If any swine or cows are reared within the Ward.
If any leper is resident within the Ward.
If any purprestures (i.e. encroachments) have been made in the streets.
If any baker of “tourte,” or “trete” bread (i.e. the coarse brown bread) make fine bread.
If an officer of the Ward has extorted money on any pretence.
If any bargain of usury has been made in the Ward since the last Ward Mote.
The rule about pigs was constantly repeated and as often disregarded. At one time in the thirteenth century four men were appointed to find and kill all pigs wandering about the streets. St. Anthony’s Hospital was an exception. This House was privileged to let its pigs go free in the City provided that they had bells hanging from their necks and that they were pigs bestowed upon the Hospital out of charity. (See vol. ii. pt. iii. ch. viii.) Later on, however, it was forbidden to keep pigs, cows, or oxen in the City at all.
The fuel used in the houses largely consisted of charcoal, which was brought into the City from the forests in the north and south of London in carts. It was ordered, temp. Richard II., that both charcoal and firewood should be sold at 10d. a quarter between Michaelmas and Easter, and at 8d. between Easter and Michaelmas. This price seems very high in comparison with that of other commodities. It is not known when coals began to be used. The name of Sea Coal Lane, near the Fleet River, was so called from coal being there stored in the reign of Henry III., if not much earlier. Coal paid custom at Billingsgate. The market for wood was not Wood Street (? Woad Street) but at Smithfield and at Cornhill. The carters sold “talwood, fagot, and busche”—words which explain themselves. Fern, reeds and stubble were also used as fuel.
The sense in which a London craftsman was a “freeman” was, happily for the growth of real freedom, extremely restricted. He must be apprenticed, and during his term of seven years he was the servant, or perhaps the adopted son of the man to whom he was bound; he must belong to a Guild; he must obey the laws of that Guild; these were minute and careful: they made a man work during stated hours and no longer; they regulated the price of his work; they would not allow him to work on Church festivals; they would not let him go to law with another of the same Guild; they sent him to church regularly; if he disgraced his moral character in any way they turned him out of his trade and sent him out of the City. In other words, he could not exercise his freedom in living idly or mischievously. The system was admirable on paper, and in fact seems to have worked well. Above all, it taught the lesson which we have since forgotten, that a workman does not belong to himself alone, but to the community. That was the meaning of fixed hours, fixed prices, fixed holidays.
“As regards wages, carpenters and that class of workman mostly received, between Michaelmas and Martimas (11th Nov.) 4d. per day, or else 1½d. ‘and their table,’ at the option of the employer; between Martimas and the Purification (2nd Feb.), 3d., or 1d. and their table; between the Purification and Easter, 4d., or 1½d. and their table; and between Easter and Michaelmas, 5d., or 2d. and their table. Saturdays and Vigils were to be paid for as whole days, the men only working till the evening, and on Sundays and Feast-days they were ‘to take nothing,’ the meaning being, no doubt, that on those days they did not work at all. Their servants, or under-workmen, and the makers of clay walls, were to receive, between Michaelmas and Easter, 2d., and between Easter and Michaelmas, 3d., for all demands. Should any person pay a workman beyond these rates, he was to pay to the City a fine of 40s., and the workman to be subjected to forty days’ imprisonment. About seventy years later, the wages of certain of these artisans had apparently increased, Masons, Carpenters, Plasterers, and Sawyers receiving sixpence during the long days, and fivepence in winter, but without being permitted to charge for the repair of their implements. The wages of Tilers, however, had not made so great an advance, being at the rate of 5½d. and 4½d. according to the length of the days, and the wages of their boys (garsons) 3½d. and 3d. ‘Master Daubers’ also were to be content with fivepence and fourpence, according to the length of the days, their boys receiving at the same rate as those of Tilers.”—Riley, Liber Albus, pp. xxxvi.-xxxvii.