The economic position of women. because the members of one company intermeddled with the trade of other companies; for instance, the Tailors complained that the Drapers cut and sewed garments1. Order was therefore taken that all should keep to the mistery in which they were enfranchised, but complaints were again renewed 2. At Norwich, again, the rule that no one should occupy more than one craft appears to have been in force in 15323, but was abandoned a few years later. "It is ordained that every person and persons that keepeth two shops or more in several parts of this city, and there use divers occupations or misteries, shall be charged to every such occupation to all charges and gilds [taxes] of the same "4. Elsewhere also, it seems to have become a recognized principle that "all franchised men being free of one occupation shall henceforth be free of all occupations "5, but usually upon the understanding that they contributed to every craft in which they engaged". The economic position of women in the Middle Ages is obscure, though they were not without a considerable share in the industrial life of the country. There is not the same evidence of industrial organization among them such as we find in the Livre des métiers of thirteenth-century Paris 7, but they were admitted to the membership of certain craft gilds, especially among the Barber Surgeons of London and 1 Morris, Chester, 436 (1574). 2 Ibid. 404. 4 Ibid. ii. 309. (i.) London; in 1336 the Weavers complained that the Burellers exercised their craft without being members of their gild. The authorities ordained that all freemen could set up looms and weave and sell cloth at their will, “saving to the king his yearly farm", i.e. provided they contributed to the Weavers' farm: Letter Book E, 296 seq. About 1518 the Weavers sued a grocer for setting up weaving without licence; the defendant alleged that he had tendered his contribution: Select Cases in the Court of Requests, p. lxxiii. (ii.) Newcastle; a craftsman may occupy other crafts upon payment of a fine: Select Cases in the Star Chamber, ii. 112. "" (iii.) Coventry; if any one wished to occupy another calling he must 'agree with the said occupation" (1518): Leet Book, iii. 655. Again in 1544 it was granted that every clothier might weave his own cloth if he paid the Weavers' charges: ibid. iii. 776. (iv.) Beverley; in 1492 the Tailors laid down the rule that drapers who encroached upon their sphere should pay contributions to them: Beverley Town Documents, 75. Economic Journal, v. 218. York; they were enrolled as apprentices; 2 and the brewing industry was largely in their hands. They also shared in the woollen industry as spinners, weavers and dyers 3. One-fourth of the cloth woven in York at the end of the fourteenth century is said to have been produced by women, and the ordinances of the Weavers' gild (1400) provide that no woman should weave unless she were well taught and approved 5. In the time of Edward I. Wallingford contained as many as fifty women traders. There seems, therefore, no adequate ground for the view that working women were mainly " unpaid domestic workers" following household occupations, rather than wage-earners supplying a market. The act of 1363 restricting craftsmen to a single trade did not apply to women, and incidentally throws light upon their industrial pursuits. "But the intent of the king and of his council is that women, that is to say, brewers, bakers, carders and spinners, and workers as well of wool as of linen-cloth and of silk, brawdesters and breakers of wool, and all other that do use and work all handiworks, may freely use and work as they have done before this time" 8. The stress of competition, however, gave rise to an agitation against the employment of women workers. At Bristol in 1461 the complaint was made that weavers set to work or hired to others their wives, daughters and maidens, “by the which many and divers of the king's liege people, likely men to do the king service in his wars and in the defence of this 1 Young, Barber Surgeons of London, 38, 260; York Memorandum Book, i. p. 1. At Coventry in 1536 “ Alice Green, cake-baker", was required to contribute to the Bakers' craft: Coventry Leet Book, iii. 723. Women were members of the Dyers' craft at Bristol : infra, n. 3. 2 See Guildhall Journals, passim. The act of 1406 (supra, p. 289) applied to a daughter as well as to a son. . 3 (i.) Spinners: "If any spinner find her [self] grieved she...": Green, Worcester, ii. App. lxviii. (1497). (ii.) Dyers: "If any damage is done through defect of dyeing by any man or woman of the said craft Little Red Book of Bristol, ii. 83 (1407). (iii.) Women wool-wrappers— wages fixed: Records of Leicester, i. 186 (1281). as 4 York Memorandum Book, i. p. xxviii. 5 Ibid. i. 243. 7 E. Dixon, 6 Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. App. 578. Craftswomen", in Economic Journal, v. 225. 8 Statutes, i. 380. At Coventry women are said to have been employed knitters, candle-makers and cutters of fish: Coventry Leet Book, iv. See also A. Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century (1909), c. 5; English Life and Manners in the later Middle Ages (1913), 293-294. P. xli. Silkweaving. his land, and sufficiently learned in the said craft, goeth vagrant and unoccupied, and may not have their labour to their living"1. Accordingly weavers were forbidden to employ women, except those who were now getting their livelihood from weaving. But more than a century earlier (1344), the London Girdlers had refused to allow any woman, other than the wife or daughter of a girdler, to be employed in their craft; and the prohibition appears in other industries 2. Sometimes the prohibition against woman's labour extended even to a wife or daughter. In the sixteenth century the weavers of York ordered " that there shall no man of the said craft learn his wife, his daughter, or any woman, to weave in their said craft under pain of twenty shillings." As a rule a woman could exercise her husband's craft after his death, and even employ journeymen and apprentices. "If any franchised men's wives", ordained the authorities of York in 1529, "after the death of their husbands be disposed to live sole without any other husband, that then it shall be lawful unto all such to occupy their husband's craft . . . and for take both journeymen and apprentices into their service " 4. "3 Of the various industries in which craftswomen were engaged we hear most about silk-weaving. The London silk-weavers were certainly organized as an industrial body by the middle of the fourteenth century and probably earlier. In 1370 a merchant of Lombardy was indicted upon a petition presented to the king "by the poor women called silkwomen", on the ground that he engrossed all the silk raw and spun in order to raise the price. For this offence he was fined the enormous sum of two hundred pounds 5. In 1379 the Commons petitioned the king that no one should be allowed to wear silk except knights and ladies, and those having an income of forty pounds a year. They were evidently anxious to discourage the silk-weaving Little Red Book of Bristol, ii. 127. 2 Riley, Memorials, 217 (Girdlers); Vict. County Hist. Yorkshire, iii. 454 (Bakers, 1595). M. Sellers, " York in the Sixteenth Century ", in English Hist. Review, ix. 295. 4 Vict. County Hist. Yorkshire, iii. 453. 5 Illingworth, Inquiry into Forestalling, 235. Women workers of silk are mentioned in the act of 1363. Rot. Parl. iii. 66 b. industry on grounds set forth in a subsequent petition, that silk "is no commodity nor thing abiding to the enriching of this land, but things of plesaunce for them that liken to have them " 1. We meet with the silk-weavers again in the next century, when they appealed to the king for protection against the competition of foreign manufactures. "Whereas it is shewed . . . by the grievous complaint of the silk-women and spinners of the mistery and occupation of silk-working within the city of London how that divers Lombards and other strangers, imagining to destroy the said mistery and all such virtuous occupations of women in the said realm to enrich themselves and to put such occupations to other lands, . . . bring into the said realm wrought silk throwen, ribbands and laces, falsely and deceitly wrought, corses of silk and all other things concerning the said mistery and occupation, in no manner wise bringing any good silk unwrought as they were wont to bring heretofore, to the final destruction of the said misteries and occupations". The act of 1455 forbade the import of manufactured silk goods, and was confirmed under Edward IV. and Richard III 2. It has been supposed that silk-women were aliens 3, but the language of their petition clearly shows that they were natives and that their industry was of old standing. In this petition they asserted that they had been in the craft within the same city of time that no mind runneth unto the contrary. . . and where upon the same crafts, before this time, many a worshipful woman within the said city have lived full honourably, and therewith many good households kept, and many gentlewomen and other in great number like as there now be more than a thousand have been drawn under them in learning the same crafts and occupation", yet now owing to the competition of Italian commodities there was great idleness amongst young gentlewomen . . . and laying down of many good and notable households". Silk-weaving, they added, was "convenient, worshipful and according for gentlewomen and other women of worship. . . . Every well-disposed person 1 Rot. Parl. v. 325 a (1455). 2 Statutes, ii. 374, 395, 472, 493. 3 W. Cunningham, Alien Immigrants (1897), 118. 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". 3 Ashley, Economic History, i. 73. |
