[7]Calendars of State Papers: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII. vol. xiii. part i., 1538, No. 1454, p. 537. Compare the ephemeral combinations cited by Fagniez, Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris (Paris, 1877), pp. 76, 82, etc.
[8]It has been assumed that, in the company of “Bachelors” or “Yeomen Tailors” connected with the Merchant Taylors’ Company of London between 1446 and 1661, we have “for the first time revealed to us the existence, and something of the constitution, of a journeyman’s society which succeeded in maintaining itself for a prolonged period.” More careful examination of the materials from which this vivid picture of this supposed journeyman’s society has been drawn leads us to believe that it was not composed of journeymen at all, but of masters. This might, in the first place, have been inferred from the fact that in the ranks of the supposed journeymen were to be found opulent leaders like Richard Hilles, the friend of Cranmer and Bullinger, who “became a Bachelor in Budge of the Yeoman Company” in 1535 (Clode, Early History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, vol. ii. p. 64), and Sir Leonard Halliday, afterwards Lord Mayor, who was in the Bachelors’ Company from 1572 to 1594, when “he was elected a member of the higher hierarchy of the Corporation” (ibid. p. 237). The Bachelors’ Company, indeed, far from being composed of needy wage-earners, bore the greater part of the expense of the pageant in connection with the mayoralty, and managed the whole proceedings. The Bachelors “in Foynes” and those “in Budge” are all named as marching in the procession in “gownes to be welted with velvet, and there jackyttes, cassockes, and doublettes to be either of satten damaske, taffataye” (ibid. pp. 262-6). And when, in 1609, the Company was assessed to contribute to the Plantation of Ulster, the Bachelors contributed nearly as much as the merchants (£155, 10s. from ten members as compared with £187, 10s. from nine members (ibid. vol. i. pp. 327-9)). Whether the Bachelors’ Company ever included any large proportion of hired journeymen appears extremely doubtful, though its object was clearly the regulation of the trade. The members, according to the Ordinance of 1613, paid a contribution of 2s. 2d. a quarter “for the poor of the fraternity.” This may be contrasted with the quarterage of 8d. a year or 2d. per quarter, levied, according to order of August 1578, on every servant or journeyman free of the City. The funds of the two companies were kept distinct, but frequent donations were made from one to the other, and not only from the inferior to the superior (ibid. vol. i. pp. 67-9). That the Bachelors’ Company was by no means confined to journeymen is clear. Sir Leonard Halliday, for instance, became a freeman in April 1564 on completing his apprenticeship, and at once set up in business for himself, obtaining a charitable loan for the purpose. Yet, although he prospered in business, “in 1572 we find him assessed as in the Bachelors’ Company,” and he was not elected to the superior company until 1594 (ibid. vol. ii. p. 237). And in the Ordinance of 1507, “for all those persons that shall be abled by the maister and Wardeins to holde hous or shop open,” it is provided that the person desiring to set up shop shall not only pay a licence fee, but also “for his incomyng to the bachelers’ Company and to be broder with theym iijs iiid” (Clode, Memorials of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, p. 209). Nor do the instances of its action imply that it had at heart the interest of the wage-earners, as distinguished from that of the employers. The hostility to foreigners, the desire to secure government clothing contracts, and the preference for a limitation of apprentices to two for each employer are all consistent with the theory that the Bachelors’ Company was, like its superior, composed of masters, probably less opulent than the governing clique, and perhaps occupied in tailoring rather than in the business of a clothier or merchant. It is not until 1675 and 1682 that can be traced in the MS. records of the Clothworkers’ Company the existence of distinctively journeymen’s combinations (Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 199). The other instances of identification of “Bachelors’ Companies” or “Yeomen” organisation with journeymen’s societies are no more convincing than that of the Merchant Taylors. That the “valets,” serving-men, or journeymen in many trades possessed some kind of “almsbox,” or charitable funds of their own is indeed clear, but that this was ever used in trade disputes, or was independent of the masters’ control, must at present be regarded as highly improbable. The strongest instance of independence is that of the Oxford cordwainers (Selections from the Records of the City of Oxford, by William H. Turner, Oxford, 1880). See, on the whole subject, the chapter on “Mediæval Journeymen’s Clubs,” in Sir William Ashley’s Surveys: Historic and Economic, 1900; Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by Professor George Unwin, 1904; and an article on “The Origin of Trade Unionism,” by Mr. W. A. S. Hewins, in the Economic Review, April 1895 (vol. v.).
[9]Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 125.
[10]Riley’s Memorials, p. 653; Clode, Early History of Merchant Taylors’ Company, vol. i. p. 63.
[11]Compare Fagniez, Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris (Paris, 1877), p. 123.
[12]3 Henry VI. c. 1; see also 34 Edward III. c. 9.
[13]“Ordinances of Worcester,” Art. lvii. in Toulmin Smith’s English Gilds, p. 399.
[14]Compare the analogous instances given by Fagniez, Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris, p. 203 (Paris, 1877).
[15]Dr. Brentano has noticed (p. 81) that the great majority of the legal regulations of wages in the Middle Ages relate (if not to agriculture) to the building trades; and it may be that these were, like modern cab-fare regulations, intended more for the protection of the customer than for that of the capitalist.
[16]See “Notes on the Organisation of the Mason’s Craft in England,” by Dr. William Cunningham (British Academy Proceedings).