Prices were also well looked after. ‘That no one presume to sell a pound of candles for more than one penny, or a gallon of the best ale for more than the same, or a gallon of small ale for more than a half-penny’—so runs one of the laws as to prices. Bakers’ charges were regulated according to the price of wheat. A farthing and a half-penny were fixed as the price of loaves, but the weight of the loaf varied. Thus in 1267, when wheat was one shilling a quarter—
| White bread | cost ½d. per 13 lbs. |
| Wheat bread | ” ” ” 20 ” |
| Horseloaves[[44]] | ” ” ” 27 ” |
The employment of cheap unskilled labour was expressly guarded against. In general, no master might keep more than one or two apprentices, and each apprentice must serve for a space of seven years. By the latter rule there was a kind of guarantee that an apprentice would learn his craft thoroughly before becoming a journeyman. No alien might be taken as an apprentice, and in many towns night-work was forbidden, as being usually inferior to day-work.
When an apprentice had ‘served his time’ and learned his craft, he might, in his turn, become free of his Gild and so earn the right to sell the product of his hands. But this right to sell was carefully guarded, as the following regulations of the Coopers and the Bakers show:—
No cooper, unless he be first free burgess of this town and free of this company, shall keep any shop in this town upon pain of 5s. weekly.
No person or persons dwelling without this town shall sell any bread or cakes within this town otherwise than on the Tuesdays and Fridays, market days, in open market.
If a craftsman was thus protected against undue competition from outsiders, so he was protected against undue competition from those who had a desire to encroach on someone else’s preserves. Carpenters might not work as joiners or as shipwrights, cobblers might not work as shoemakers, nor might shoemakers work as cobblers. ‘Every man to his own trade’ was a maxim of the middle ages, and there was then no call for a ‘William Whiteley’ or a ‘Selfridge’s, Ltd.’
Sunday labour and Sunday trading were expressly forbidden in all Gilds:—
No shopwindows of the fraternity of Shoemakers shall be opened upon the sabbath days in pain of every default viijd.