No wine was permitted to be sold till it had been submitted to a scrutiny, and been duly gauged. In the reign of Edward III. four vintners were chosen yearly to assess the prices of wine. King’s Prisage, or Custom, was taken according to a certain scale on all imported wines. The wine taverns were furnished with a pole projecting from the gable of the house, and supporting a sign, or a bunch of leaves at the end (the bush of the proverb, ‘Good wine needs no bush’). In one ordinance it is stated that the poles of the taverns of Cheapside and elsewhere were of such a length as to be in the way of persons on horseback, and so heavy as to cause the risk of greatly damaging the houses; in consequence of this it was enacted that from thenceforth no sign-pole should be more than seven feet in length.[337]
No ale or wine tavern was allowed to remain open after curfew.
The clothing trades are well represented among the city companies. The Mercers head the list of the ‘Twelve,’ and the freemen were originally ‘chapmen in small or mixed wares,’ that is, those articles which were sold retail by the little balance or small scale, in contradistinction to those things sold by the beam, or in gross, and they did business in the Mercery, Cheapside. Wadmal, a coarse woollen stuff, lake or fine linen, fustian, felt, etc., were among these smallwares. Gradually the mercers of Cheap extended their dealings, became vendors of silks and velvets (temp. Henry VI.), and formed a mixed body of merchants and shopkeepers, leaving the smallwares, or mercery proper, to the haberdashers. Sir William Stone held the position of mercer to Queen Elizabeth, and supplied her with her wardrobe.
The Haberdashers imported a cloth at first styled halberject, and in the fourteenth century hapertas, from which, as Mr. Riley suggests, the term ‘haberdasher’ probably originated. Subsequently the Hurers and the Hatters joined them.
The Merchant Taylors and Linen Armourers are in some documents styled ‘Mercatores Scissores,’ ‘Scissors of London,’ ‘Scissors and Fraternity of St. John Baptist,’—titles alike pointing to their being anciently both tailors and cutters, and also making the padding and interior lining of armour, as well as manufacturing garments. Tailors made dresses for both sexes, their prices, as usual, being regulated by public enactment. By ordinance of the reign of Edward III. it is declared that ‘Tailors shall henceforth take for a robe, garnished with silk, 18d.; for a man’s robe, garnished with thread and buckram, 14d.; also a coat and hood, 10d.; also for a lady’s long dress, garnished with silk and cendale, 2s. 6d.; also for a pair of sleeves for changing, 4d.’[338]
The Drapers’ Company is the third on the list of the twelve great companies, and the second of the clothing companies, the Mercers being the first. Henry Fitz-Ailwin, the first Mayor of London, was a freeman of the Drapers’ Gild, to which he left by will an inn, called the Chequer, in the parish of St. Mary Bothaw.
The Skinners represented the trade that dealt with furs. The furs mentioned in the Liber Albus as imported are, marten skins, rabbit skins, dressed woolfels, Spanish squirrel skins, and grysoevere or grey work. In the reign of Edward I. an enactment was made that ‘no woman, except a lady who is in the habit of using furs, shall have a hood furred with dressed woolfel’ (pelure). Women of ill-fame were forbidden at one period to wear minever or other furs, though at a later date they were permitted to use lambs’ wool and rabbit skin. No mixed work, formed of different kinds of skins, was allowed to be made, and no new fur was to be worked up with the old.[339]
‘The skynner unto the feeld moot also,
His hous in London is to streyt and scars
To doon his craft; sum tyme it was nat so.{317}
O lordës, yeve unto your men hir pars
That so doon, and acqwente hem bet with Mars,
God of bataile; he loueth non array
That hurtyth manhode at preef or assay.’
(The Regement of Princes, by Thomas Hoccleve, II. 477-483.)
The Clothworkers’ Company, formed by a junction of the Gilds of Shearmen and Fullers, has already been alluded to.
The minor companies connected with the clothing trades require some notice here. The Cordwainers held a prominent position, but in the reign of Edward I. (1303) there were public complaints of frauds and irregularities brought against them, and charges were made that they mixed inferior with the superior leathers. They were continually at feud with the Cobblers, and every endeavour was made to keep the two trades distinct. The cordwainers were forbidden to mend shoes and the cobblers to make them. Moreover, throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were fixed regulations not only that cordwainers should use new leather in making shoes, but that cobblers should be restricted wholly to the use of old leather in mending them. The latter were even punished for having new leather in their possession.[340]