An order of the corporation[162] directing that burgesses only are to be elected Wardens of the companies points to another abuse, the existence of which is proved by other evidence, viz., the admittance of non-residents in the town to membership in the companies on payment of a sufficiently large entrance fee. Yet the extent to which corruption could go was seen forty years later when the corporation stultified itself by passing an order[163] allowing the Haberdashers to elect persons, though they might not be burgesses, as Wardens of their company.
The general impression which such transactions leave is that extreme laxity prevailed in all departments. The town woke up for a moment in 1702 when the prospect perhaps of a harvest of unpaid fines induced them to make an effort to recover all such[164]. It is to be regretted that nothing remains to show to what extent the abuse had prevailed, nor how far the present effort was successful. The annual fine of the Bakers’ company was £3. 6s. 8d. which they appear to have generally paid with considerable reluctance[165]. The supply of provision to the town seems to have given much trouble in the early years of the eighteenth century. Permission was given, in 1730, to the country butchers to sell in the town unless the town butchers could furnish meat in sufficient quantity. Similar permission was accorded to the country bakers, if the Bakers’ company in the town would not pay their yearly fine. This they were unwilling, or unable, to do, and the country bakers were in consequence called in[166].
with one another,
The picture given by such incidents is not more significant of the degeneracy of the Gilds than is that which the friction of the companies one with another presents. The Mercers and the Drapers had frequently made mutual complaints of intrusion: the Mercers and the Glovers also appear as great rivals in later years. In 1679 and at several subsequent dates there were actions at law between the two companies. In 1727 the records of the Glovers show that similar actions were again in process. In 1721 the company unanimously agreed to withstand the Tailors in the matter of widow Steen, whom they pledge themselves to support; “and that shee may goe on with makeing Brichess peruided shee dos not line them with flonen or Buckrom or cennet onlye Lether.”
and with their own members.
Nor is the evidence of intestine friction within the Gilds themselves less significant of decay. So early as 1636 the Mercers were fain to confess that the spirit of mutual assistance had disappeared, in the order which they passed to the effect that any combrother refusing to pay his assessment was to be distrained upon by authority of the Wardens. There are several records of such distraints. In 1700 they find it necessary to pass an ordinance against freemen taking the sons of intruders as apprentices. The records of the other companies are, similarly, full of like evidences of demoralisation. The companies are declared to be impoverished by the taking of inordinate numbers of apprentices. The same sort of abuse is found in a complaint which appears in the Glovers’ books in 1656: “the company is much impoverished by the taking in of foreigners freemen such as have not served” their due apprenticeship. “The disorderly manner of electing Wardens” about which the Glovers have to “take account” in 1668 points to a great deterioration in the manner of holding Gild meetings from that which has been sketched in a previous chapter[167]. Worse than all is the confession that the Gild brothers have sunk so low as to connive at intruders “for fraudulent lucre and gain[168].” The Saddlers have the same sort of complaint in 1740. Some brethren are infringing on the trades of others: resolutions are passed against such conduct. Their books show that the resolutions were soon forgotten[169]. The other Gilds experienced similar difficulties. In 1745 the Barbers levied a fine of ten shillings on brethren who should so far forget themselves as to instruct “men or women servants to dress hair.”
The problem of regulating trade would have been difficult enough under the most favourable circumstances. With the Gilds in the condition which we have been considering it was an impossibility. There was indeed a feature in the modern companies which at the outset deprived the attempt to utilise them beneficially for trade-purposes of all chance of success.
The Gilds have changed to capitalist companies.
The old Gilds, which had lived through the shocks of the Reformation, and the Elizabethan changes, had quite altered their character. The new ones which had arisen differed widely from the old fraternities. Instead of being brotherhoods of craftsmen desirous of advancing the public weal, they were now mere societies of capitalists, intent only on private and personal advantage. As a writer of 1680 observes “most of our ancient Corporations and Guilds [have] become oppressive Oligarchies[170].” There is a constant endeavour to restrict the companies to favoured individuals. Every “foreigner” is subjected to a heavy fine, which grows larger in amount as the companies feel the trade slipping from their hands in spite of their desperate endeavours to restrict it. The new compositions continually point to this abuse by bringing back the fines to their original sum, or rather reducing them to an amount less inordinate than that which they have irregularly reached. The admission stamp of the Saddlers was 4/- in 1784. It reached 8/2 in 1799. In 1831 it was 20/2. The Mercers’ fine was fixed at £40. 6s. 8d. in 1789, “besides fees.” In 1823 it had sunk to £20. The Mercers were of course one of the richest of the companies, yet the sum was a large one to pay for the privilege of opening a shop in a provincial town.
Other means to restrict themselves were also attempted. Increase in the number of apprentices was viewed with disfavour. There are frequent complaints of the “impoverishment” of the companies through the indiscriminate admittance of “foreigners.” All the evidence shows how entirely they have degenerated into mere societies of capitalists. Their records almost decline into bald columns of pounds, shillings and pence. For it was to this completeness of degradation that the social body had sunk. The merest selfishness was lauded as a patriotic virtue. Private gain was recommended as a public benefit. Social disintegration and industrial anarchy ruled supreme, and when commercial success had come to be looked upon as the one avenue to honour and advancement, it was not to be expected that the companies would escape the general infection. They formed simply one among many means by which the individual was enabled to fill his own pockets at the cost of a suffering and squalid populace.