To the Market House flocked the Welsh farmers, their bales of cloth being borne to the town on the backs of hardy ponies. The merchandise was exposed for sale in the large room upstairs. The Drapers assembled beneath, and proceeded to make their purchases in order of seniority, according to ancient usage. The custom which the Welshmen brought to the town easily accounts for the keenness of the competition to secure the market. For a long time the trade flourished. Gradually however the action of “foreigners” in buying from the Welsh manufacturers at their homes[158] broke down the monopoly which Shrewsbury had so long enjoyed. At the end of the 18th century the sales had shrunk to miserable proportions. In 1803 the room over the market was relinquished by the Drapers, and though a certain amount of Welsh trade was still carried on, it withdrew gradually from the town until it finally left Shrewsbury altogether. The Drapers might have realised that the time for restricting trade to the freemen of their company was past.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEGENERACY OF THE COMPANIES.
Outside competition
The competition of “interlopers” ruined the Welsh trade of Shrewsbury. It was not, as we have seen, from any lack of vigilance on the part of the companies. Stimulated by their new compositions they became extremely active. As early as 1622 the actions against “foreigners” begin. Soon afterwards they become of frequent occurrence until at length the books of the companies are almost mere records of a daily struggle for existence.
inevitable under the altered conditions of trade.
But the companies themselves are unsatisfactory.
Friction with the town authorities;
This was of course inevitable under the altered conditions of trade. But the companies exhibited in themselves all the radical defects which must pertain to such a system when it has outgrown its necessity. We have seen how free the earlier companies were from friction with the municipal authorities. In the 17th century this is changed. The propriety of setting up a May-pole had formerly been almost the only ground of conflict between the bailiffs and the craftsmen. But in 1639 we find that the Tanners were thought to be overstepping their powers; the corporation appointed a committee to examine their composition. Some seventeen years later, extreme measures had to be taken with regard to the same company. It was the custom for the charters to be inspected by the corporation periodically. In 1656 the Tanners refused to comply with the request to produce their composition for the mayor’s perusal, with the result that the company was prosecuted by the corporation[159].
The town had been willing to support the Drapers in their measures to draw the Welsh trade to Shrewsbury, but it did not approve of the line of action they tried subsequently to take, namely, to limit all the trade to their own members. In 1653 regulations were framed to prevent the company “forestalling or engrossing the Welsh Flannels, Cloaths etc.[160]” A more serious abuse transpired in connection with the Feltmakers’ company in 1667. They refused to make one who had been lawfully apprenticed to the trade in Shrewsbury free of their company. On this occasion the mayor and aldermen exercised their right of supervision by ordering the Wardens to admit the man, “and the Mayor is desired to give him the oath of a Freeman of the said Company[161].” The importance of the mayor being thus empowered by the municipal authorities to administer the oath of admittance to one of the Gilds is very great, and shows how real was the subordination of the latter to the town when the corporation chose to exert its rights.