Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Alice Stopford Green

THE TAILORS OF EXETER

It was in the fifteenth century, at the very time when the towns seem to have been most energetic in tightening the bonds that held the crafts fast to their service, that we find the crafts on their side most impatient of subjection, and eager to test their strength in a direct conflict with the civic rulers. Their restless energy broke down all barriers between trade and politics, and forced each into the service of the other; for by whatever stratagem the crafts proposed to compel the constituted authorities to recognize them in a partnership of power—whether a wealthy guild planned the winning of a charter which should make it a free and independent corporation in the town; or whether a combination of less powerful trades demanded to be officially included in the municipal government which regulated their business, or in any other way to control its action—in any and every conflict with the ruling oligarchy the guilds were forced to enlist the sympathy of the burghers and to become leaders of popular discontent. On the other hand the commons, with no resource against the official class save an occasional mass meeting, eagerly welcomed the aid of the disciplined army enrolled in the guild, and under the politic guidance of expert leaders, to give weight to their claims for more power. Thus under the stress of the growing passion for political emancipation, trading interests constantly seem to merge altogether into the ambitions and animosities of parties wholly occupied in a conflict about civic rights. No doubt a prevailing suspicion of some such intimate connection between the desire of the crafts to escape from municipal control and a democratic movement in city politics, gave fire to the discussions which from the first origin of the question disturbed market-place and council-chamber, law-court and Parliament, and proclaimed the vehemence of feeling with which so great a matter was debated.

In the Tailors’ Fraternity of Exeter we have a very curious example of the part which the Guild organization played in municipal politics. We have already seen the optimistic view taken by the Mayor and his Fellowship of “the great commonalty of the city,” united and harmonious, and worthily represented by the patriotic officers into whose hands an absolute and unquestioned power had been committed; so that when John Shillingford sends to the Recorder and the Fellowship an account of his doings in London in the matter of the Dean and Chapter, he simply begs them first to make such corrections as they saw fit, and adds, “This done I pray you to call before you at the Hall the substance of the commonalty praying every one of them in my name and charging them in the most straightest wise in the King’s behalf to come before you in haste for the tidings that I have sent home to you; and that ye wisely declare before them these answers; so that they say manly yea and nay in such points as you think to be done.”[320] Throughout the whole of the Mayor’s letters there is not the slightest indication that he had ever heard of any “impetuous clamours” of a revolutionary Exeter mob, little mindful of the honour of the city; nor that after a hundred years or more of gathering discontent a crisis was close at hand when the commonalty was to measure its strength against the corporation. Nevertheless the union of the moment was but the union that comes of confronting a common enemy; and the townsmen seemed to be only waiting till that strife was temporarily hushed to fling themselves again into the discussion of their own domestic differences.

It is probable that from the time when the people of Exeter began to elect their own mayor, bailiff, and eight aldermen of the wards, they were also accustomed to appoint a body of twelve men to aid the mayor in all difficult business.[321] As at Colchester, Norwich, and many other towns, the elections were made by a double jury of Twenty-four; but how the Twenty-four were themselves elected we do not know. In the fourteenth century they seem already established, like the Twenty-four of Norwich, as a permanent council to advise and assist the Mayor; but the Twelve apparently survived alongside of them, for freemen were forbidden to assemble for the election of a mayor “in the absence of the Thirty-six”; and the Twenty-four were unable to perform any act save in the presence of Twelve men.[322] Until the records of Exeter are published, however, it is impossible to define the relations of the two bodies; and the manner in which the Twenty-four took possession of the Council Chamber is unknown.[323]

In Exeter, as elsewhere, trouble broke out in the middle of the fourteenth century between the two factions of the community—between the commons, discontented and rebellious; and the governing class, who appear, not as innovators or usurpers, but as the conservative guardians of “the ancient orders and customs of the city.” The quarrel began in 1339 with “impetuous clamours” of the people against the constant re-election of one or two men as mayors; and for one year at least they carried their point, perhaps by some breach of former customs of election, for a decree was immediately issued that the people were not to gather together on the day of the mayor’s election “in the absence of the Thirty-six”; perhaps by some help from the Church and from country patrons, for it was further ordered that no clerk of the Consistory Court, nor any man who did not live in the city should be elected mayor or allowed in any way to meddle with the election. The decree that no burgher might be excluded from the office who was resident, had been seneschal and had the hundred shillings of property which was generally required in all boroughs was, if we may judge from other boroughs, simply a recapitulation of the common custom.

That the quarrel was still agitating the people’s minds some years later is shown by the ordinances of 1346 and 1347. The first forbade that a mayor should be immediately re-elected—an order evidently made to quiet public opinion but which the Twenty-four had no intention of observing. The second ordinance of 1347 decreed that the election should be made “by Twenty-four persons who upon their several and respective oaths shall make the election”—in fact it declared anew the custom which had been already recognized for fifty years, and probably from the first institution of the office, though of late years it had been called in question.

The victory of the governing body was apparently complete,[324] and it was indeed inevitable that so long as the city had to keep up its struggle with Earl and Bishop the needs and discipline of war should strengthen the position of the leaders and tighten their hold on their fellow-citizens. In 1427 the Twenty-four appear with the name of “the Common Council,” ordinances are issued in the name of “the Mayor and the Common Council,” and “in open court the Mayor and Bailiffs by the assent of the Twenty-four” transact all manner of town business, whether it concerned the city franchise, the hearing and carrying out of the King’s orders, or the voting of money for public purposes.[325] To them also undoubtedly Shillingford wrote his long letters from London, respectfully addressing them as the “Fellowship” or “his Fellows,” with whom he was accustomed to take counsel.

The ordinary burgesses of Exeter therefore, so far back as we can trace its history, played a modest part in city politics, nor had their attempt to assert themselves in 1339 won for them any advantage whatever. In 1460 the townsfolk made a new effort of a different and singularly interesting kind.

There was in Exeter a certain Tailors’ Guild. Its rules, written or copied in 1460, ordained that every full tailor worth £20 “shall be of the Master’s Fellowship and Clothing” and pay as his entrance “a spoon of silver weighing one ounce and the fashion,” besides buying a livery once a year and giving twelve pence to the yearly feast. Other shop-holders were entered as of the Fellowship of the Bachelors, each paying 8d. to the feast and his offering.[326] There were special charges for the “free sewers”; and every servant who took wages was also brought into the organization and had to pay his sixpence yearly to the Guild.[327] The master and wardens sat every Thursday at nine o’clock to do business, and general meetings of the wardens and shop-holders were held four times a year, where after they had dined the free sewers were given the remains of the feast. There was a council of Eight;[328] and the usual rules for protecting the trade monopoly, for maintaining discipline, and for collecting funds were made.

So far the Guild was as other Guilds. But rich, powerful, and well drilled, it cherished ambitions beyond the perfecting of the tailors’ art.[329] In the struggle between York and Lancaster, the sympathies of official Exeter were apparently Lancastrian, and when Edward the Fourth came to the throne[330] he probably found it politic or necessary, by a generous grant to the Tailors’ Company, to make friends of the trading classes that had been left outside the governing caste. By the charter of incorporation which he allowed them they were granted singular privileges, of a kind which the municipal government bitterly resented. The charter placed the guild in direct dependence on the King, not on the mayor. They were given a rare liberty—the right “to make ordinances among themselves, as to them might beseem most necessary and behovefull for the said fraternity,” and to “make search” and correct faults, apparently without need of the mayor’s sanction.[331] Not only so, but they obtained authority to “augment and enlarge” their Guild as they chose; and did forthwith begin daily to take into their company “divers crafts other than of themselves, and divers others not inhabitants within the same city”—men in fact of every conceivable trade and occupation, free brethren who swore to be true and loving brothers of the guild, never to go to law with any of the fraternity, to pay their fines duly during life to the treasure box, and leave a legacy to it at their death. The usual rule that no man of the craft could be admitted to the freedom of the city save by the consent of the master and wardens gained a new political significance when the bulk of the inhabitants were thus enrolled under the Tailors’ Guild, and when consequently it was the master of the Tailors who decided what men should or should not be made free of the borough.