(a) There was at least some risk of malversation of funds by the Master of the craft gild; and strict regulations were laid down by the Fellmongers and Cappers as to the time when the amounts were to be rendered and passed, but a much greater number of the ordinances deal with the respective duties of masters and apprentices and masters and journeymen.
(b) The question of apprenticeship was of primary importance, as the skill of the next generation of workmen depended on the manner in which it was enforced. There are a good many ordinances of the Coventry Cappers in 1520. No one was to have more than two apprentices at a time, and he was to keep them for seven years, but there was to be a month of trial before sealing; nobody was to take apprentices who had not sufficient sureties that he would perform his covenant. If the apprentice complained that he had not sufficient "finding," and the master was in fault, the apprentice was to be removed on the third complaint, and the master was handicapped in getting another in his place. Once a year the principal master of the craft was to go round the city and examine every man's apprentice, and see they were properly taught. The Clothiers, in regulations which I believe to be of about the same date, though they are incorporated with rules of a later character, had a system of allowing the apprentice to be turned over to another master if his own master had no work, so that he might not lose his time—this was a system which was much abused in the eighteenth century: the master was to teach the apprentice truly, and two apprentices were not to work at the same loom unless one of them had served for five years. No master was to teach any one who was not apprenticed, and he was to keep the secrets of the craft; this was a provision which constantly occurs in the ordinances. Some such exclusive rule was necessary if they were to secure the thorough competence, in all branches of the art, of the men who lived by it. In the case of the Coventry Clothiers there is an exception which is of interest; the master might give instruction to persons who were not apprenticed as "charity to poor and impotent people for their better livelihood."
(c) The limitation of the number of apprentices, though it was desirable for the training of qualified men, was frequently urged in the interests of the journeymen. There had been frequent complaint on the part of journeymen that the masters overstocked their shops with apprentices, and that those who had served their time could get no employment from other masters, while they also complained that unnecessary obstacles were put in the way of their doing work on their own account.
One or two illustrations of these points may be given from the Coventry crafts; the Fullers in 1560 would not allow any journeyman to work on his own account. The Clothiers in the beginning of the sixteenth century ordained that none shall set any journeyman on work till he is fairly parted from his late master, or if he remains in his late master's debt; journeymen were to have ten days' notice, or one cloth to weave before leaving a master; their wages were to be paid weekly if they wished it, and they were to make satisfaction for any work they spoiled. Similarly the Cappers in 1520 would not allow journeymen to work in their houses.
Some of the most interesting evidence in regard to the grievances of the journeymen comes from the story of a dispute in the weaving trade in the early part of the fifteenth century. "The said parties—both masters and journeymen—on the mediation of their friends, and by the mandate and wish of the worshipful Mayor, entered into a final agreement." The rules to which they agreed throw indirect light on the nature of the points in dispute. It was evidently a time when the trade was developing rapidly, and when an employing class of capitalists and clothiers was springing up among the weavers. It was agreed that any who could use the art freely might have as many looms, both linen and woollen, in his cottage, and also have as many apprentices as he liked. Every cottager or journeyman who wished to become a master might do so in paying twenty shillings. Besides this, the journeymen were allowed to have their own fraternity, but they were to pay a shilling a year to the weavers, and a shilling for every member they admitted.[7] On the whole it appears that the journeymen in this trade obtained a very considerable measure of independence, but this was somewhat exceptional, and on the whole it appears that the grievances and disabilities under which journeymen laboured had a very injurious effect on the trade of many towns, and apparently on that of Coventry, during the sixteenth century. There was a very strong incentive for journeymen to go and set up in villages or outside the areas where craft gilds had jurisdiction, and there is abundant evidence[8] that this sort of migration took place on a very large scale. I should be inclined to lay very great stress on this factor as a principal reason for the decay of craft gilds under Henry VIII., so that Edward VI.'s Act gave them a death-blow. They no longer exerted an effective supervision, because in so many cases the trade had migrated to new districts, where there was no authority to regulate it. This is, at any rate, the best solution I can offer of the remarkable manner in which craft gilds disappeared, as effective institutions, about the middle of the sixteenth century. Their religious side was sufficiently pronounced to bring them within the scope of the great Act of Confiscation, by which Edward VI. despoiled the gilds; but there was an effort made to spare them then, and I cannot but believe that if they had had any real vitality a large number would have survived, as some, like the Bakers and Fullers at Coventry, actually did. At the same time, it appears to be true that these cases are somewhat exceptional and that the craft gilds, as effective institutions for regulating industry, disappeared. Part of the evidence for this opinion comes from Coventry itself, for we find that a deliberate and conscious effort was made to resuscitate the gilds in 1584. It is of this resuscitation, involving as it does a previous period of decay, that I now wish to speak.
III. The disappearance of the craft gilds appears to have been connected with one of their accidental features, as I may call them—their common worship. The attempted resuscitation at Coventry was due to another—to the fact that each craft provided a certain amount of pageantry for the town. I suspect that the so-called "Mistery plays" were the plays organised by the different "misteries" or crafts. The Chester plays, the Coventry plays, and the York plays,[9] have been published, and they present features which force comparison with the Passion Play which is being given this year at Ober Ammergau; and they were most attractive performances. The accounts of the various trading bodies show that these pageants were continued through the sixteenth century; they were suspended for eight years previous to 1566, and again in 1580 and three following years, when the preachers inveighed against the pageants, even though "there was no Papistry in them"; revived once more in 1584, they were finally discontinued in 1591.[10]
I have lately seen the originals of the dialogue of the Weavers' Pageant, with the separate parts written out for the individual actors. During the fifteenth century, these pageants were performed with much success, and several of the smaller trades appear to have been united for the purpose of performing some pageant together. In 1566 and in 1575 Queen Elizabeth visited Coventry, and the pageants were performed, and with the view of reviving the diminished glories of the towns considerable pains were taken to reorganise the old crafts; thus the Bakers and Smiths joined in producing a pageant in 1506.[11] The Fullers appear to have been reorganised in 1586, and there was a very distinct revival of the old corporations about that time. This same element, the manner in which the crafts had contributed to the local pageants, was noticeable in connection with the organisation of the bodies at Norwich; and I cannot but connect the resuscitation of some of the Coventry Gilds at this time with the desire to perpetuate these entertainments; certain common lands had been enclosed by the town to bear another part of the expense.[12] Though the interest in the pageants marks the beginning of this revival at Coventry, it yet appears that during the seventeenth century it continued. There was some general cause at work connected with the condition of industry which called out a new set of efforts at industrial regulation, but the power which called these gilds or companies into being was no longer merely municipal; they rely, as in the earliest instances, on royal or Parliamentary authority. It is by no means easy to see what was the precise motive in each case of the incorporating of new industrial companies in the seventeenth century. The Colchester Bay-makers introduced a new trade, so, perhaps, did the Kidderminster Carpet-weavers, but the movement at this time appears to be connected with the fact that industry was becoming specialised and localised. I am inclined to suspect that the companies of the seventeenth century differ from the craft gilds of the fifteenth, partly, at least, in this way, that whereas the former were the local organisations for regulating various trades in one town, the latter were the bodies, organised by royal authority for regulating each industry in that part of the country where it could be best pursued. It was at this date that the Sheffield Cutlers were incorporated, and indeed a large number of organisations in different towns. Several of the Coventry gilds, notably the Drapers and the Clothiers, were incorporated by royal charters during the seventeenth century, and if we turned to a northern town like Preston, we might be inclined to say that this was the real era when associations for industrial regulation flourished and abounded.
It is no part of my purpose to speak of the decay of these newly formed or newly resuscitated companies as it occurred in the eighteenth century. I have endeavoured to indicate the excellent aims which these institutions set before them, and the success which attended their efforts for a time. At the same time, it is a significant fact that they failed to maintain themselves as effective institutions in the sixteenth century, and when they were resuscitated they failed to maintain themselves as useful institutions in the eighteenth. Partly, as I believe, for good, and partly, as we here recognise, for evil, business habits have so changed that whatever is done for the old object—maintaining quality and skill—must be done in a new way. The power which we possess of directing and controlling the forces of nature has altered the position of the artisan, and made him a far less important factor in production. The maintenance of personal skill, the unlimited capacity for working certain materials, is no longer of such primary importance for industrial success as was formerly the case. There is another—perhaps a greater—difficulty in the diffusion of a wider and more cosmopolitan spirit; the sympathies of the old brethren for one another were strong, but they were intensely narrow. No town can be so isolated now, or kindle such intense local attachments as did the cities of the Middle Ages. There has been loss enough in the destruction of these gilds, but we cannot, by looking back upon them, reverse the past or re-create that which has been destroyed through the growth of the larger life we enjoy to-day. Let us rather remember them as showing what could be accomplished in the past, and as pointing towards something we ought to try to accomplish in some new fashion to-day. When we see that the mediæval workman was a man, not a mere hand; that in close connexion with his daily tasks the whole round of human aspiration could find satisfaction; that he was called with others to common worship, called with others to common feasts and recreations, and encouraged to do his best at his work, we feel how poor and empty, in comparison, is the life that is led by the English artisan to-day. But if there is a better and more wholesome life before the labourer in days to come, if new forms of association are to do the work which was done by the gilds of old, we may trust that those who organise them will bear in mind not only the successes, but the failures of the past, and learn to avoid the mistakes which wrecked craft gilds not once only, but twice.
Footnotes
[1] ] Richard of Hoveden, Rolls Series, iv. 33.