[341] This forms the earliest account we possess of the costs of a private bill. Ibid. 308-311.
[342] Freeman’s Exeter, 146-154.
[343] English Guilds, 328.
[344] See Chapter XIII. p. 352-4.
[345] In 1376 the judges held that no guild could be established save by royal charter. (Seligman in his Med. Guilds p. 66, quotes Year Book 49, Edward III. fol. 36.) On the other hand in 1376 the commons presented a petition complaining that many of the mayors were prevented from exercising their office thoroughly by the special charters which had been granted to certain misteries and praying that these special charters might be withdrawn so as to strengthen the hands of the local authorities. (Rot. Parl. ii. 331 No. 54.) See Gross i. 113 note 2. For instances of royal charters to guilds see the Mercers of Shrewsbury (Hibbert, 64), the Tailors of London (Clode’s Merchant Tailors), and various companies in Hull (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life).
[346] A curious instance is given in Hull in which one of the county magnates made use of the guild as an instrument for getting hold of the borough representation in Parliament. (Lambert’s Two Thousand Years of Guild Life, 182.)
[347] The story of the Hull Merchants’ Company is very instructive. Ibid. 180, etc.
[348] See Chapter VIII. The union of crafts in a guild at Walsall (Gross ii. 248) before 1440 seems to have been very like the union of crafts at Coventry a century earlier to get control of the town government, “in eschewing of such great misorder and inconvenience as here of late hath fortuned and happened.”
[349] Carlisle Mun. Rec. ed. Ferguson and Nansen 89-99.
[350] The town customs and bye-laws were drawn up in 1561 by “the Mayor and Council with four of every occupation in the aforesaid city, for and in the name of the whole citizens (Carlisle Mun. Rec. 28, 29, 59). In Beverley the alderman of merchants and twenty-one aldermen of various crafts gave assent in the fifteenth century to ordinances of the governors.” (Gross, ii. 23.)