III. We next come to the Merchant Guild. This was simply the whole body of merchants organised for regulation of trade. In a mercantile city such a Society would of course be extremely powerful.
TOMBSTONE OF WILLIAM WARRINGTON,
MASTER MASON, AT CROYLAND ABBEY,
1427.
The statutes of the London Guilds were reduced to writing in the time of King Athelstan. From them Brentano thinks that the Guilds in and about London were united into one Guild, and to have framed common regulations for the better maintenance of peace, for the suppression of violence—especially of theft, and the aggressions of the powerful families,—as well as for carrying out rigidly the ordinances enacted by the King for that purpose.
It has already been stated that there are grave difficulties concerning the Merchant Guild of London. We find all the other towns in the country petitioning for the Merchant Guild unless they have already such an institution. But there are no documents at all which show the operation or the functions of the Merchant Guild of London. Some historians are of opinion that the Merchant Guild ruled the whole trade of the City, and that it was a body apart from the Portreeve or the Mayor and his Aldermen.
Whatever it was before the creation of the Mayor, there can be no doubt that after that important step all the functions of a Merchant Guild were discharged by the Mayor and Aldermen. These functions were, in brief, the regulation of trade. Now, in Riley’s Memorials we have a great number of trades approaching the Mayor and Aldermen with petitions not to regulate their trade for themselves; but that the Mayor and Aldermen would be pleased to regulate it in a certain manner; to bestow upon them certain powers; and to allow them to hale offenders, not before any court of their own, but before the Mayor and Aldermen. What is this but the authority of the Merchant Guild?
We have seen the rules of the Religious Guild. Let us now consider the ordinances submitted to the Mayor and Aldermen by a Craft Company. The following are those of the Pewterers. They are not the Articles of Association framed when the Company was founded, but the rules by which the Company regulated its own work:—
“Unto the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London pray the good folks, makers of vessels of pewter in the same City, that it may please them to hear the state and the points of their trade; and as to the defaults, for the common profit, by good discretion to provide redress and amendment thereof; and the points which are proper for folks who are skilful in the trade, and are duly ordained, to support and maintain.