Life in a mediæval city

by Edwin Benson

The professions, as we use the term to-day, had not as yet attained sufficient importance for them to form a distinct class division. There were a few capable physicians, but generally the practice of medicine was shared by the Church and the barber-surgeons. Priests and officers of the Church had the privilege peculiar to the Church by which even a poor but intellectually capable man could rise to high office and become the social equal of nobles. Architecture was practised by master-masons under the patronage of leading ecclesiastics and nobles. Teaching was nearly all the work of the Church. The lawyers, however, were already to be distinguished from those who gained profit by dealing in goods, for they made profit from transactions on paper, from managing the interests of others, from trading in their own acute mental powers.

The wool trade was by far the most extensive and flourishing trade of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was the trade that made England great commercially. Wool was England's raw material and the source of most of her wealth. The numerous monasteries had huge sheep-farms. Edward III. had encouraged foreign clothworkers to settle in England (in York, as in other places). The first York craftsmen to be incorporated were the weavers, who received a charter from Henry II., in return for which they paid a tax to the King for the customs and liberties he granted them. The weavers were the largest and wealthiest body of traders.

Guilds had developed from societies of masters and men engaged in the same trade, to the trade-guilds, which in the fourteenth century were trade corporations, the lower ranks of members being the workers, the higher ranks, including the office-holders, the richer merchants, the capitalist employers. The ruling committees of the trade-guilds made regulations and generally governed their particular trades. Despite the power of the guilds the municipal authority maintained its supremacy in civic government because it enforced the ordinances of the trades. Moreover, disputes between the guilds themselves gave the city authority opportunities of increasing its power, of which it availed itself.

The system of serfdom, by which serfs were bound to a particular domain and owned by their overlord, had not yet ceased. Nearly all the workmen of York, however, were freemen, i.e. they had full and complete citizenship. The members of the councils of aldermen and councillors, the mayors and city officials, the members of the trade-guilds, were all freemen.

In the fifteenth century the wealthy and important employers and traders governed the guilds. They were in the position and had the power to regulate the conduct in every way of their own trades. Thus, rules were laid down as to the terms of admission of men to the practice of a trade; the government of the guild and the meetings of the members and ruling committees; the moral standard of the members in their work and trafficking; the payments of masters to workers; the prices of goods to be sold to the public or other traders; the rates of fines and the amount of confiscations inflicted on those who broke the rules of their guild; the terms on which strangers, English and foreign, were to be allowed to pursue their trade in the city; whether Sunday trading was to be permitted or not; the duties of the searchers; everything incident to the share of the guild in the city's production of pageant plays.

The question of the terms of the residence and trading of strangers received constant consideration. The city had, in many respects, complete local autonomy and rules were made with regard to strangers who came to carry on their trades in the city. From 1459 aliens had, by municipal law, to live in one place only, at the sign of the Bull in Coney Street, unless they received special permission from the Mayor to reside elsewhere. The guilds were ruled by masters and wardens. They had their various officials. The searchers were officers appointed to observe that the rules of the trade were being carried out properly. They took care that only authorised members pursued the trade of the guild of which they were the officers. They vigilantly watched the conduct of the members, and it was their duty to take action in case of infringement of the rules and to bring offenders before the Mayor in his court.

The wealthy trading class all over the country did great and lasting work in founding grammar schools and building or rebuilding cathedrals and churches or parts of them. There was a social side to the guilds. This appeared in the public processions and the performances of plays, the morality and mystery plays of mediæval England. There was also a strong religious side to the guilds. The processions and plays were fundamentally religious. The Church's festivals were recognised as holidays. Much money was given and bequeathed for the foundation of chantries, which with their priests have their place also in the educational life of the city.

The merchants lived well. They were rich from trade, and through the corporate guilds governed their own trades both legislatively and executively; the highest offices in civic life were theirs; they lived in houses as splendid as they cared to have them; they furnished their homes with quantities of silver plate, both for use and for ornament, for this was the most suitable outlet for superfluous wealth in days when modern facilities for investment did not exist; they wore clothes of fine material, richly trimmed; they were honoured citizens; they were earnest in religion and their benevolence to the Church is very remarkable. They were forming a lesser aristocracy now that they were becoming owners of agricultural land as well as town property. They had the benefits of wealth and comfort, while they were shrewd enough to avoid the penalties of advertised riches. A typical instance of a successful merchant who rose to high positions was that of Sir Richard Yorke, who was Mayor of the staple of Calais and Lord Mayor of York in 1469 and 1482, and member of Parliament. A window in St. John's Church, Micklegate, in commemoration of him is still to be seen. A shield bearing his arms (azure, saltire argent) appears in the glass; another bears the arms of the Merchants of the Wool staple of Calais. He was knighted by Henry VII. when that king was in York in 1487.

Masters took apprentices, who themselves generally became masters in their turn. The conditions of apprenticeship were ruled in detail by the guilds.

When a workman became a skilled artisan he was called a journeyman, [3] that is, a man who earned a full day's pay for his work. The legal hours of work were, from March to September, from 5 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., with half an hour for breakfast, and an hour and a half for dinner. Saturday was universally a half-holiday. There were 44 working weeks in a year and, consequently, a total of holidays and non-working times of eight weeks. The burden of the very long hours was increased by the great physical exertion required from men who had to do much that is now done with the help of machinery. The strain was not always unrecognised, for the Minster workmen were allowed a period of rest during the working day.