Under the Norman rule, however, the growth of guilds was much interfered with at first. Henry I. commanded that all should receive royal license; and he subjected several guilds to heavy fines because they had been established without license, or exercised their functions independent of it. This penalty fell heavily on London, where the confraternities were very numerous. They were encouraged by Henry II.; but as they increased under this patronage, and were much given to parading with their respective uniforms or "liveries" and banners, collisions between rival trades became so frequent that at length, under Henry IV., they were forbidden to wear their liveries. In subsequent reigns they were permitted to appear in them at coronations, and finally it became necessary to obtain the royal license for appearing in public with their insignia.
| PLATE LXII | BREWER'S HALL: COUNCIL ROOM |
During the reign of Edward III. the fraternities or Companies of Liverymen as they had now come to be called, not only received specific charters, but the king, having found that they were the main-spring of trades in his kingdom, resolved to raise them in public estimation, and became himself a member of the Company of Merchant Tailors, an example which the nobility were not slow to follow; and it is a despised Company that cannot now-a-days boast of many names of rank upon its rolls.
In the records of the thirty-sixth Parliament of Edward's reign, a petition from the commons is preserved, which shows not only how powerful these guilds had by that time become, but also that the evil of "trusts," recently so much lamented, is not of such modern origin as we may suppose. This petition recites that the Guild of Grocers had become so great and monopolistic as to threaten ruin to the numerous other fraternities that had now sprung up, and complains that they "engrossed all manner of merchandise vendible, suddenly raised the prices of such merchandise within the realm, and by ordinance made amongst themselves, in their own society, kept such merchandise in store to be sold at higher rates in times of dearth and scarcity."
From this time forward we find many records of charters granted to these companies, and the granting of such charters, for which the guilds were made to pay liberally, became a strictly business transaction, being one of the methods by which the sovereigns raised money for their numerous wars in France and Scotland. From 1280 to 1420, twelve companies were chartered; from 1420 to 1740, ten companies received charters; during the fourteen years of Elizabeth's reign, five companies were incorporated; and with the arrival of the poverty-stricken Stuarts, a shower of charters were granted, James granting seventeen and Charles twenty-two. With the expulsion of the Stuarts, however, the granting of charters practically ceased, only one having been issued since that time, and that one, appropriately enough, to the Fan Makers in the bric-à-brac age of Queen Anne.
Under the Restoration the guilds fared hard. The great fire of London destroyed their halls and warehouses. Charles's idiotic foreign policy, and the high-handed "quo warranto" proceedings which their wealth brought upon them, crippled their gains and liberties; and after the advent of the German dynasty, with its importation of the German aristocratic contempt for trade, the younger sons of nobles and country gentlemen ceased to enter mercantile pursuits.