Relation between of this land, by reason and natural favour, would rather that women of their nation born and own blood had the occupation thereof, than strange people of other lands" 1. The relation between the craft gilds and the gild merchant in the early Middle Ages has been the subject of considerable controversy, and there is a remarkable divergence of opinion craft gilds. among historians. Here, as in the problem of the manor, the gild merchant and the Friction between rich and poor. the questions at issue cannot be set aside as matters of barren speculation, for they affect fundamentally many of our conceptions of early municipal history. Dr. Brentano has applied to England evidence drawn from continental analogies, and transplanted to English soil the features of the struggle carried on in foreign towns between rich merchants and oppressed artisans. According to this view, the merchant gild was a gild of wealthy traders from whose ranks artisans were excluded and forced into a condition of economic dependency. The craft gilds are represented as associations formed by craftsmen to protect themselves against the merchant gild and to obtain a share in its mercantile privileges 2. A modification of this view would regard the merchant gild as comprised of the landed citizens, and the craft gilds as comprised of the landless industrial workers who came into existence by the side of the original body of landed burgesses 3. There is ample evidence that the relations between the different elements of the community, the majores and the minores, were often strained, and that some conflict did take place in the towns; on this point the evidence of the Patent Rolls is valuable. In 1267 the commons of Lincoln presented a petition against "the mayor and others", alleging that the acquisition of citizenship was made an instrument of extortion; that the pleas of the city were held scarcely twice or thrice in the year instead of once a week; 1 Rot. Parl. v. 325 a. 2 Brentano, History and Development of Gilds, p. cxix: "The whole history" of the craft gilds" till they obtained the mastery in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries appears as nothing else than one continual struggle of the handicraftsmen with the town for these privileges". Ashley, Economic History, i. 73. that the taxes of the town were not devoted to their proper use, that no account was rendered of the state of the finances, that many citizens withheld their share of the assessments,. in consequence of which the king had twice taken the city into his hands 1. In this long list there is no hint, however, of industrial oppression; the grievances are financial and unfold the familiar story of the rich grieving the poor. In 1276 the commonalty of York complained that the smaller men were rated to tallages, fines, contributions and amercements out of proportion to their means. Accordingly a royal mandate was issued to the "mayor, bailiffs and citizens' to make just charges, "lest the king have to apply other measures". In 1281 the mayor of Carlisle was charged by "the poor men of the town of Carlisle " with "divers injuries and grievances". In 1304 we get the complaint of "the poor men of the commonalty of the town of Lynn, that the rich who levy collections and tallages upon that commonalty and fines made with the king for matters touching the commonalty, collect more than the specified sums and often extort grievous distraints from the commonalty, which they convert to their own uses "4. Again, in 1376 the "poor commons" of Yarmouth petitioned the Good Parliament that they might freely buy and sell according to the tenure of their charter, and not be oppressed by the rich (les grantz) 5. The appeal for their legal rights is significant: they appear not as unenfranchised commons seeking relief, but as the weak oppressed by the strong. oppression. In the evidence that we have brought forward, there is Evidence nothing to support the contention that during the twelfth of economic and thirteenth centuries the mediaeval craftsmen were involved in any struggle with the merchant classes. None the less it is contended that the craft gilds at their first 1 Patent Rolls, 1266-1272, p. 270. Ibid. 1272-1281, p. 138. Ibid. 1272-1281, p. 476. Ibid. 1301-1307, p. 280. Rot. Parl. ii. 352 a, 353 a. There were also disputes in Grimsby in 1258 between the rich and poor over forestalling and other "corrupt practices": Charter Rolls, ii. 14; Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. viii. 238. For the grievances of the commonalty of Dublin (which are of a general character relating to financial administration, assizes of bread and ale, and the like), see Gilbert, Documents of Ireland, 359 seq. inception undoubtedly met with opposition, and that artisans were excluded from civic rights and burdened with heavy disabilities. The earliest Pipe Roll shows that already under Henry I. craft gilds were established among the Weavers of London, Winchester, Oxford, Lincoln and Huntingdon, and among the Fullers of Winchester and the Cordwainers of Oxford 1. We also meet with Weavers' gilds at York and Nottingham 3, and a Bakers' gild in London. These gilds were founded by royal charter, and their relations with the municipal government were apparently extremely hostile. At London the civic authorities made every effort to crush the separate organization of the Weavers, granted to them by Henry I. and confirmed under Henry II. " with all the liberties and customs which they had in the time of King Henry my grandfather; so that none, except by their permission, intermeddle within the city with that trade, and unless he be in their gild" 5. In 1202 John agreed to abolish the Weavers' gild: "At the petition of our mayor and the citizens of London we have granted . . . that the Weavers' gild shall not exist henceforth in our city of London, nor shall it on any account be revived. But because we have been wont to receive yearly eighteen marks of silver from that Weavers' gild, the aforesaid citizens shall pay every year to us and our heirs twenty marks of silver " ". The authorities, however, fell into arrears, and the king again restored the gild, though the Weavers had now to pay twenty marks, and the hostility of the city grew so intense that in 1221 the Weavers deposited their charter of liberties for safe-keeping in the Exchequer. Henry III. confirmed their privileges in 12429, but in 1300 their resistance to the civic authorities suddenly collapsed and they made submission 1 Magnum Rotulum Pipae (ed. J. Hunter, 1833), 2, 5, 37, 48, 114, 144. 2 II Hen. II. (Pipe Roll. Soc. viii. 46). 3 2 Hen. II. The Great Rolls of the Pipe (ed. J. Hunter, 1844), 39. 4 Ibid. 4. The Bakers paid annually one mark of gold (= 8 oz.), but in 4 Hen. II. they only paid 2 oz. (ibid. 114). This explains the entry in T. Madox, Exchequer (1711), 231, that the bakers stood charged with one mark and 6 oz. of gold. Ballard, Borough Charters, 208 (1155-1158). 7 Madox, Exchequer, 279 (n. m). pro gilda telaria delenda ". • Ibid. "" Cives Londoniae debent lx marcas 8 Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. p. lxii. • Ibid. 48. to the mayor. They agreed to accept the new ordinances drawn up by the authorities in conjunction with representatives of the Weavers and the Burellers. They were allowed to retain their own court and bailiffs, but henceforth the mayor had the right to preside over the court if he wished, while the bailiffs were required to take an oath of obedience in his presence 1. Not only did the municipality endeavour to destroy the craft gilds, but it subjected the weavers to the most rigorous disabilities. The Laws of the Weavers and Fullers, which are now known to date from the reign of King John, show that at Winchester they were not allowed to sell cloth to non-burgesses, nor to engage in trade outside the city: "neither weaver nor fuller may buy even that which pertains unto his craft, unless he make satisfaction to the sheriff each year" for the payments due from his gild. It is added: "nor may any freeman be attainted by a weaver or by a fuller, nor may they bear witness". It is true that we find burel cloth made at Winchester by freemen3, but this was at a later period and does not necessarily conflict, as is sometimes thought, with the earlier evidence. At Marlborough similar provisions were enforced : if a weaver sought to become a freeman of the city he had first to forswear his craft; nor may anyone weave or work except for the proved men of the town, or have anything of his own but what pertains to making cloth, worth one penny". Again at Oxford he could not weave or full his own cloth without leave; and lastly, the Law of Winchester concludes with the important words: "and this law they have of the freedom and of the custom of London as they say". An explanation commonly given of the antagonism between the weavers and the body of burgesses is that the former were aliens, Flemings, who came over to England after the Norman Conquest and established the weaving 1 Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. 121 seq. These laws (which are contained in Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. 130-131) have since been printed from an earlier MS. (c. 1209) in the British Museum by Leach, Beverley Town Documents, App. ii. 134. 3 Archæol. Journal, ix. 77; Smith, English Gilds, 351. Similarly at Bristol in 1346 only burgesses could weave cloth: Little Red Book, ii. 4. Reasons industry in this country. This hypothesis has little direct for the an- evidence in its favour. There appear to have been Flemish tagonism between weavers and weavers in Yorkshire 2, and some of the Flemish mercenaries employed in the revolt of 1173 may have settled in this burgesses. country. But, as we shall see, the cloth trade was widely spread, and the number of weavers dispersed throughout England in the twelfth century was considerable; it is improbable, therefore, that they were of alien origin, though doubtless Flemings were to be found in their midst. The fact that weavers refused to accept municipal control, and obtained royal charters to set up independent gilds of their own, does not prove that they were aliens, for the Cordwainers of Oxford, the Bakers of London, and the Fullers of Winchester also had their own gilds at the same period. The confifct between the weavers and the municipal authorities can best be explained on other grounds. The former were not debarred from civic rights because they were landless artisans oppressed by the rich, but on the contrary because they were rich enough to purchase royal charters and win for themselves an exceptional position. Attention may be called to the fact that at Oxford, at any rate, the weavers, fullers and shoemakers were not all landless craftsmen; at the very time when the Laws of the Weavers and Fullers were presumably in operation against them, they were holding land within the city which was their own whether to sell or to give away. Accordingly the decisive factor in the situation would seem to have been not economic but constitutional. The weavers, fullers and bakers of the different towns formed associations in the first instance to secure the monopoly of their trade, and to commute the tolls due to 1 Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. p. Ixi. seq., followed by Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 108; Cunningham, English Industry, i. App. E, 641. 2 Vict. County Hist. Yorkshire, iii. 436-438. 3 G. T. Lapsley, in English Hist. Review, xxi. 509-513. 4 Charter Rolls, i. 300. Grant in 1246 to the Hospital of St. John, Oxford, of the gift of Henry son of Alwin all the land which his father bought from Herbert the weaver" in the parish of St. Peter in the East within the walls of Oxford. Other craftsmen holding land in Oxford were a carter (ibid. 300), a shoemaker (301) and a fuller (304). Thus the Bakers of Winchester were required to pay each 2d. per annum to the king and rd. to the city clerk; presumably also their fines went to the city treasury: Archæol. Journal, ix. 78. Observe that in 1202 |