§ 1. The origin of towns
§ 2. Rise of towns in England
§ 3. Towns in Domesday: London
Now, in the Domesday Book there is mention made of forty-one provincial cities or boroughs, most of them being the county towns of the present day. There are also ten fortified towns of greater importance than the others. They are Canterbury, York, Nottingham, Oxford, Hereford, Leicester, Lincoln, Stafford, Chester, and Colchester. London was a town apart, as it had always been, and was the only town which had a civic constitution, being regulated by a port-reeve and a bishop, and having a kind of charter, though afterwards the privileges of this charter were much increased. London was of course a great port and trading centre, and had many foreign merchants in it. It was then, as well as in subsequent centuries, the centre of English national life, and {25} the voice of its citizens counted for something in national affairs. The other great ports of England at that time were Bristol, Southampton, and Norwich, and as trade grew and prospered, many other ports rose into prominence (see p. [64]).
§ 4. Special privileges of towns
§ 5. How the towns obtained their charters
§ 6. The gilds and the towns. Various kinds of gilds
§ 7. How the Merchant Gilds helped the growth of towns
§ 8. How the Craft Gilds helped industry
We must now look for a moment at the work of the artisans’ gilds, or craft gilds, which afterwards became very important. These gilds are found not only in London, but in provincial towns. The London weavers are mentioned as a craft gild in the time of Henry I. (A.D. 1100), and most of these gilds seemed to have existed already for a long period. The Goldsmiths’ Gild claimed to have possessed land before the Norman Conquest, and it was fairly powerful in the days of Henry II. (A.D. 1154), for he found it convenient to try and suppress it. But it did not receive the public recognition of a charter till the fourteenth century. They arose, of course, first in the towns, and originally seem to have consisted of a small body of the leading men of a particular craft, to whom was confided the regulation of a particular industry, probably as soon as that industry was thought of sufficient importance to be regulated. The gild tried to secure good work on the part of its members, and attempted to suppress the production of wares by irresponsible persons who were not members of the craft. Their fundamental principle was, that a member should work not only for his own private advantage, but for the reputation and good of his trade; hence bad work was punished, and it is curious to note that night-work is prohibited as leading to poor work. The gild took care to secure a supply of competent workmen for the future by training young people in its particular industry, and hence arose the apprentice system, which at first, at any rate, had considerable advantages.