Five centuries ago one of the privileges of a free borough was the holding of a market for the sale of goods by people who were not burgesses of the town. Every free borough had its market-place, which usually lay under the shadow of the parish church, as it does to-day at Beverley, Driffield, Hedon, Howden and Hull. The markets were held on certain fixed days of the week, and Tuesdays and Fridays have been the market-days at Hull since the granting of King Edward I.’s charter in the year 1299.
While the position of the market, and probably also its general appearance, have not altered during all these centuries, certain of its adornments have entirely disappeared. Beverley is the only town in the East Riding that has preserved its market cross. From all the towns of the East Riding have disappeared the stocks, the pillory, and the ducking-stool.
Parish Stocks preserved in Beverley Minster.
To the stocks and the pillory went in former times such men and women as ‘John Fleshewer, butcher,’ of Hedon, who in 1420 was brought before the town bailiffs on the charge that he ‘did sell flesh not useable, old, useless, and worthless,’ and ‘Agnes, wife of John Piese, schipman,’ also of Hedon, who ‘did sell two penny wheat loaves of bread, not useable and fusty.’ In the ducking-stool went to the town moat or the river the scolding woman whose temper and tongue were equally beyond their owner’s control. So the stocks, pillory, and ducking-stool proved themselves to be not only ornamental but also very useful.
The daily work of wage-earners five hundred years ago was very different from what it is to-day. There were then no such things as our huge factories in which thousands of ‘hands’ are employed day after day at the same monotonous toil. Work was more varied and the conditions were much freer. But hours were longer and pay was considerably less. The legal hours of the day labourer from March to September were 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., with two hours allowed for breakfast and dinner. On the other hand, ‘Bank Holidays’—or Holy-Days, as they were then called—were far more numerous. Holy-days, in fact, reduced the working-days of the year to only 264 in number.
The building-accounts for the Beverley North Bar in 1409 give a record of all the wages paid; and from these we find that the wages of a bricklayer were 6d. per day, of a labourer 4d., and of a carter with his horse and cart 12d.[[40]] What would the ‘British workman’ of to-day think of the following scale of wages, which formed the statute yearly wages in 1444:—
| With food and clothing. | |||||
| s. | d. | s. | d. | ||
| Bailiff of husbandry | 23 | 4 | or | 5 | 0 |
| Hind, carter, shepherd | 20 | 0 | ” | 4 | 0 |
| Labourer | 15 | 0 | ” | 3 | 4 |
| Woman servant | 10 | 0 | ” | 4 | 0 |
| Child under 14 | 6 | 0 | ” | 3 | 0 |
The work of the Trade Gilds in regulating the trade and industries of a town will be described in another chapter, but here is the place to refer to the work of the Religious or Social Gilds which were so prominent a feature of mediæval town life. These were voluntary associations of men and women, who undertook to pay sums of money into a common fund, on which all members could draw during old age or during periods of sickness. In other words they were the Friendly Societies—the ‘Hearts of Oak,’ ‘Ancient Order of Foresters,’ and ‘Oddfellows’—of our own times.
At Hull there were six of these Gilds, the most important being the Gild of St. John Baptist, the Gild of Corpus Christi, and the Gild of the Holy Trinity. In the case of the first of these a member undertook to pay two shillings of silver each year, in four instalments, and derived the following benefits, on becoming ‘infirm, bowed, blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, ... either in youth or age.’:—