MEYNSTYRLS.
Attached to the east face of the pillar are also figures of five ‘meynstyrls,’ each gaudily coloured and holding his particular musical instrument—a tabor and pipe, a large viol, a shawm, a cittern, and a wait or hautboy.
Besides these numerous Craft Gilds there were Merchant Gilds, or, as we should call them to-day, ‘Trading Companies.’
The distinction between the two kinds of Gilds is not always clear, and in some cases a trader belonged to both. But in general the Craft Gilds contained men who by their daily work changed the form of a thing, while the Merchant Gilds contained those whose daily work consisted of trading in a thing without changing its form. Thus, the Merchant Tailors bought and sold cloth, but the Tailors made the cloth into clothes. And just as to-day it is ‘much more respectable’ to be an egg-merchant than to be a pastry-cook, so, five centuries ago, it was equally ‘more respectable’ to be a merchant-tailor than a tailor pure and simple.
Arms of the Hull
Merchants’
Company.
Chief among the Merchant Gilds of Kingston-upon-Hull were the Gild of the Merchant Adventurers, originally known as the ‘Brotherhood of St. Thomas of Canterbury,’ and the Hull Merchants’ Company. During the reigns of the Tudor and Stuart Kings, these did much to foster the trade of Hull with the great ports on the other side of the North Sea.
A charter was granted to the Hull Merchants’ Company by Queen Elizabeth, and King Charles II. renewed it on receipt of ‘fifty pounds of good and lawful money of England.’ The members of the Company met in the Merchants’ Hall—the upper story of the red-brick building on the south of the Market Place, now known as the Choir School—and a ‘merchant’s mark’ is still to be seen cut in three stone panels in the front wall of the building.[of the building.] They were a wealthy Company, and at one time had much power. Fines or ‘upsetts’ for the privilege of membership ranged from 6s. 8d. to £20.
It is interesting to find that the Hull Merchants’ Company acted as a Post Office for foreign correspondence. ‘Masters of ships’—so ran one of the laws governing their Exchange—must
hang up a bagg a week before their sailing, that merchants may putt their letters therein, and soe the masters to take the same away the night before they intend to saile.