heretofore, and of more national comprehensiveness. Merchants were beginning to look beyond the confines of the narrow seas to the riches of the gorgeous East and to the newly found lands of the mysterious West. Industry was shaking off the bonds and trammels of local regulations; the labourer of the manor no longer feared the authority of his lord, nor the artisan of the town the censure of his gild. Social life also was changing and with it political life as well. The Wars of the Roses had destroyed the great nobles of the past, and now the royal power rested chiefly upon the goodwill of the middle classes.1 The ideal of this class was a king who would act as a superior kind of chief constable 2 who, by keeping the great men in order would allow their inferiors to make money in peace. Such a king was found in Henry VII. It was not perhaps a very high ideal, but it was practically possible, and under Henry VII. the middle classes prospered. Nor were the lower classes as far as we have been able to judge, less fortunate. Poverty and crime existed, as unfortunately they always will, and there were Poor Laws with penal codes to 1 Cf. Gardiner, Student's History, i. 357. 2 Ib., i. 331. 3 Stubbs, Const. Hist., iii. xxi., pp. 599 and 600, points out how the alms-giving of the clergy, the monasteries and the gilds, as well as general |