The most ancient of these corporations was the Parisian Hanse, or corporation of the bourgeois for canal navigation, which probably dates its origin back to the college of Parisian Nautes, existing before the Roman conquest. This mercantile association held its meetings in the island of Lutetia, on the very spot where the church of Notre-Dame was afterwards built. From the earliest days of monarchy tradesmen constituted entirely the bourgeois of the towns ([Fig. 203]). Above them were the nobility or clergy, beneath them the artisans. Hence we can understand how the bourgeois, who during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a distinct section of the community, became at last the important commercial body itself. The kings invariably treated them with favour. Louis VI. granted them new rights, Louis VII. confirmed their ancient privileges, and Philip Augustus increased them. The Parisian Hanse succeeded in monopolising all the commerce which was carried on by water on the Seine and the Yonne between Mantes and Auxerre. No merchandise coming up or down the stream in boats could be disembarked in the interior of Paris without becoming, as it were, the property of the corporation, which, through its agents, superintended its measurement and its sale in bulk, and, up to a certain point, its sale by retail. No foreign merchant was permitted to send his goods to Paris without first obtaining lettres de Hanse, whereby he had associated with him a bourgeois of the town, who acted as his guarantee, and who shared in his profits.

[Fig. 203.]--Merchants or Tradesmen of the Fourteenth Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Library at Brussels.

There were associations of the same kind in most of the commercial towns situated on the banks of rivers and on the sea-coast, as, for example, at Rouen, Arles, Marseilles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Ratisbon, Augsburg, and Utrecht. Sometimes neighbouring towns, such as the great manufacturing cities of Flanders, agreed together and entered into a leagued bond, which gave them greater power, and constituted an offensive and defensive compact ([Fig. 204]). A typical example of this last institution is that of the commercial association of the Hanseatic Towns of Germany, which were grouped together to the number of eighty around their four capitals, viz., Lubeck, Cologne, Dantzic, and Brunswick.

[Fig. 204.]--Seal of the United Trades of Ghent (End of the Fifteenth Century).

Although, as we have already seen, previous to the thirteenth century many of the corporations of artisans had been authorised by several of the kings of France to make special laws whereby they might govern themselves, it was really only from the reign of St. Louis that the first general measures of administration and police relating to these communities can be dated. The King appointed Etienne Boileau, a rich bourgeois, provost of the capital in 1261, to set to work to establish order, wise administration, and "good faith" in the commerce of Paris. To this end he ascertained from the verbal testimony of the senior members of each corporation the customs and usages of the various crafts, which for the most part up to that time had not been committed to writing. He arranged and probably amended them in many ways, and thus composed the famous "Book of Trades," which, as M. Depping, the able editor of this valuable compilation, first published in 1837, says, "has the advantage of being to a great extent the genuine production of the corporations themselves, and not a list of rules established and framed by the municipal or judicial authorities." From that time corporations gradually introduced themselves into the order of society. The royal decrees in their favour were multiplied, and the regulations with regard to mechanical trades daily improved, not only in Paris and in the provinces, and also abroad, both in the south and in the north of Europe, especially in Italy, Germany, England, and the Low Countries (Figs. [205] to [213]).

Etienne Boileau's "Book of Trades" contained the rules of one hundred different trade associations. It must be observed, however, that several of the most important trades, such as the butchers, tanners, glaziers, &c., were omitted, either because they neglected to be registered at the Châtelet, where the inquiry superintended by Boileau was made, or because some private interest induced them to keep aloof from this registration, which probably imposed some sort of fine and a tax upon them. In the following century the number of trade associations considerably increased, and wonderfully so during the reigns of the last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons.

The historian of the antiquities of Paris, Henry Sauval, enumerated no fewer than fifteen hundred and fifty-one trade associations in the capital alone in the middle of the seventeenth century. It must be remarked, however, that the societies of artisans were much subdivided owing to the simple fact that each craft could only practise its own special work. Thus, in Boileau's book, we find four different corporations of patenôtriers, or makers of chaplets, six of hatters, six of weavers, &c.

Besides these societies of artisans, there were in Paris a few privileged corporations, which occupied a more important position, and were known under the name of Corps des Marchands. Their number at first frequently varied, but finally it was settled at six, and they were termed les Six Corps. They comprised the drapers, which always took precedence of the five others, the grocers, the mercers, the furriers, the hatters, and the goldsmiths. These five for a long time disputed the question of precedence, and finally they decided the matter by lot, as they were not able to agree in any other way.

[Fig. 205.]--Seal of the Corporation of Carpenters of St. Trond (Belgium)--From an Impression preserved in the Archives of that Town (1481).

[Fig. 206.]--Seal of the Corporation of Shoemakers of St. Trond, from a Map of 1481, preserved in the Archives of that Town.