London

by Walter Besant

(7) All things touching the trade within the City between those who are not freemen shall be forfeited.

(8) Journeymen shall be paid their present rate of wages.

(9) Persons who entice away journeymen glovers to make gloves in their own houses shall be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.

(10) Any one of the trade who refuses to obey these regulations shall be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.

Observe, upon these laws, first, that the fourth simply transfers the master's right to chastise his servant to the governing body of the company. This seems to put the craftsmen in a better position. Here, apparently, is combination carried to the fullest. All the glovers in the City unite; no one shall make or sell gloves except their own members; the company shall order the rate of wages and the admission of apprentices; no glover shall work for private persons, or for any one, except by order of the company. Here is absolute protection of trade and absolute command of trade. Unfortunately, the Wardens and court were not the craftsmen, but the masters. Therefore the regulations of trade were very quickly found to serve the enrichment of the masters and the repression of the craftsmen. And if the latter formed "covins" or conspiracies for the improvement of wages, they very soon found out that such associations were put down with the firmest hand. To be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen meant, unless submission was made and accepted, expulsion from the City. So long as the conditions of the time allowed, the companies created a Paradise for the master. The workman was suppressed; he could not combine; he could not live except on the terms imposed by his company: if he rebelled he was thrust out of the City gates. The jurisdiction of the City, however, ceased at the walls; when a greater London began to grow outside Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate, and on the reclaimed marshes of Westminster and along the river-bank, craftsmen not of any company could settle down and work as they please. But they had to find a market, which might be impossible except within the City, where they were not admitted. Therefore the companies, as active guardians and jealous promoters of their trades, fulfilled their original purposes a long while, and enabled many generations of masters to grow rich upon the work of their servants.

Every company was governed by its Wardens. The Warden had great powers; he proved the quality, weight, or length of the goods exposed for sale; the members were bound to obey the Warden; to prevent bad blood, every man called upon to serve his time as Warden had to undertake the office. The Warden also looked after the poor of the craft, assisted the old and infirm, the widows and the orphans. He had also to watch over the fraternity, to take care that there should be no underselling, no infringement of the rate of wage, no overreaching of one by the other. He was, in short, to maintain the common interest of the trade. It was a despotism, but, on the whole, a benevolent despotism. The Englishman was not yet ready for popular rule; doubtless the jealousies of the sovereign were allayed by the discovery that the association of a trade was a potent engine for the maintenance of order and the repression of the turbulent craftsman. How turbulent they could be was proved by the troubles which arose in the reign of Henry III.

The great companies were always separate and distinct from the smaller companies. For a long time the Mayor was exclusively elected from the former. Even at the present day, unless the Mayor belongs to one of the great companies, he labors under certain disadvantages. He cannot, for instance, become President of the Irish Society.

By the end of the fourteenth century, then—to sum up—the government of London was practically complete and almost in its present form. The Mayor, become an officer of the highest importance, was elected every year; the Sheriffs every year; the Aldermen and the Common Councilmen were elected by wards. The Mayor was chosen from the great companies, which comprised all the merchant venturers, importers, exporters, men who had correspondence over the seas, masters, and employers. Every craft had its own regulations; no one could trade in the City who did not belong to a company; no one could work in the City, or even make anything to be sold, who did not belong to a company. Wages were ordered by the companies; working-men had no appeal from the ruling of the Warden. From time to time there were attempts made by the craftsmen to make combinations for themselves. These attempts were sternly and swiftly put down. No trades-unions were suffered to be formed; nay, even within the memory of living man trades-unions were treated as illegal associations. The craftsman, as a political factor, disappears from history with the creation of the companies. In earlier times we hear his voice in the folkmote; we see him tossing his cap and shouting for William Longbeard. But when Whittington sits on the Lord Mayor's chair he is silenced. And he remains silent until, by a renewal of those covins and conspiracies which Whittington put down so sternly, he has become a greater power in the land than ever he was before. Even yet, however, and with all the lessons that he has learned, his power of combination is imperfect, his aims are narrow, and his grasp of his own power is feeble and restricted.

For my own part, I confess that this repression, this silencing of the craftsman in the fourteenth century, seems to me to have been necessary for the growth and prosperity of the City. For the craftsman was then incredibly ignorant; he knew nothing except his own craft; as for his country, the conditions of the time, the outer world, he knew nothing at all; he might talk to the sailors who lay about the quays between voyages, but they could tell him nothing that would help him in his trade; he could not read, he could not inquire, because he knew not what question to ask or what information he wanted; he had no principles; he was naturally ready, for his own present advantages, to sacrifice the whole world; he believed all he was told. Had the London working-man acquired such a share in the government of his city as he now has in the government of his country, the result would have been a battle-field of discordant and ever-varying factions, ruled and led each in turn by a short-lived demagogue.

It was, in short, a most happy circumstance for London that the government of the City fell into the hands of an oligarchy, and still more happy that the oligarchs themselves were under the rule of a jealous and a watchful sovereign.