Mr. Power says: ‘The officers thus put under an obligation to perform certain public duties were the masters or aldermen of the Surgeons’ Guild, and it is certain that they took so wide a view of their duties as to harass the members of the Barbers’ Guild who meddled with surgery. Thus in 1410 certain ‘good and honest folk, barbers of the city, appeared by their counsel in the private chamber of the aldermen and sheriffs, and demanded that they should for ever peaceably enjoy their privileges, without scrutiny of any person of other craft or trade than barbers, and this neither in shaving, cupping, bleeding, nor any other thing in any way pertaining to barbery, or to such practice of surgery as is now used, or in future to be used, within the craft of the said barbers.’[145]
In 1417 there is in the city records special reference to the wardens of the faculty or craft of surgeons. Security was given by a surgeon to the Chamberlain of the city to ensure due care of his patients. John Severelle Love, surgeon, undertook to pay £20 sterling to the Chamberlain if he ‘should take any man under his care, as to whom risk of maiming, or of his life might ensue, and within four days should not warn the wardens of the craft of surgery thereof.’ Half of this sum was to go to the city, and the other half to the faculty of surgeons.[146]
We now arrive at the time when another great surgeon arose. This was Thomas Morestede, surgeon to Henry V. and Henry VI., and probably previously to Henry IV., who, Mr. Power says, made the first serious attempt to convert surgery into a profession. When Henry V. in the spring of 1415 entered on his campaign in France, which ended with the victory at Agincourt on the 25th October, the medical arrangements of the army were very complete. ‘The agreement, dated 29th April 1415, is to the effect that Nicholas Colnet was to accompany the King for a year as physician to the forces in Guienne and France. He was to be attended by three archers as a guard, each archer receiving sixpence a day, whilst Colnet drew twelvepence for his own pay. Thomas Morstede, the surgeon, had also three archers assigned to him for protection, and he too received twelve pence a day, in addition to the usual allowance of one hundred marks a quarter—the pay, it is stated, for thirty men-at-arms, with a share of the plunder. Morestede was directed further to take with him twelve of his own craft, each subordinate surgeon to receive the pay of an archer—sixpence a day.... The scale of pay here granted is very liberal. The ordinary day’s wage of a labourer at this time was one penny. Each archer and each surgeon was considered to be worth the wages of six day labourers, and the two chiefs double their assistants.... Yet in spite of these attractions the service was a perilous one, even though it only lasted a few months. Morestede engaged William Bredewardyne to act under him, but he had such difficulty in securing the services of the twelve assistants that he prayed the King ‘to grant his letters of Privy Seal directed to your Chancellor of England, to cause him to deliver to your suppliant letters of commission under your great seal, by force of which he should have power to press twelve persons of his craft, such as he should choose to accompany him, and to serve your most gracious sovereign lord during your campaign.’[147] Morstede became a rich and influential London citizen, and served as sheriff in 1436. He died in 1450, and was buried in the Church of St. Olave Upwell, Old Jewry, where he had built ‘a fair new aisle.’[148]
Dr. Furnivall printed in his edition of Thomas Vicary’s Anatomie of the Bodie of Man (Early Text Society, 1888, p. 236), a paper from a manuscript in the British Museum (Royal M.S., 7 F., xiv., art. 24) containing a statement of the pay of navy surgeons in the reign of Henry VIII. The Henry Grace de Dieu carried two surgeons at 23s. 4d. a month; also The Mary Rose and The Great Gally, with two surgeons each at the same pay, and nineteen other vessels each with one surgeon at 10s. a month.
To return to the Fellowship of Surgeons, Mr. Power tells us that in 1435 the surgeons, then seventeen in number, became an established body, with a code of laws and regulations which still exist in a small vellum volume now preserved in Barbers’ Hall. In 1462 they obtained a charter of incorporation, and in 1492 were given a grant of arms. In 1493 the guild ‘was living on friendly terms with the Barbers’ Company, for in this year the two guilds entered into a “composition,” dated 12th May, and signed by representatives of both bodies. This composition recognised the independence of the two fellowships “of surgeons enfranchised within the city of London,” and “of barber-surgeons and surgeon-barbers enfranchised in the said city.” It was agreed that neither body should admit any one except a regular apprentice to practise surgery without the consent and knowledge of the other, and to ensure this being carried into effect every stranger seeking a license to practise in London was to be presented to the Mayor by the four wardens of the two guilds.’[149] The end of the Fellowship of Surgeons came in 1540, when it was united by Act of Parliament (32 Henry VIII.) with the Company of Barbers. The granting of the charter on this occasion was the cause of Holbein’s famous picture being painted. This picture still decorates the Barbers’ Hall in Monkwell Street.
Allusion has already been made to the Barbers’ Company—to its first master in 1308, and to its incorporation by royal charter in 1462 by Edward IV. In 1376 the gild elected two masters, and at this time the members were sharply divided between the barbers proper and the barbers exercising the faculty of surgery.
In 1390 four masters were sworn in in one year, but these were really only master and wardens, as stated by Mr. Young in his most valuable and exhaustive account of the Barber Surgeons’ Company.[150]
The relative positions of the city companies has frequently changed, thus at one time the Barber Surgeons were entitled to the seventeenth place, but in 1516 they only ranked as the twenty-eighth. In 1537 the Barber Surgeons formed the most numerous company in London, the number of freemen being 185. The next in order of numbers was the Skinners with 151, then the Haberdashers with 120, the Leathersellers with 113, and the Fishmongers with 109. The rest of the companies numbered less than 100, the Bowyers being the lowest with 19.[151] In 1745 the surgeons, who had long chafed under the inconveniences caused by official connection with the barbers, seceded and formed the Surgeons’ Company, under the title of ‘The Masters, Governors and Commonalty of the Art and Science of Surgery,’ which was established by Act of Parliament. The Surgeons found a temporary home at Stationers’ Hall until 1751, when the premises known as Surgeons’ Hall, in the Old Bailey, were ready for occupation.
The company came to a premature end in 1796, and it was not until 1800 that the Royal College of Surgeons was established.