The story of Coventry

by Mary Dormer Harris

BUTCHER ROW

There was one point, however, on which all employers were agreed, and that was on the advisability of checking unions and combinations among their workmen for the purpose of obtaining better wages. The journeymen's, or, as they were called, "yeomen's" guilds, which seem to have been fairly universal at the close of the fourteenth and during the fifteenth century, appear in Coventry with great frequency and persistence. Three several times the corporation obtained patents against the formation of guilds other than those already existing in the city.[494] The patent for the suppression of the first of these combinations that comes before our notice, the fraternity of S. Anne, is addressed to the mayor and bailiffs, in 1406, and relates how it had come to the ears of the government that a certain number of youths, serving men of the tailors and other artificers working by the day called journeymen, gathered together in the priory, or the houses of the friars, and formed a fraternity called the fraternity of S. Anne, to the end that each might maintain the other in their quarrels. This action was likely, in the opinion of those in authority, to breed dissensions in the city, do great harm to the societies founded of old time, namely, the Trinity and Corpus Christi guilds, and hence bring final destruction upon the townsfolk. The meetings were declared unlawful, and all who persisted in assembling to hold them after the patent had been openly proclaimed were to be arrested, and their names certified to the King, who would have them punished according to their deserts.[495] But, in spite of this warning, the journeymen did not give up the conflict, for the fraternity had again to be crushed in the first year of Henry V.,[496] only to reappear in 1425 under the title of the guild of S. George.

Connected with this last movement was the discontent which affected the journeymen weavers in the year 1424. Indeed it is possible that the whole company of journeymen within the city were at that time making demand for higher pay. The weavers had a bond of union in a common fund which they apparently appropriated to the furnishing of altar or processional lights, a pretext possibly like that of the journeymen saddlers in London in the time of Richard II., who, under "colour of sanctity" and religious meetings, "sought only to raise wages greatly in excess."[497] The movement among the Coventry weavers assumed all the forms of a modern strike. The men not only refused to serve at the usual wages, but hindered others from filling their place. The corporation took the matter in hand, and the question was finally settled by arbitration. The men were forbidden to hinder any of their fellows from working for their masters as they had done aforetime, and a regular rate of wages was established, whereby the journeymen took a third of the sum paid to their employers for the weaving of each piece of cloth, while the masters were ordered to exact threepence and no more from their workmen as a fine for each "contumacy," being, however, forbidden, under colour of this rule, to oppress their servants.[498]

Nearly a hundred years later we find that the fraternities of journeymen were still in existence, albeit jealously watched by the masters of the crafts. In 1518 all initiative was taken from them. "No journeymen of what occupation or craft soever," runs the order of leet, shall "make or use any cave or bylaw, or assembly, or meetings at any place by their summoner without license of the mayor and the master of their[499] occupation" upon pain of 20s. at the first fault; at the second the offender's "body to prison," there to remain until the master and six honest persons of his occupation would speak for him.[500] At the same time the workers' fraternities were ordered to bring in the rules already made for the mayor's inspection. But the attempts on their part to form closer unions in order to facilitate concerted action still continued, and in 1527 we find the dyers' serving men assembling together for the apparently pacific purpose of attending marriages, betrothals, and burials, as if "they had been a craft or fellowship." These meetings served most likely as a cloak to more serious proceedings, and they were forbidden by the leet.[501] Nor was the movement entirely confined to the workers of the crafts; it spread among those outside the guild organization. In 1518 the daubers and rough masons were forbidden to form a fellowship of themselves, but were henceforth to be common labourers, "and to take such wages as are limited by statute."[502]

In other matters we may see the discontented attitude of the workfolk. Thus the journeymen cappers objected to the lengthening of the hours of their working day, which in 1496 had been fixed to last from six till six, but which by 1520 was further increased by two hours in the summer-time, thus lasting from five in the morning to seven in the evening.[503] Six years later it was enacted that, unless they kept these hours, it was permitted to any master to "abridge their wages according to their time of absence." Any rivalry in trade between masters and men was crushed whenever the masters' power availed to do so. Thus in 1496 the journeymen cappers carried on a contraband trade, and scorning to be content with the permission to "scour and fresh old bonnets" for that purpose, made new caps for sale; nor did the imposition of a fine of twenty pence at every default avail to check their activity. Therefore according to the rules of 1520, members of the craft were forbidden to give any work to those who knitted the journeymen's caps, or to the spinners who span for them, thus indirectly checking this illicit competition. In other ways the journeyman was made to feel the weight of the master's hand. Among the carpenters none could be set to work unless he had served for seven years as apprentice to the handicraft;[504] and a journeyman capper was compelled to certify the cause of leaving his late master to the satisfaction of the masters of the craft.[505]

These are some points connected with the life of mediæval craftsmen. Although so much has been written on the economical, social, and religious aspects of the subject, we are still very ignorant as to the actual workings of the craft system. Modern industry seems to have entirely passed through, and, as it were, forgotten this immature phase of its existence. The companies in Coventry which were able to survive the shock of the suppression of the guilds and chantries under Edward VI., and have lasted to our own day—the mercers, drapers, cappers, fullers, clothiers, and worsted weavers—possess none of the powers or organization of their predecessors, and are mere survivals of a bygone time, "the shadows of a great name."

FOOTNOTES:

[451] Rogers, Six Cent., 116.

[452] In early times there was a special place in the market assigned to the sale of cloth. See undated deed Corp. MS. C. 40.