Bygone Berkshire

by Unknown

The victuallers' company embraced the vintners, innholders, bakers, brewers, butchers, fishmongers, chandlers, maltmakers, flax-dressers, salters, and wood mongers.

The rules of this company do not, I believe, appear in the Corporation documents, but from other sources we find that the members of the guild were strictly enjoined to observe Lent, and were forbidden to kill or dress meat in that season without a license from the Abbot. Also to prevent imposition on the part of the publicans, two ale tasters were appointed to set the price of beer. The Corporation in former days performed a duty from which the present members of the municipal council would doubtless shrink. It assumed the power of regulating the price of such articles as beer and bread. In the time of Edward VI. a quart of best beer could be obtained for 1d.

These, then, were the five companies which formed the old guild Mercatory of Reading. They did not form (as Mr. Man says in his History of the town) "a society of mechanics and merchants without pretending to interfere in the government of the borough." In fact the guild was rather aristocratic in its tendency, and later on we find that the lower class of tradesfolk formed craft guilds in order to protect the interests of the artizans and smaller tradesmen. Of these the higher guild was very jealous, and frequently exerted its power to oppress the craftsmen and their guild. In the history of nearly every borough we find instances of contention and jealousies between the two bodies. One instance of this occurred in the year 1662, "when the cobblers petition to the Corporation against the shoemakers for mending and repairing old ware in violation of the ancient orders of the borough."

It seems strange to us to think of the time when a man could not sell what he liked, or live where he liked, or work at any trade he pleased; but such freedom was impossible under the old guilds. No one could ply his trade in a town unless he was a freeman of the company; e.g., "in July, 1545, one Robert Hooper, a barber, being a foreigner, was this day ordered to be gone out of the town at his peril, with his wife and children," and the town sergeants were ordered to shut up his shop and see poor Robert Hooper and his wife beyond the borough boundaries. And the distinction between the various trades, between the carpenters and joiners, between the joiners and sawyers, and as we have seen between cobblers and shoemakers, and the privileges of each class were jealously guarded. Absurd as these restrictions were, the early guilds contributed greatly to the making of England. Green thus writes of them:—"In the silent growth and elevation of the English people the borough led the way. The rights of self-government, of free speech in free meeting, of equal justice by one's equals, were brought safe across the ages of Norman tyranny by the traders and shopkeepers of the towns. In the quiet, quaintly-named streets, in town mead, and market place, in the Lord's mill besides the stream, in the bell that sounded out its summons to the borough moot, in the jealousies of craftsmen and guilds, lay the real life of Englishmen, the life of their home and trade, their ceaseless sober struggle with oppression, their steady unwearied battle for self-government."

Again, speaking of the policy of Edward I., who built up the power of the towns in view of checking the lawless tendencies of the barons, he says:—

"The bell which swung out from the town tower gathered the burgesses to a common meeting, where they could exercise their rights of free speech and free deliberation on their own affairs. Their merchants' guild, over its ale-feast, regulated trade, distributed the sums due from the different burgesses, looked to the repair of the gate and wall, and acted in fact pretty much the same part as a Town Council of to-day. Not only were all these rights secured by custom from the first, but they were constantly widening as time went on. Whenever we get a glimpse of the inner history of an English town, we find the same peaceful revolution in progress, services disappearing through disuse or omission, while privileges and immunities were being purchased in hard cash. The lord of the town, whether he were king, abbot, or baron, was commonly thriftless or poor, and the capture of a noble, or the campaign of a sovereign, or the building of some new minster by a prior, brought about an appeal to the thrifty burghers, who were ready to fill again their master's treasury, at the price of a strip of parchment, which gave them freedom of trade, of justice, and of government. For the most part the liberties of our towns were bought in this way by sheer hard bargaining."

We have observed the numerous charters granted to Reading. The charter of Henry III., to which his successor refers, is the earliest known one, and in that we find the words:—

"Henry, by the grace of God, King of England, etc., to all archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, etc., greeting. Know ye that we will, and command for ourself and our heirs, that all the burgesses of Reading who belong to the guild Merchant in Reading may be for ever free from all shires and hundred courts, and from all pleas, complaints, tolls, passages, ways, carriage ways, and that they may buy and sell wheresoever they will throughout all England, without paying toll, and no one may disturb them under forfeiture of 10 marks." This was confirmed by Edward I., and by successive kings. These charters were granted to the guild, the immediate predecessor of the corporation, the "warden" of the guild ultimately being called the "mayor."

But there was a great opponent to the rights and freedom of the good citizens of Reading in the person of the high and mighty Lord Abbot. Referring to the original charter of the abbey granted by Henry I., we see what extensive sway was placed in the hands of the abbot. He ruled Reading with a powerful hand, and when a former mayor of this town, in the time of Henry VI., thought he would like to have a mace carried before him as a badge of office, the abbot objected. The mayor appealed to the Crown, but he was told it was contrary to the franchise and liberties of our church and monastery, that he was only a keeper of the guild at Reading, admitted by the abbot, and might only have "two tipped staffs" carried before him as a badge of office.

The extensive powers given to the abbot produced constant struggles for power between the guild and the ecclesiastical rulers. Sometimes they even came to blows, and the townsmen often assaulted the abbot's bailiffs in the execution of their duty. The men of Reading were cited in the reign of Henry III., 1243, to show what warrant they had for any privileges which they claimed as members of the guild. The sheriff of Berks received a strict injunction to prevent the men of Reading from interfering with the abbot's lawful rights. Two years later "a final and endly concord" was established between the contending parties, but in 1351, the dispute revived; quarrels arose about the election of a constable for the town, and the contention was not settled for 200 years. In 1430, abbot Henley seized from the guild the out-butchery, or shambles, used by butchers not living in the town, which was another bone of contention.