It would be impossible to fully understand the conditions of life on the eve of the Reformation without some knowledge of the working and purposes of mediÆval guilds. These societies or brotherhoods were so common, formed such a real bond of union between people of all ranks and conditions of life, and fulfilled so many useful and even necessary purposes before their suppression under Edward VI., that a study of their principles of organisation and of their practical working cannot but throw considerable light on the popular social life of the period. To appreciate the position, it is necessary to bear in mind the very real hold the Gospel principles of the Christian brotherhood had over the minds of all in pre-Reformation days, the extinction of the general sense that man did not stand alone being distinctly traceable to the tendencies in regard to social matters evolved during the period of turmoil initiated by the religious teachings of the Reformers. What M. SimÉon Luce says about the spirit of common life existing in the villages of Normandy in the fourteenth century might be adopted as a picture of English life in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. “Nobles, priests, religious clerks, sons of the soil who laboured at various manual works,” he writes, “lived then, so to say, in common, and they are found continually together in all their daily occupations. So far from this community of occupations, this familiar daily intercourse, being incompatible with the great inequality of conditions which then existed, in reality it resulted from it. It was where no strict line of demarcation divided the various classes that they ordinarily affected to keep at a distance one from the other.”[328]

There can be no doubt as to the nature of the teaching of the English Church in regard to the relation which, according to true Christian principles, should exist between all classes of society. In particular is this seen in all that pertained to the care of the poorer members of the Christian family. The evidence appears clear and unmistakable enough in pre-Reformation popular sermons and instructions, in formal pronouncements of Bishops and Synods, and in books intended for the particular teaching of clergy and laity in the necessary duties of the Christian man. Whilst fully recognising as a fact that in the very nature of things there must ever be the class of those who “have,” and the class of those who “have not,” our Catholic forefathers in pre-Reformation days knew no such division and distinction between the rich man and the poor man as obtained later on, when pauperism, as distinct from poverty, had come to be recognised as an inevitable consequence of the new era. To the Christian moralist, and even to the bulk of Catholic Englishmen, whether secular or lay, in the fifteenth century, those who had been blessed by God’s providence with worldly wealth were regarded not so much as the fortunate possessors of personal riches, their own to do with what they listed, and upon which none but they had right or claim, as in the light of stewards of God’s good gifts to mankind at large, for the right use and ministration of which they were accountable to Him who gave them.

Thus, to take one instance: the proceeds of ecclesiastical benefices were recognised in the Constitutions of Legates and Archbishops as being in fact as well as in theory the eleemosynÆ et spes pauperum—the alms and the hope of the poor. Those ecclesiastics who consumed the revenues of their cures on other than necessary and fitting purposes were declared to be “defrauders of the rights of God’s poor,” and “thieves of Christian alms intended for them;” whilst the English canonists and legal professors who glossed these provisions of the Church law gravely discussed the ways in which the poor of a parish could vindicate their right to their share in the ecclesiastical revenues of the Church.

This “jus pauperum,” which is set forth in such a text-book of English Law as Lyndwood’s Provinciale, is naturally put forth more clearly and forcibly in a work intended for popular instruction such as Dives et Pauper. “To them that have the benefices and goods of Holy Church,” writes the author, “it belonged principally to give alms and to have the cure of poor people.” To him who squanders the alms of the altar on luxury and useless show, the poor may justly point and say: “It is ours that you so spend in pomp and vanity!… That thou keepest for thyself of the altar passing the honest needful living, it is raveny, it is theft, it is sacrilege.” From the earliest days of English Christianity the care of the helpless poor was regarded as an obligation incumbent on all; and in 1342, Archbishop Stratford, dealing with appropriations, or the assignment of ecclesiastical revenues to the support of some religious house or college, ordered that a portion of the tithe should always be set apart for the relief of the poor, because, as Bishop Stubbs has pointed out, in England, from the days of King Ethelred, “a third part of the tithe” which belonged to the Church was the acknowledged birthright of the poorer members of Christ’s flock.

That there was social inequality is as certain as it was inevitable, for that is in the very constitution of human society. But this, as M. Luce has pointed out in regard to France, and Professor Janssens in regard to Germany, in no way detracted from the frank and full acknowledgment of the Christian brotherhood. Again and again in the sermons of the fifteenth century this truth, with all its practical applications, was enforced by the priest at the altar, where both poor and rich alike met on a common footing—“all, poor and rich, high and low, noble and simple, have sprung from a common stock and are children of a common father, Adam:” “God did not create a golden Adam from whom the nobles are descended, nor a silver Adam from whom have come the rich, and another, a clay Adam, from whom are the poor; but all, nobles, rich and poor, have one common father, made out of the dust of the earth.” These and similar lessons were constantly repeated by the religious teachers of the pre-Reformation English Church.

Equally definite is the author of the book of popular instruction, Dives et Pauper, above referred to. The sympathy of the writer is with the poor, as indeed is that of every ecclesiastical writer of the period. In fact, it is abundantly clear that the Church of England in Catholic days, as a pia mater, was ever ready to open wide her heart to aid and protect the poorer members of Christ’s mystical body. This is how Pauper in the tract in question states the true Christian teaching as to the duties of riches, and impresses upon his readers the view that the owners of worldly wealth are but stewards of the Lord: “All that the rich man hath, passing his honest living after the degree of his dispensation, it is other men’s, not his, and he shall give full hard reckoning thereof at the day of doom, when God shall say to him, ‘Yield account of your bailywick.’ For rich men and lords in this world are God’s bailiffs and God’s reeves, to ordain for the poor folk and to sustain them.” Most strongly does the same writer insist that no property gives any one the right to say “this is mine” and that is “thine,” for property, so far as it is of God, is of the nature of governance and dispensation, by which those who, by God’s Providence “have,” act as His stewards and the dispensers of His gifts to such as “have not.”[329]

It would, of course, be affectation to suggest that poverty and great hardness of life were not to be found in pre-Reformation days, but what did not exist was pauperism, which, as distinguished from poverty, certainly sprung up plentifully amid the ruins of Catholic institutions, overthrown as a consequence—perhaps as a necessary and useful consequence—of the religious changes in the sixteenth century. Bishop Stubbs, speaking of the condition of the poor in the Middle Ages, declares that “there is very little evidence to show that our forefathers in the middle ranks of life desired to set any impassable boundary between class and class.… Even the villein, by learning a craft, might set his foot on the ladder of promotion. The most certain way to rise was furnished by education, and by the law of the land, ‘every man or woman, of what state or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth him within the realm.’” Mr. Thorold Rogers, than whom no one has ever worked so diligently at the economic history of England, and whom none can suspect of undue admiration of the Catholic Church, has also left it on record that during the century and a half which preceded the era of the Reformation the mass of English labourers were thriving under their guilds and trade unions, the peasants were gradually acquiring their lands and becoming small freeholders, the artisans rising to the position of small contractors and working with their own hands at structures which their native genius and experience had planned. In a word, according to this high authority, the last years of undivided Catholic England formed “the golden age” of the Englishman who was ready and willing to work.

“In the age which I have attempted to describe,” writes the same authority, “and in describing which I have accumulated and condensed a vast amount of unquestionable facts, the rate of production was small, the conditions of health unsatisfactory, and the duration of life short. But, on the whole, there were none of those extremes of poverty and wealth which have excited the astonishment of philanthropists and are exciting the indignation of workmen. The age, it is true, had its discontents, and these discontents were expressed forcibly and in a startling manner. But of poverty which perishes unheeded, of a willingness to do honest work and a lack of opportunity there was little or none. The essence of life in England during the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors was that every one knew his neighbour, and that every one was his brother’s keeper.”[330]

In regard to the general care of the poorer brethren of a parish in pre-Reformation England, Bishop Hobhouse, after a careful examination of the available sources of information, writes as follows: “I can only suppose that the brotherhood tie was so strongly realised by the community that the weaker ones were succoured by the stronger, as out of a family store. The brotherhood tie was, no doubt, very much stronger then, when the village community was from generation to generation so unalloyed by anything foreign, when all were knit together by one faith and one worship and close kindred; but, further than this, the guild fellowships must have enhanced all the other bonds in drawing men to share their worldly goods as a common stock. Covertly, if not overtly, the guildsman bound himself to help his needy brother in sickness and age, as he expected his fellow-guildsman to do for him in his turn of need, and these bonds, added to a far stronger sense of the duty of children towards aged parents than is now found, did, I conceive, suffice for the relief of the poor, aided only by the direct almsgiving which flowed from the parsonage house, or in favoured localities from the doles or broken meat of a monastery.”[331]

To relieve the Reformation from the odious charge that it was responsible for the poor-laws, many authors have declared that not only did poverty largely exist before, say, the dissolution of the monastic houses, but that it would not long have been possible for the ancient methods of relieving the distressed to cope with the increase in their numbers under the changed circumstances of the sixteenth century. It is of course possible to deal with broad assertions only by the production of a mass of details, which is, under the present circumstances, out of the question, or by assertions equally broad, and I remark that there is no evidence of any change of circumstances, so far as such changes appear in history, which could not have been fully met by the application of the old principles, and met in a way which would never have induced the degree of distressing pauperism which, in fact, was produced by the application of the social principles adopted at the Reformation. The underlying idea of these latter was property in the sense of absolute ownership in place of the older and more Christian idea of property in the sense of stewardship.

Most certainly the result was not calculated to improve the condition of the poorer members of the community. It was they who were made to pay, whilst their betters pocketed the price. The well-to-do classes, in the process, became richer and more prosperous, whilst the “masses” became, as an old writer has it, “mere stark beggars.” As a fact, moreover, poverty became rampant, as we should have expected, immediately upon the great confiscations of land and other property at the dissolution of the religious houses. To take one example: Dr. Sharpe’s knowledge of the records of the city of London enables him to say that “the sudden closing of these institutions caused the streets to be thronged with the sick and poor.”

“The devil,” exclaims a preacher who lived through all these troublous times—“the devil cunningly turneth things his own way.” “Examples of this we have seen in our time more than I can have leisure to express or to rehearse. In the Acts of Parliament that we have had made in our days what godly preambles hath gone afore the same; even quasi oraculum Apollinis, as though the things that follow had come from the counsel of the highest in heaven; and yet the end hath been either to destroy abbeys or chauntries or colleges, or such like, by the which some have gotten much land, and have been made men of great possessions. But many an honest poor man hath been undone by it, and an innumerable multitude hath perished for default and lack of sustenance. And this misery hath long continued, and hath not yet (1556) an end. Moreover, all this commotion and fray was made under pretence of a common profit and common defence, but in very deed it was for private and proper lucre.”[332]

In the sixty years that followed the overthrow of the old system, it was necessary for Parliament to pass no less than twelve acts dealing with the relief of distress, the necessity for which, Thorold Rogers says, “can be traced distinctly back to the crimes of rulers and agents.” I need not characterise the spirit which is manifested in these acts, where poverty and crime are treated as indistinguishable.

Dr. Jessop writes: “In the general scramble of the Terror under Henry the Eighth, and of the anarchy in the days of Edward the Sixth … the monasteries were plundered even to their very pots and pans. The almshouses, in which old men and women were fed and clothed, were robbed to the last pound, the poor almsfolk being turned out in the cold at an hour’s warning to beg their bread. The splendid hospitals for the sick and needy, sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains, whose very raison d’Être was that they were to look after the care of those who were past caring for themselves, these were stripped of all their belongings, the inmates sent out to hobble into some convenient dry ditch to lie down and die in, or to crawl into some barn or house, there to be tended, not without fear of consequences, by some kindly man or woman, who could not bear to see a suffering fellow-creature drop down and die at their own doorposts.”[333]

Intimately connected with the subject of the care of the poor in pre-Reformation days is obviously that of the mediÆval guilds which, more than anything else, tended to foster the idea of the Christian brotherhood up to the eve of the religious changes.

It would probably be a mistake to suppose that these societies existed everywhere throughout the country in equal numbers. Mr. Thorold Rogers, it is true, says—and the opinion of one who has done so much work in every kind of local record must carry great weight—that “few parishes were probably without guild lands.” But there is certainly no distinct evidence that this was the case, especially in counties say like Hampshire, always sparsely populated as compared with other districts in the east of England, and where the people largely depended on agricultural pursuits for a living. It was in the great centres of trade and manufacture that the guilds were most numerous and most important, for it was precisely in those parts that the advantages of mutual help and co-operation outside the parish bond were most apparent and combination was practically possible.

An examination of the existing records leads to a general division of mediÆval guilds into two classes—Craft or Trade associations, and Religious or, as some prefer now to call them, Social guilds. The former, as their name implies, had, as the special object of their existence, the protection of some work, trade or handicraft, and in this for practical purposes we may include those associations of traders or merchants known under the name of “guild-merchants.” Such, for instance, were the great companies of the city of London, and it was in reality under the plea that they were trading societies that they were saved in the general destruction which overtook all similar fraternities and associations in the sixteenth century. The division of guilds into the two classes named above is, however, after all more a matter of convenience than a real distinction founded on fact. All guilds, no matter for what special purpose they were founded, had the same general characteristic of brotherly aid and social charity; and no guild was divorced from the ordinary religious observances commonly practised by all such bodies in those days.

It is often supposed that, for the most part, what are called religious guilds existed for the purpose of promoting or encouraging the religious practices, such as the attendance at church on certain days, the taking part in ecclesiastical processions, the recitations of offices and prayers, and the like. Without doubt, there were such societies in pre-Reformation days—such as, for example, the great Guild of Corpus Christi, in the city of York, which counted its members by thousands. But such associations were the exception, not the rule. An examination of the existing statutes and regulations of ancient guilds will show how small a proportion these purely Ecclesiastical guilds formed of the whole number of associations known as Religious guilds. The origin of the mistaken notion is obvious. In mediÆval days—that is, in times when such guilds flourished—the word “religious” had a wider, and what most people who reflect will be inclined to think, a truer signification than has obtained in later times. Religion was then understood to include the exercise of the two commandments of charity—the love of God and the love of one’s neighbour—and the exercises of practical charity to which guild brethren were bound by their guild statutes were considered as much religious practices as attendance at church or the taking part in an ecclesiastical procession. In these days, as Mr. Brentano in his essay On the History and Development of Guilds has pointed out, most of the objects, to promote which the guilds existed, would now be called social duties, but they were then regarded as true objects of Christian charity. Mutual assistance, the aid of the poor, of the helpless, of the sick, of strangers, of pilgrims and prisoners, the burial of the dead, even the keeping of schools and schoolmasters, and other such like works were held to be “exercises of religion.”[334]

If the word “religious” be thought now to give a wrong impression about the nature of associations, the main object of which was to secure the performance of duties we should now call “social,” quite as false an impression would be conveyed by the word “social” as applied to them. A “social” society would inevitably suggest to many in these days an association for convivial meetings, and this false notion of the nature of a mediÆval guild would be further strengthened by the fact that in many, if not most, of them a yearly, and sometimes a more frequent feast existed under an item in their statutes. This guild feast, however, was a mere incident in the organisation, and in no case did it form what we might consider the end or purpose of the association.

By whichever name we call them, and assuming the religious basis which underlay the whole social life in the fifteenth century, the character and purpose of these mediÆval guilds cannot in reality be misunderstood. Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies and the provident associations of the middle ages. They undertook towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor. Not infrequently they acted for the public good of the community in the mending of roads and the repair of bridges, and for the private good of their members, in the same way that insurance companies to-day compensate for loss by fire or accident. The very reason of their existence was the affording of mutual aid and assistance in meeting the pecuniary demands which were constantly arising from burials, legal exactions, penal fines and all other kinds of payments and compensations. Mr. Toulmin Smith thus defines their object: “The early English guild was an institution of local self-help which, before the poor-laws were invented, took the place in old times of the modern friendly or benefit society, but with a higher aim; while it joined all classes together in the care of the needy and for objects of common welfare, it did not neglect the forms and practice of religion, justice, and morality,”[335] which I may add was, indeed, the main-spring of their life and action.

“The guild lands,” writes Mr. Thorold Rogers, “were a very important economical fact in the social condition of early England. The guilds were the benefit societies of the time from which impoverished members could be, and were, aided. It was an age in which the keeping of accounts was common and familiar. Beyond question, the treasurers of the village guild rendered as accurate an annual statement of their fraternity as a bailiff did to his lord.… It is quite certain that the town and country guilds obviated pauperism in the middle ages, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre for those associations which fulfilled the function that in more recent times trades unions have striven to satisfy.”[336]

An examination of the various articles of association contained in the returns made into the Chancery in 1389, and other similar documents, shows how wide was the field of Christian charity covered by these “fraternities.” First and foremost amongst these works of religion must be reckoned the burial of the dead; regulations as to which are invariably to be found in all the guild statutes. Then, very generally, provisions for help to the poor, sick, and aged. In some, assistance was to be given to those who were overtaken by misfortune, whose goods had been damaged or destroyed by fire or flood, or had been diminished by loss or robbery; in others, money was found as a loan to such as needed temporary assistance. In the guild at Ludlow, in Shropshire, for instance, “any good girl of the guild had a dowry provided for her if her father was too poor to find one himself.” The “guild-merchant” of Coventry kept a lodging-house with thirteen beds, “to lodge poor folk coming through the land on pilgrimage or other work of charity,” with a keeper of the house and a woman to wash the pilgrims’ feet. A guild at York found beds and attendance for poor strangers, and the guild of Holy Cross in Birmingham kept almshouses for the poor in the town. In Hampshire, the guild of St. John at Winchester, which comprised men and women of all sorts and conditions, supported a hospital for the poor and infirm of the city.

The very mass of material at hand makes the task of selecting examples for illustrating some of the objects for which mediÆval guilds existed somewhat difficult. I take a few such examples at haphazard. The organisation of these societies was the same as that which has existed in similar associations up to the time of our modern trades unions. A meeting was held at which officers were elected and accounts audited; fines for non-acceptance of office were frequently imposed, as well as for absence from the common meeting. Often members had to declare on oath that they would fulfil their voluntary obligations, and would keep secret the affairs of the society. Persons of ill-repute were not admitted, and members who disgraced the fraternity were expelled. For example, the first guild statutes printed by Mr. Toulmin Smith are those of Garlekhithe, London. They begin: “In worship of God Almighty our Creator and His Mother Saint Mary, and all Saints, and St. James the Apostle, a fraternity is begun by good men in the Church of St. James, at Garlekhith in London, on the day of Saint James, the year of our Lord 1375, for the amendment of their lives and of their souls, and to nourish greater love between the brethren and sisters of the said brotherhood.” Each of them has sworn on the Book to perform the points underwritten.

“First: all those that are, or shall be, in the said brotherhood shall be of good life, condition, and behaviour, and shall love God and Holy Church and their neighbours, as Holy Church commands.” Then, after various provisions as to meetings and payments to be made to the general funds, the statutes order that “if any of the foresaid brethren fall into such distress that he hath nothing, and cannot, on account of old age or sickness, help himself, if he has been in the brotherhood seven years, and during that time has performed all duties, he shall have every week after from the common box fourteen pence (i.e. about £1 a week of our money) for the rest of his life, unless he recovers from his distress.”[337] In one form or other this provision for the assistance of needy members is repeated in the statutes of almost every guild. Some provide for help in case of distress coming “through any chance, through fire or water, thieves or sickness, or any other haps.” Some, besides granting this kind of aid, add: “and if so befall that he be young enough to work, and he fall into distress, so that he have nothing of his own to help himself with, then the brethren shall help him, each with a portion as he pleases in the way of charity.”[338] Others furnish loans from the common fund to enable brethren to tide over temporary difficulties: “and if the case falleth that any of the brotherhood have need to borrow a certain sum of silver, he (can) go to the keepers of the box and take what he hath need of, so that the sum be not so large that any one may not be helped as well as another, and that he leave a sufficient pledge, or else find a sufficient security among the brotherhood.”[339] Some, again, make the contributions to poor brethren a personal obligation on the members, such as a farthing a week from each of the brotherhood, unless the distress has been caused by individual folly or waste. Others extend their Christian charity to relieve distress beyond the circle of the brotherhood—that is, of all “whosoever falls into distress, poverty, lameness, blindness, sent by the grace of God to them, even if he be a thief proven, he shall have seven pence a week from the brothers and sisters to assist him in his need.”[340] Some of the guilds in seaside districts provide for help in case of “loss through the sea,” and there is little doubt that in mediÆval days the great work carried on by such a body as the Royal Lifeboat Society would have been considered a work of religion, and the fitting object of a religious guild.

It would be tedious to multiply examples of the purposes and scope of the old fraternities, and it is sufficient to repeat that there was hardly any kind of social service which in some form or other was not provided for by these voluntary associations. As an illustration of the working of a trade or craft guild, we may take that of the “Pinners” of the city of London, the register of which, dating from A.D. 1464, is now in the British Museum.[341] These are some of the chief articles approved for the guild by the Mayor and Corporation of the city of London: (1) No foreigner to be allowed to keep a shop for the sale of pins. (2) No foreigner to take to the making of pins without undergoing previous examinations and receiving the approval of the guild officers. (3) No master to receive another master’s workman. (4) If a servant or workman who has served his master faithfully fall sick he shall be kept by the craft. (5) Power to the craft to expel those who do ill and bring discredit upon it. (6) Work at the craft at nights, on Saturdays, and on the eves of feasts is strictly prohibited. (7) Sunday closing is rigidly enforced.

It is curious to find, four hundred years ago, so many of the principles set down as established, for which in our days trades unions and similar societies are now contending. It has been remarked above, that even in the case of craft guilds, such as this Society of Pinners undoubtedly was, many of the ordinary purposes of the religious guilds were looked to equally with the more obvious object of protecting the special trade or handicraft of the specific society. The accounts of this Pinners’ Guild fully bear out this view. For example: We have the funeral services for departed brethren, and the usual trentals, or thirty masses, for deceased members. Then we find: “4d. to the wax chandlers’ man for setting up of our lights at St. James.” One of the members, William Clarke, borrowed 5s. 10d. from the common chest, to secure which he placed a gold ring in pledge. There are also numerous payments for singers at the services held on the feast days of the guild, and for banners and other hangings for processions.

Of payments for the specific ends of the guild there are, of course, plenty of examples. For instance: spurious pins and “other ware” are searched for and burnt by the craft officers, and this at such distances from London as Salisbury and the fair at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, the great market for East Anglia and the centre of the Flanders trade. “William Mitchell is paid 8d. for pins for the sisters, on Saint James’ day.” In 1466, a man is fined 2s. for setting a child to work before he had been fully apprenticed; and also another had to pay 2s. for working after seven o’clock on a winter night. Later on in the accounts we have a man mulcted for keeping a shop before he was a “freeman” of the society, and another “for that he sold Flaundres pynnes for English pynnes.” At another time, a large consignment of no less than 12,000 “pynnes of ware” were forfeited to the craft, and sold by them for 8s., which went to the common fund. These accounts show also the gradual rise in importance and prosperity which the Pinners’ Guild, under the patronage of St. James, manifested. At first, the warden and brethren at their yearly visit to Westminster were content to hire an ordinary barge upon the Thames, but after a few years they had started “a keverid boote” of their own at the cost of half-a-crown, in place of the sixpence formerly paid. So, too, in the early days of their incorporation they had their annual dinner and audited their accounts at some London tavern—the “Mayremayde in Bread Street” and “the brew house atte the Sygne of the Rose in Old Jury” are two of the places named. Later on they met in some hall belonging to another guild, such as the “Armourers’” Hall, and later still they built their own Guild Hall and held their banquet there. This building made a great demand upon their capital, and the officers evidently began to look more carefully after the exaction of fines. For late working at this time one of the brethren was mulcted in the sum of twenty pence; another was fined twopence for coming late to the guild mass, and several others had to pay for neglecting to attend the meeting. From the period of starting their own hall, ill-fortune seems to have attended the society. About the year 1499, they got involved in a great lawsuit with one Thomas Hill, upon which was expended a large sum of money. A special whip was made to meet expenses and keep up the credit of the guild; for what with counsel’s fees, the writing of bills, and the drawing of pleas, the general fund was unable to find the necessary munitions of war to continue the suit. To the credit of the members, most of them apparently responded generously to this call, and, in consequence of this unfortunate litigation, to many subsequent demands which the empty exchequer necessitated.

There would be no difficulty whatever in multiplying the foregoing illustrations of the working of these mediÆval societies. The actual account books of course furnish us with the most accurate knowledge, even to minute details, and any one of them would afford ample material.

The funds at the disposal of the guilds were derived chiefly from voluntary subscriptions, entrance fees, gifts, and legacies of members. Frequently these societies became in process of time the trustees of lands and houses which they either held and administered for the purposes of the guilds, or for some specific purpose determined by the will of the original donor. Thus, to take one or two examples from the account rolls of the Guild of Tailors in the city of Winchester. In the time of King Richard II.—say 1392—the usual entrance fee for members was 3s. 4d., and the annual subscription was 1s. There were 106 members at that time, seven of whom had been enrolled during the previous year. Among others who had thus entered was one Thomas Warener, or Warner, a cousin of Bishop William of Wykeham, and the Bishop’s bailiff of the Soke; his payment was 4s. 8d. instead of the usual entrance fee. In the same year we find the names of Thomas Hampton, lord of the manor of Stoke Charity, and Thomas Marleburgh, who was afterwards Mayor of Winchester. In the following year, seventeen new members were enrolled, one of them being a baker of Southampton, called Dunster. Turning over these accounts, we come upon examples of presents either in kind or money made to the society. Thus in one place Thomas Marleburgh makes a present of a hooded garment which was subsequently sold for eighteen pence; and in another, one Maurice John Cantelaw presented for the service of the guild, “a chalice and twelve pence in counted money,” requesting the members “to pray for his good estate, for the souls of his parents, friends, benefactors, and others for whom he was bound to pray.” In return for this valuable present, the guild granted that it should be accounted as Cantelaw’s life-subscription.

Having spoken of the sources of income, which were practically the same in all guilds, something must be said as to the expenditure over and above the purposes for which the guilds existed. This may be illustrated from the accounts of this same fraternity of tailors of Winchester.[342] In the first place, as in almost every similar society, provision was made for the funerals of members and for the usual daily mass for thirty days after the death of the deceased members. The sum set down is 2s. 6d. for each trental of thirty masses. Then we find mention of alms to the poor and sick; thus in 1403, the sum of 36s., about one-tenth of the annual revenue, was spent upon this object. This, of course, was charity of a general kind, and wholly unconnected with the assistance given by rule to necessitous members of the guild.[343]

One expense, very common in these mediÆval guilds, was the preparation for taking a fitting part in the great annual religious pageant or procession on Corpus Christi day. In the case of this Tailors’ Guild at Winchester, we find sums of money charged for making wax torches and ornamenting them with flowers and red and blue wax, with card shields and parchment streamers, or “pencils,” as they are called. The members of the guild apparently carried small tapers; but the four great torches were borne by hired men, who received a shilling each for their trouble. It is somewhat difficult for us nowadays to understand the importance attached to these great ecclesiastical pageants by our ancestors four hundred years or so ago. But as to the fact, there can be no doubt. Among the documents in the municipal archives of Winchester there exists an order of the Mayor and Corporation as to the disposition of this solemn procession in 1435. It runs thus: “At a convocation holden in the city of Winchester the Friday next after the Feast of Corpus Christi in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Harry the Sixth, after the conquest; it was ordained by Richard Salter, mayor of the city of Winchester, John Symer and Harry Putt, bailiffs of the city aforesaid, and also by all the citizens and commonalty of the same city: It is agreed of a certain general procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi, of divers artificers and crafts within the said city: that is to say the carpenters and felters shall go together first; smiths and barbers, second; cooks and butchers, third; shoemakers with two lights, fourth; tanners and japanners, fifth; plumers and silkmen, sixth; fishers and farriers, seventh; taverners, eighth; weavers, with two lights, ninth; fullers, with two lights, tenth; dyers, with two lights, eleventh; chaundlers and brewers, twelfth; mercers, with two lights, thirteenth; the wives with one light and John Blake with another light, fourteenth; and all these lights shall be borne orderly before the said procession before the priests of the city. And the four lights of the brethren of St. John’s shall be borne about the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the same day in the procession aforesaid.”

The brethren of St. John’s just named, as the chief object of their association, kept a hospital for the poor and sick in the city. They paid a chaplain of their own, as indeed did most of the guilds, and had a master and matron to look after the comfort of the poor. They provided bed and bedding, and carefully administered not only their own subscriptions, but the sums of money freely bequeathed to them to be spent on charity. At every market held within the precincts of Winchester an officer, paid by the society, attended and claimed for the support of the poor a tax of two handfuls of corn from every sack exposed for sale. The mayor and bailiffs were apparently the official custodians of this guild, and numerous legacies in wills, even in the reign of Henry VIII., attest its popularity. For example, on February 19, 1503, John Cornishe, alias Putte, late Mayor of Winchester, died and left to the guardians his tenements and gardens under the penthouse in the city for the charity, on condition that for ten years they would spend 6s. 8d. in keeping his annual obit. In 1520, a draper of London, named Calley, bequeathed ten shillings to the hospital for annually repairing and improving the bedding of the poor. The accounts of this Fraternity of St. John’s Hospital for a considerable period in the fourteenth century are still in existence. They show large receipts, sometimes amounting to over £100, from lands, shops, houses, and from the sale of cattle and farm produce, over and above the annual subscriptions of members. On the other side, week by week we have the payments for food provided for the service of the poor: fish, flesh, beer, and bread are the chief items. One year, for instance, the bread bought for the sick amounted to 36s. 6d.; beer to 36s. 8d.; meat to 32s. 2d.; fish to 28s. 3½d., &c. Besides this seven shillings were expended in mustard, and 3s. 6d. for six gallons of oil. This same year the guardians also paid 2s. 2d. for the clothes and shoes for a young woman named Sibil “who nursed the poor in the hospital.” The above represents only the actual money expended over the sick patients, and from the same source, most minute and curious information might be added as to the other expenses of the house, including, for instance, even the purchase of grave-clothes and coffins for the dead poor, the wages and clothing of the matron and servant, and the payment of the officer who collected the handfuls of corn in the market-place. At times we have evidence of the arrival and care of strange poor people—we should perhaps call them “tramps” in our day. For instance, here is one heading: “The expenses of three poor strangers in the hospital for 21 days and nights, 15¾d.; to each of whom is given ¾d. Item: the expenses of one other for 5 days, 3¾d. Item: the expenses of the burial of the said sick person, 3d. Item: the expenses of four pilgrims lodged for a night, 2d. Item: new straw to stuff the beds of the sick, 8d. Item: paid to the laundress for washing the clothes of the sick during one year, 12d.”

To speak of guilds without making any mention of the feasts—the social meetings—which are invariably associated with such societies, would be impossible. The great banquets of the city companies are proverbial, and, in origin at least, they arose out of the guild meeting for the election of officers, followed by the guild feast. As a rule, these meetings took place on the day on which the Church celebrated the memory of the Saint who had been chosen as patron of the society, and were probably much like the club dinners which are still cherished features of village life in many parts of England.[344]

It has been said that the wardens of guilds were frequently named in mediÆval wills as trustees of money for various charitable purposes. As an example of property thus left to a guild, take the Candlemas Guild, established at Bury St. Edmunds: the society was established in the year 1471, and a few years later one of the members made over to the brethren considerable property for the common purposes of the guild and other specified objects. His name was John Smith, a merchant of Bury, and he died, we are told, on “St. Peter’s even at Midsummer, 1481.” His will, which is witnessed by the Abbot and Prior of St. Edmund’s Abbey, provides, in the first place, for the keeping of an obit “devoutly.” The residue of the income was to accumulate till the appointment of each new abbot, when, on the election, the entire amount was to be paid over to the elect in place of the sum of money the town was bound to pay on every such occasion. Whatever remained over and above this was to be devoted to the payments of any tenth, fifteenth, or other tax, imposed upon the citizens by royal authority. This revenue was to be administered by the guardians of the guild, who were bound at the yearly meeting at Candlemas to render an account of their stewardship. Year by year John Smith’s will was read out at the meeting, and proclamation was made before the anniversary of his death in the following manner: “Let us all of charity pray for the soul of John. We put you in remembrance that you shall not miss the keeping of his Dirge and also of his Mass.” Round about the town the crier was sent to recite the following lines:—

The example set by this donor to the Candlemas Guild at Bury was followed by many others in the later part of the fifteenth century. For instance, a “gentlewoman,” as she calls herself, one Margaret Odom, after providing by will for the usual obit and for a lamp to burn before “the holie sacrament in St. James’s Church,” desires that the brethren of the guild shall devote the residue of the income arising from certain houses and lands she has conveyed to their keeping, to paying a priest to “say mass in the chapel of the gaol before the prisoners there, and giving them holy water and holy bread on all Sundays, and to give to the prisoners of the long ward of the said gaol every week seven faggots of wood from Hallowmass (November 1) to Easter Day.”[346]

Intimately connected with the subject of the guilds is that of the fairs, which formed so great a feature in mediÆval commercial life, and at which the craft guilds were represented. For the south of England, the great fair held annually at Winchester became the centre of our national commerce with France. The following account of it is given in Mr. W. J. Ashley’s most interesting Introduction to English Economic History: “A fair for three days on the eastern hill outside Winchester was granted to the bishop by William II.; his immediate successors granted extension of time, until by a charter of Henry II. it was fixed at sixteen days, from 31st August to 15th September. On the morning of 31st August ‘the justiciars of the pavilion of the bishop’ proclaimed the fair on the hilltop, then rode on horseback through the city proclaiming the opening of the fair. The keys of the city and the weighing machine in the wool market were taken possession of, and a special mayor and special bailiffs were appointed to supersede the city officials during the fair time. The hilltop was quickly covered with streets of wooden shops: in one, the merchants from Flanders; in another, those of Caen or some other Norman town; in another, the merchants from Bristol. Here were placed the goldsmiths in a row, and there the drapers, &c., whilst around the whole was a wooden palisade with guarded entrance, a precaution which did not always prevent enterprising adventurers from escaping payment of the toll by digging a way in for themselves under the wall.… In Winchester all trade was compulsorily suspended, and within ‘a seven league circuit,’ guards being stationed at outlying posts, on bridges and other places of passage, to see that the monopoly was not infringed. At Southampton nothing was to be sold during the fair time but victuals, and even the very craftsmen of Winchester were bound to transfer themselves to the hill and there carry on their occupations during the fair. There was a graduated scale of tolls and duties: all merchants of London, Winchester, or Wallingford who entered during the first week were free from entrance tolls.… In every fair there was a court of pie-powder (of dusty feet) in which was decided by merchant law all cases of dispute that might arise, the ordinary jurisdiction being for a time suspended in the town; at Winchester this was called the Pavilion Court. Hither the bishop’s servants brought all the weights and measures to be tested; here the justices determined on an assize, or fixed scale, for bread, wine, beer, and other victuals, adjudging to the pillory any baker whose bread was found to be of defective weight; and here every day disputes between merchants as to debts were decided by juries upon production and comparison of the notched wooden tallies.”[347]

A few words must be said about the final destruction of the English guilds. At the close of the reign of Henry VIII. an act of Parliament was passed vesting the property of colleges, chantries, fraternities, brotherhoods and guilds in the Crown (38 Hen. VIII., c. 4). The king was empowered to send out his commissioners to take possession of all such property, on the plea that it might be “used and exercised to more godly and virtuous purposes.” Henry died before the provisions of the act could be complied with, and a second act was passed through the first Parliament in the reign of Edward VI. (1 Ed. VI., c. 14). This went beyond the former decree of destruction, for after providing for the demolition of colleges, free chapels, and chantries, it proceeded not only separately by name to grant to the king all sums of money devoted “by any manner of corporations, guilds, fraternities, companies or fellowships or mysteries or crafts,” to the support of a priest, obits or lights (which may be taken under colour of religion), but to hand over to the crown “all fraternities, brotherhoods and guilds, being within the realm of England and Wales and other the king’s dominions, and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them, other than such corporations, guilds, fraternities, &c., and the manors, lands, &c., pertaining to the said corporations, &c., above mentioned.”

The Parliament of Henry VIII. assigned as a reason for this seizure of the property of the corporate bodies the need “for the maintenance of these present wars,” and cleverly put into one group “colleges, free chapels, chantries, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, and guilds.” “The act of Edward VI.,” writes Mr. Toulmin Smith, “was still more ingenious, for it held up the dogma of purgatory to abhorrence, and began to hint at grammar schools. The object of both acts was the same. All the possessions of all the guilds (except what could creep out as being mere trading guilds, which saved the London guilds) became vested by these two acts in the Crown; and the unprincipled courtiers who had advised and helped the scheme gorged themselves out of this wholesale plunder of what was, in every sense, public property.”[348]

It is clear that in seizing the property of the guilds the Crown destroyed far more than it gained for itself. A very large proportion of their revenues was derived from the entrance fees and the annual subscriptions of the existing members, and in putting an end to these societies the State swept away the organisation by which these voluntary subscriptions were raised, and this not in one or two places, but all over England. In this way far more harm was in reality done to the interests of the poor, sick, and aged, and, indeed, to the body politic at large, than the mere seizure of their comparatively little capital, whether in land or money.

It is not, of course, meant to imply that the injury to the poor and sick was not fully recognised at the time of these legal confiscations. People deeply resented the idea that what generations of benefactors had intended for the relief of distress should thus be made to pass into the pocket of some “new” man who had grown great upon the spoils. The literature of the period affords abundant evidence of the popular feeling. Crowley, for instance, wrote about 1550—just at this very time—and although no one would look for any accurate description of facts in his rhyming satires, he may be taken as a reliable witness as to what the people were saying. This is what he writes on the point:—

It has frequently been asserted that although grave injury was undoubtedly done to the poor of the land by this wholesale confiscation, it was done unwittingly by the authorities, or that, at the worst, the portions of revenue derived from the property which had been intended for the support of the sick, aged, &c., was so bound up with those to which religious obligations (now declared superstitious and illegal) were attached, that it was impossible to distinguish the latter from the former, and all perished together, or rather passed undistinguished into the royal pocket. Such a view is not borne out by facts, and however satisfactory it might be to believe that this robbery of the poor and sick by the Crown was accidental and unpremeditated, the historian is bound by the evidence to hold that the pillage was fully premeditated and deliberately and consciously carried out. It is of course obvious, that some may regard it as proper that funds given for the support of priests to say masses or offer prayers for the souls of the departed should have been confiscated, although it would have been better had the money been devoted to some purpose of local utility rather than that it should have been added to the Crown revenues or have gone to enrich some royal favourite. For example it may, for the sake of argument, be admitted that the two fields at Petersfield in Hampshire thus taken by the royal commissioners—one called White field, in the tenure of Gregory Hill, the rent of which was intended to keep a perpetual light burning in the parish church, and the other held by John Mill, given to support a priest “called the Morrow Masse priest” (i.e. the priest employed to say the early morning mass for the convenience of people going to work)—were under the circumstances fair articles of plunder for the royal officials, when the mass was prohibited and the doctrine symbolised by the perpetual light declared superstitious. But this will not apply to the money intended for the poor. It might have been easy to justify the Crown’s action in taking the priest’s portion, and even the little pittance intended for the serving clerk, but the seizure of the benefactions to the poor cannot be defended. It was not accidental; for an examination of the original documents relating to the guilds and chantries now in the Record Office will show not only that the Royal Commissioners were as a rule careful to distinguish between the portions intended for religious purposes and those set aside for perpetual charity to the sick and poor, but in many cases they actually proposed to the Court of Augmentation to protect the latter and preserve them for the objects of Christian charity intended by the original donors. In every such case the document reveals the fact that this suggestion in the interest of common justice was rejected by the ultimate Crown officials, and a plain intimation is afforded on the face of the documents that even those sums intended by the original donors for the relief of poverty were to be confiscated.

The destruction of the guilds is, from any point of view, a sad and humiliating story, and, perhaps fortunately, history has so far permitted the thick veil of obscurity drawn over the subject at the time to remain practically undisturbed. A consideration of the scope and purposes of English mediÆval guilds cannot but raise our opinion of the wisdom of our forefathers who fostered their growth, and convince us that many and useful ends were served by these voluntary societies. This opinion we can hold, wholly apart from any views we may entertain about the religious aspects of these societies generally. Socialistic they were, but their socialism, so far from being adverse to religion, as the socialism of to-day is generally considered to be, was transfused and directed by a deeply religious spirit, carried out into the duties of life, and manifesting itself in practical charities of every kind.

One or two points suggested by consideration of the working of mediÆval guilds may be emphasized. The system of these voluntary societies would be, of course, altogether impossible and out of place in this modern world of ours. They would not, and could not, meet the wants and needs of these days; and yet their working is quite worth studying by those who are interested in the social problems which nowadays are thrusting themselves upon the public notice and demanding a solution. The general lessons taught by these voluntary associations may be summed up under one or two heads suggested by Mr. Ashley’s volume already referred to: (1) It is obvious that, unlike what we find to-day in the commercial enterprises of the world, capital played but a very small part in the handicrafts of those times; skill, perseverance, and connection were more important. (2) The middle ages had no knowledge of any class of what may be called permanent wage-labourers. There was no working-class in our modern sense: if by that is meant a class the greater portion of which never rises. In the fourteenth century, a few years of steady work as a journeyman meant, in most cases, that a workman was able to set up as a master craftsman. Every hardworking apprentice expected as a matter of course to be able to become in time a master. The collisions between capital and labour to which we are so much accustomed had no place in the middle ages. (3) There was no such gulf between master and man as exists in our days. The master and his journeyman worked together side by side, in the same shop, at the same work, and the man could earn fully half as much as his master. (4) If we desire to institute a comparison between the status of the working-classes in the fourteenth century and to-day, the comparison must be between the workman we know and the old master craftsman. The shop-keeping class and the middle-man were only just beginning to exist. The consumer and producer stood in close relation, and public control was exercised fully, as the craft guilds were subject to the supervision and direction of the municipal or central authority of the cities in which they existed.