THE WEAVERS
This is certainly the oldest Gild of which we have historical information. The weavers included under one Fraternity, at first, all the trades which belong to the manufacture and use of textile stuffs. The history of the Gild is briefly but clearly told by Loftie in his History of London.
“The weavers, again, by their superior wealth, and their superior organisation, were constantly exciting the envy, not only of other trades but also of the city guild itself. They had taken care to obtain acknowledgment as early as 1130, when Robert, son of Levestan, who may have been their alderman, paid 16£ into the treasury for them. They had a charter, more or less formal, in which Henry I. enacted that no one should exercise their trade in London or Southwark except he be a member of their guild. This was confirmed by Henry II. On the establishment of the mayoralty the weavers had a narrow escape. In 1202 the citizens offered the king sixty marks to suppress the guild, but they had money as well as influence, and the king only renewed their privileges, while he increased their annual payment. ‘Although,’ as Mr. Stubbs remarks, ‘there is no positive evidence to connect them and their fellow-guildsmen with the factions of Thomas FitzThomas and Walter Hervey, or with the later troubles under Edward I., it is not at all unlikely that their struggle with the governing body was a continuous one.’ Edward gave them a charter so worded that they assumed powers of self-government, which the city authorities could not recognise, and in the following reign a verdict against them was obtained after long litigation.
“It was perhaps in consequence of this verdict that the old corporation of the weavers resolved itself or was divided by a higher power into its constituent elements, and we henceforth hear of the drapers, tailors, and others, but no more of the weavers till long after. There is, however, absolute silence on the subject in the works of London historians. The phenomena are altogether peculiar, and but few facts can be picked out as tolerably certain. The weavers touched on one side the trade in linen, on the other that in wool. The woollen drapers were naturally very much divided in their interests from the linen-armourers, and the tailors who constructed garments, as well from the vegetable as from the animal production, were distinct from those who wove the cloth. We find, therefore, not only great dissension at times among the weavers, but a strong tendency to establish separate interests. The drapers, under their Latin designation of panarii, very soon divided themselves from the tailors, cissores; and, though there is no evidence of their separate existence before 1299, when the tailors’ records commence, it is very probable that from time to time they both rebelled against the tyranny of the weavers. Certain it is, that this powerful guild, which had subsisted through all changes and chances from the time of Henry I. at least, now suddenly and unaccountably disappears; while from its ashes rise the tailors—to whom long after, in the reign of Henry VII. the title of ‘Merchant Taylors’ was conceded—the clothworkers, at first ‘shermen’ and fullers, and the drapers, all of which preserve, more or less dimly, a tradition of their previous united state of existence” (vol. i. pp. 168, 170).
Was the old Gild of Weavers, that licensed by Henry I. and Henry II., entirely dissolved in consequence of the many branches which broke off from the parent trunk? It would appear that since the Craft of the Weavers was one thing and that of the Drapers was another, the Gild of the Weavers would still remain, in which case, though we cannot say that the Company is the most ancient, it would be quite true that the Company is descended from the most ancient Fraternity known.
It has now a Livery of 106; a Corporate Income of £1067; and a Trust Income of £1087. It formerly had a Hall in Basinghall Street. This was destroyed in the Great Fire, and, though subsequently rebuilt, was pulled down in 1856, when offices were built on the site.