Old Country Inns of England

by Henry Parr Maskell; Edward W. Gregory

THE CRAFT GUILDS AND TRADERS’ INNS

Of the writing of books about the mediæval guilds there seems to be no end, and each new contribution serves to mystify rather than to throw light on the difficulties of the subject. From the earliest times, it was an inherent tendency of the Teutonic races to combine and form guilds. There were guilds for the building of bridges, for the relief of poor pilgrims, and for almost every imaginable purpose, ranging from the organisation of a municipality to the Saxon “frith-gild,” which undertook the punishment of thieves and the exacting of compensation for homicides. As to the craft guilds of the Middle Ages, some are content to regard them as trade unions, others as similar to our modern clubs, and a third class of writers assert that they were purely religious. As a matter of fact, they were capable of becoming all three in turn.

No doubt the original motive of these guilds was to create a monopoly and artificial control over the particular trade, and also to obtain that security which only an organised association is able to give against tyranny and corruption. They comprised all ranks, wage-earners, manufacturers, and merchants. The weakness of such a body was that there was no community of interests as regards the internal economy of the industry. That is to say, the merchants and masters would not be induced to improve the position of their apprentices or to raise the wages of journeymen. The only common ground would lie in attempts to assert the interests of the trade at large against the whole body of consumers, or against competing trades.

On the other hand, the Corporation itself was originally a guild which had succeeded in obtaining a charter and thus becoming the administrative authority. It would regard with anxiety the creation of other bodies which might follow in its footsteps and become very dangerous rivals. Charters, indeed, were in the twelfth century being bought from the King, which rendered fraternities dependent for their existence on the royal will alone. The weavers of London lived in a quarter by themselves, with their own courts and raised their own taxes, suffering no intrusion from the City officials. Only by an expensive process of boycotting was this abuse brought to an end. When once the municipalities perceived their danger, they proceeded ruthlessly to reduce the craft guilds into subjection and to limit the purposes for which they were permitted to combine.

And this brings us to the second period in the history of the craft guilds, when we find each trade forming itself into an association to provide a burial fund for its deceased members, masses for the repose of their souls, and to organise a solemn procession and miracle play on the annual festival. Behind the religious association the union for trade purposes remained. When the secular powers of the craft guild were more clearly defined, in the fifteenth century, under the style of a company, the observance of the mystery was often allowed to fall into desuetude. The Companies became mere trustees of the endowments belonging to the religious guilds and treated with equanimity the abolition of these trusts at the Reformation.

In the third period the craft guilds as Companies became a useful adjunct of the Corporation, protecting the community from overcharges, settling disputes in the trade, and generally forming courts of reference on technical matters. The City companies of to-day, though not under any compulsion to do so, still occasionally render service of a kindred nature. The work of the Plumbers’ Company, a few years ago, in arranging for the examination and registration of plumbers will be called to mind; the Apothecaries’ Company has also done good service. Out of the guilds of the Holy Trinity at Hull and at Deptford has grown the Corporation of Trinity House, that wealthy philanthropic body that builds lighthouses, licenses pilots, and ministers in various ways to the welfare of our merchant shipping.

At Headcorn and Cranbrook, in the Weald of Kent, and again at Lavenham and Sudbury, in Suffolk, may be seen many beautiful examples of the halls of the craft guilds now derelict and converted to less noble purposes. Part of the King’s Head at Aylesbury is supposed by experts to have been anciently a Guildhall. We shall refer more fully to this building in another chapter.

We have seen that the guilds afforded very few advantages to the wage-earners, and according to the natural tendency of all such bodies, they ended in becoming aristocratic and exclusive. They were for a long period masters of the labour of the country, preventing any attempts at strikes, and securing that all disputes as to the rate of pay should be settled by the arbitration of their own warden. Vainly the serving-men of the Saddlers strove to form a guild of their own on the harmless pattern of a religious body with their own festival at Our Lady of Stratford-le-Bow. It was complained of them that in thirteen years their hire had more than doubled the ordinary rate, and their meetings were ruthlessly repressed. The May-Day festival of the Journeymen Shearers in Shrewsbury was suppressed for a similar reason.[7]

Only one refuge remained for the oppressed workmen—the inn, which for centuries was to be the place where he could hold these more or less illegal meetings with his comrades. In the houses of call for artisans, the workers discussed their grievances, hatched conspiracies and strikes, or devised less drastic methods for the betterment of their condition. At Kidderminster there is an inn called The Holy Blaise, after the patron of weavers; another, Bishop Blaise, exists in the heart of the City of London in New Inn Yard. The Boar’s Head, by the way, was a commonly accepted emblem of St. Blaise. Many St. Crispins or Jolly Crispins survive to represent the shoemaker. St. Hugh was another patron of the shoe trade, and there was once a St. Hugh’s Bones in Clare Market. Simon the Tanner is an old house in Long Lane, Bermondsey. A later age absurdly re-named inns frequented by the labouring class as The Weavers’ Arms, Carpenters’ Arms, Bricklayers’ Arms, etc., etc. These inns, a common occurrence in every large town, are often of old foundation, and incidentally commemorate the fact that in the public-house it was that the wage-earners first learnt the art of combination for their own betterment. Here the earliest trade unions found a welcome and a home, with which many of their successors are still content. The club room at the inn was the cradle of the Friendly Societies. The Freemasons have given name to a whole series of taverns. All the numerous and generally well managed benefit Societies on the pattern of the Foresters, Hearts of Oak and Oddfellows owe their very existence to the public-house.