THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GILDS OF SHREWSBURY.

In the foregoing chapter it has been shown how the Craft Gilds were called into being. They possessed at first no charters[91] because none were needed. It was only when friction arose that there came any necessity for royal authority to step forward with its support and sanction[92].

And as they at first possessed no charters, so they have left few or no records of their earliest life. So long as they worked in thorough accord with the spirit of the age and completely fulfilled its requirements they left scanty traces. It is only when the period of degeneracy commences that we begin to have anything like adequate materials for their detailed history.The 14th century was fruitful in illustrations of the difficulties which beset the work of the Gilds.

The development of trade alone had proceeded far enough to render their task already complicated: their difficulties were increased abnormally by the exceptional conditions of labour brought about by the Black Death. The Peasant Revolt compelled Parliament to take cognisance of industrial difficulties. In 1388, at its meeting at Cambridge, it was largely occupied with trade questions[93], and ordered the issue of writs to the sheriff of each county in England, commanding returns of all details as to the foundation, objects, and condition of both religious fraternities and Craft Gilds. These returns show that most of the Gilds obtained their charters during the 13th and the early years of the 14th centuries[94].

It does not appear that any legislation followed upon this parliamentary action, but provisions now begin to appear for the settlement of disputes between masters and workmen, and also between brethren of the Gild. So far the different classes of workmen had worked together in harmony upon the whole, but it could not fail that a severance or at least a marked diversity of interests should arise. Most important, as demonstrating that it was the change in external circumstances, and not so much the internal degeneracy of the Gilds themselves, which was causing the friction, are the evidences which show that a great division of labour was in progress[95]. In the 13th century the tailor and the cloth-merchant sever their former connection: the businesses of the tanner and of the butcher become distinct branches of trade[96]. Similarly the tanner and the shoemaker were made separate callings[97]. The same movement is still more clearly seen in the disputes which arose between allied Gilds as to the particular work which each was charged with supervising[98]. It was the creation of opposing interests, of which such were the outward signs, that introduced the seed of decay into the Gild system.

How rapidly the degeneracy proceeded may be gathered from a petition of the Commons early in the 15th century (1437), which evoked an Act (15 Hen. VI., cap. 6) definitely recognising the existence of abuses. After reciting how the

the statute proceeded to order that the Gilds should not in the future

But it is abundantly clear that the complaints are against the abuses of the system and not against the system itself. Dissatisfaction is expressed at the “little reasonable ordinances” of the Gilds but not against the companies themselves. The policy therefore of Henry VI. and Edward IV. was to reform the Gilds by amending their ordinances, or, if necessary, giving them charters of incorporation which should set forth definitely their objects, and state both the extent and the limitation of their powers. It is from this period that we date most of the existing records of the Shrewsbury companies. The barbers are said to have been chartered by Edward I. in 1304[99]; their earliest extant composition[100] is dated 1432 (10 Hen. VI.). The Shoemakers’ composition of 1387 recited a charter of Edward III.[101] A Vintners’ company is said to have been erected in Shrewsbury by Henry IV. in 1412[101].

But it is with the accession of Henry VI. that the great number of present charters and compositions begins. The date of the Fishmongers’ company is 1423[101], and the entries of the Mercers commence in the next year[101]. The Barbers’ composition of 1432 has been already mentioned. Then follow the Weavers (1448-9), the Fletchers (1449), the Carpenters (1449-50) in close proximity[101]. The Tailors and Skinners (1461) were recognised in the last year of Henry VI.[101], and eighteen years subsequently received a new composition from Edward IV. (1478), who had in the first year of his reign united the Fraternity of the Blessed Trinity with the company of the Drapers[102]. The companies of the Millers, Bakers, Cooks, Butchers and Shearmen certainly existed before 1478, as they are mentioned as taking part in the Corpus Christi Procession at that date. In that year the Tanners and Glovers were incorporated[103], as also were the Saddlers[103]. The royal recognition of the Mercers[101] in the next year completed the list of Shrewsbury companies erected before the 16th century.

It will be convenient here to draw attention to a different kind of Gild which was founded in Shrewsbury towards the close of this period: the religious Gild of S. Winifred.

The ancient Monks’ Gilds which had spread so early over England, found as was to be expected later imitators in large numbers. The oldest accounts of these Gilds also, like those of the Monks’ Gilds, are found in England[104]. Religious or Social they are usually called. They all evinced a strong religious character, but in addition had a care for the old and needy. If a Gild-brother suffer loss through theft “let all the Gildship avenge their comrade,” says the Cambridge statute. They also took cognisance of public welfare. If a Gild-brother do wrong “let all bear it: if one misdo, let all bear alike.” If a man be slain in fair quarrel with a Gild-brother the wite is to be borne by all, but the wilful or treacherous murderer is “to bear his own deed.”

These Gilds rapidly spread over all Europe, and existed probably in every town. They doubtless formed the model to which the later associations looked, and, except in details, differed little from the Craft Gilds. They were frequently connected with trade, even in some instances consisting entirely of followers of specific crafts[105], and loans were made out of the common chest to help members in misfortune[106]. We have scant information of early religious Gilds in Shrewsbury, though there can be but little doubt they flourished there as elsewhere. Later, in the 15th century, one was founded by the Abbot of the Holy Cross, which presents several unusual and interesting features.Thomas Mynde was elected Abbot on January 8th, 1460, but it was not till 1486 that he took measures to found the Fraternity of S. Winifred, though probably the scheme had been previously shaping itself through the long period of unsettlement which the Civil Wars had caused. The present Gild differed from the earlier foundations in being deliberately created by royal charter. The reason was that without such security it could not receive grants of land, and Abbot Mynde was desirous to bequeath to it his private possessions rather than to leave them to his Monastery,—a curious commentary perhaps on the low estimation into which the religious houses had fallen.

The royal charter was not obtained without some trouble. The License itself says it was granted “by [reason of] the sincere devotion which we have and bear towards S. Winefrida Virgin and Martyr;” but Abbot Mynde assures us that this laudable zeal required the practical stimulus of “a large sum of money” before it would take effect in action.

The terms of the charter allowed both brethren and sisters to join the fellowship, the number being unregulated. The oath to support the Gild was taken by each member on admittance, kneeling before the altar in the Abbey of the Holy Cross. Power was given for the election of a Master, whose duties were the regulation of the Gild and the supervision of its property. The fraternity had its common seal, and the ordinary powers and privileges of corporations. It was especially exempted from the Mortmain Acts, and was allowed to acquire property to the yearly value of £10. The objects to which this was to be devoted were the finding of two Chaplains, or at least one, whose duties were the saying of a daily Mass at the Altar of S. Winifred in the Abbey, and the celebration of a Requiem Mass on the decease of a brother or sister of the Fraternity. At such Masses it was especially provided that the prayers for the departed soul should be in English.

The Gild was joined in considerable numbers by the principal folk of the town, but there is little information[107] respecting its history, which may be at once anticipated here. At the confiscation of the Chantry and Gild property the fraternity of S. Winifred was not able to plead the excuse of usefulness for trade purposes, and it fell unnoticed in the ruin of the great Abbey with which it was connected. Its life had been a short one, but coming as it did at a time when religious fervour was weak and morality lax, it no doubt served a useful purpose and deserved a better fate than almost total oblivion.

Returning after this digression to the Craft Gilds it will be interesting and profitable to make an examination and comparison of two of their charters, one selected from the earlier and one from the later portion of the period. The charter[108] of the Barbers’ Gild, granted by Henry VI. in 1432, may be placed beside the composition[109] which Edward IV. gave to the Mercers in 1480.

A point which strikes us forcibly on the most superficial examination of the charters, is the prominence given, in one as in the other, to the Corpus Christi procession. It is a striking illustration of the extent to which mediÆval materialism had permeated society, and how deeply rooted was that “tendency to see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the doctrine into its most literal application[110],” which scholastic philosophy had nurtured. The procession indeed would almost appear, from the charters, to be the principal object for which the Gilds exist. A considerable share of the fines is expressly devoted to the “Increce of the Lyght that is boren yerely in the heye and worthie ffest of Corpus Xti Day.” The Mercers’ composition regulates the order of the procession and the weight of the candle which the company provides in it. No member is to be out of his place on the festival without permission, and the combrethren are especially prohibited from going to “the Coventrie Fayre” at this season under penalty of a fine of twelve pence. The fact of being enabled to take part in the procession is manifestly looked upon as one of the great privileges and duties of the companies.

The Mercers’ Gild also provided for a priest to say a daily Mass at the altar of S. Michael in the Church of S. Chad; and thirteen poor Bedesmen were retained at a penny per week to pray for the King and Queen and Councillors, and for the brethren of the Gild “both quyke and dedd.”

The trade regulations of the two compositions are naturally cast in the same mould. In both appears the prohibition of foreign labour (the Mercers say “except in fayre tyme”), and of under-selling by combrethren as well as unfair competition generally. The later regulations go further and provide for the carrying out of the ordinances of the composition by the appointment of a searcher to secure the use of good materials and to prevent “dissayte and gyle,” the use of false weights, &c. They also forbid the taking of aliens as apprentices[111].

All indentures are to be for seven years at the least, and none are to be taken as apprentices without being properly bound by indentures approved by the wardens and recorded by the clerk. There is also the article which now becomes common, against divulging the secrets of the craft, and an interesting one against “eny confederacye or embracerye wherebie any p’judices hurt or hynd’ance myght growe.”

In the later charter, too, it is evident that there had arisen no small need for reform. In the forefront it is stated that the previous “Fines assessyd uppon ev’y App’ntice at their entries to be maysters Combrethyrn and Settursuppe of the said Craftes or any of them,” “and in like wyse gret Fynes uppon eny Forreyn that shoulde entre into the same” are “thought overchargeable” and so are to be “dymynished and refowrmed.” If members refuse to pay them, as thus amended, they may be levied by distress. Of how great a falling-off from the original spirit of brotherhood do these two short articles speak.

Both the documents provide for the trial of dissensions among brethren, in preference to going before the ordinary tribunals, though by permission cases might be taken before the bailiffs of the town.

In a similar spirit of pacification the Mercers’ composition forbids the wearing of liveries “saving the lyverray of gownes or hodes of the said Gylde to be ordeyned and worne,” and that of the municipal corporation[112]. This was in accordance with the Act 13 Henry IV. cap. 3. The abuse of liveries had evoked from Parliament an attempt to put a total stop to the custom[113] (13 Rich. II.). Such endeavours were futile. This was at last recognised, and in 13 Henry IV. the use of liveries of cloth was prohibited, but with the important proviso, “Gilds and fraternities and crafts in the cities and boroughs within the kingdom which are founded and ordained to good intent and purpose alone being excepted.” In 1468 Edward IV. confirmed previous legislation on the subject[114].

In spite of reforms by improved compositions and legislative measures the degeneracy of the Gilds proceeded apace. The statute 19 Hen. VII. cap. 7 repeats the complaint of 15 Hen. VI. cap. 6, and re-enacts the same restrictions. “Divers and many ordinances have been made by many and divers private bodies corporate within cities, towns, and boroughs contrary to the King’s prerogative, his laws, and the common weal of his subjects:” in future therefore the Gilds are prohibited from making any new by-laws or ordinances concerning the prices of wares and other things “in disheritance or diminution of the prerogative of the King, nor of other, nor against the common profit of the people, but that the same Acts or Ordinances be examined and approved by the Chancellor, Treasurer of England, or Chief Justices.” The repetition of the same articles shows how little effective they had been in checking the abuses against which they were directed.

Nevertheless Henry VII. and Henry VIII. persevered in the work of regulating, reforming and strengthening the Gilds. The statute of 1530[115] once more diminished entrance fees, which had been inordinately and illegally raised; but another of 1536[116] repeating the same prohibition shows the utter futility of such measures in the condition of trade which had been brought about.

A more serious abuse appears in the latter statute, namely the attempt of the masters to exact from their apprentices an oath promising to refrain from prosecuting trade on their own account without consent of their late master. Such abuses exhibit the Gilds in a state of wholesale demoralisation.

This was not unnatural under the circumstances, for the course of the Reformation had tended to turn public opinion against the Gilds. Moreover it now gave them a severe shock on one side, at any rate, of their functions.

The confiscation of monastic lands had shown how easy it was for a needy government to seize upon corporate property to its own use, and the example was not long without being followed. The statute 37 Hen. VIII. cap. 4 gave the whole property of all Colleges, Hospitals, Fraternities and Gilds to the king. Before this wholesale desolation could be effected Henry died, but Somerset obtained a renewal[117] of the grant to Edward VI.

The words of the Act are absolute in making over to the king all the lands and other possessions of Chantries, Colleges, Hospitals, Gilds and bodies of a similar nature, both religious and secular. No distinction is made as to aim or object, utility or abuse. According to the terms of the statute, we should expect every Gild and corporate body in the country to come to an end with the years 1547-8. Nevertheless though the Chantries were seized the Craft Gilds in general remained. The reason for this apparent divergence between the provisions of the statute and the facts of the case is given by Burnet.Two parties opposed the passing of the Act. Cranmer and the best of the Reformers were grieved to see the material supports of the Church one after another torn away to prop up the failing fortunes of needy and rapacious courtiers. They desired to preserve the lands of the Chantries till the king came of age, when they hoped they might be devoted to the suitable object of augmenting the livings which had been in such numbers impoverished by the Reformation changes. On the other hand were the burgesses. These had no mind to see their own property confiscated, and their benefit societies and clubs suddenly broken up. We may appreciate the feelings of the nation respecting the proposed measure by considering what would be the effect of a statute taking over the properties of all benefit clubs, Trades Unions, Lodges of Oddfellows and Foresters, and similar associations, to-day.

Cranmer and his supporters failed to overthrow the measure in the Lords, but when it came to the lower house it was at once evident that a considerable amount of careful statesmanship and astute policy would be requisite if the statute was to pass. Apparently no opposition was expected, as the bill was already engrossed, or perhaps it was hoped that it might be smuggled through amidst the hurry of the closing session. But the government discovered that they had gone to the length of the nation’s patience. The Commons saw in its true enormity the conspiracy of the rich and powerful against the weak and poor, and this once perceived a check was given, tardy but not quite too late, to the long and disastrous course of spoliation and confiscation.

The opposition to the bill was obstinate, especially as regarded that portion which dealt with the Gilds. Led by the members for Lynn and Coventry the house showed unmistakeably that it was at length determined to submit no longer. In fact the feeling was evidently so strong that the government perceived the absolute necessity of drawing back. The mode in which this was done is explained in the following extract, which, though written from the court point of view, shows up the whole incident as a choice specimen of the statesmanship of the period.

“Whereas in the last Parliament holden at Westminster in November the first year of the King’s Majesty’s reign, among other articles contained in the Act for colleges and chantry lands, etc., to be given unto his Highness, it was also insisted that the lands pertaining to all guilds and brotherhoods within this realm should pass unto his Majesty by way of like gift: At which time divers there being of the Lower House did not only reason and arraign against that article made for the guildable lands, but also incensed many others to hold with them, amongst the which none were stiffer, nor more busily went about to impugn the said Article than the burgesses for the town of Lynn in the county of Norfolk and the burgesses of the city of Coventry in the county of Warwick.... In respect of which their allegations and great labours made herein unto the House such of his Highness’s Council as were of the same House there present, thought it very likely that not only that Article for the guildable lands should be clashed, but also that the whole body of the Act might either sustain peril or hindrance, being already engrossed, and the time of the Parliament’s prolongation hard at hand, unless by some good policy the principal speakers against the passing of that article might be stayed. Whereupon they did participate the matter with the Lord Protector’s grace and other of the Lords of his Highness’s Council: who pondering on the one part how the guildable lands throughout this realm amounted to no small yearly value, which by the article aforesaid were to be accrued to his Majesty’s possessions of the Crown; and on the other part weighing in a multitude of free voices what moment the labours of a few settlers had been of heretofore in like cases, thought it better to stay and content them of Lynn and Coventry by granting to them to have and enjoy their guild lands etc. as they did before, than through their means, on whose importance, labour, and suggestions the great part of the Lower House rested, to have the article defaced, and so his Majesty to forego the whole lands throughout the realm. And for these respects, and also for avoiding of the promise which the said burgesses would have added for the guilds to that article, which might have ministered occasion to others to have laboured for the like, they resolved that certain of his Highness’s Councillors, being of the Lower House, should persuade with the said burgesses of Lynn and Coventry to desist from further speaking or labouring against the said article, upon promise to them that if they meddled no further against it, his Majesty once having the guildable lands granted unto him by the Act ... should make them over a new grant of the lands pertaining then unto their guilds etc. to be had and used to them as before: which thing the Councillors did execute, as was desired, and thereby stayed the speakers against it, so as the Act passed with the clause for the guildable lands accordingly[119].”

This remarkable document, which Canon Dixon printed for the first time, is of surpassing interest, not only to the historian of the Craft Gilds but also to the student of constitutional history. The unscrupulous recourse of the government to jobbery and corruption is not more revolting than the evidence of the increasing constitutional power of the Commons is interesting. It is evident from the account that when the country was with the house of Commons the voice of the latter could not be disregarded.

The upshot was that an understanding was entered into, to the effect that the Gild lands were to be only surrendered pro formÂ, and that they should not in fact be confiscated. In most cases this arrangement was adhered to, and when the great crisis was past it was seen that the Gilds had lost their Chapels and Chantries with the fittings of these, but that their other possessions remained to them.

It has been pointed out how the increasing constitutional power of the Commons could make itself felt when the opinion of the nation was at its back. That it undoubtedly was so at the present juncture cannot be doubted. The method which was adopted for carrying out the provisions of the Act demonstrates fully how violently the country had been excited by the measure and by the danger to which the Gild lands had been exposed. The usual way of putting such an Act into execution would have been to send down commissioners to take particulars of the Gilds and Chantries and of their possessions. But royal commissioners had come to be looked upon, not without ample reason, as merely the formal heralds of state robbery. If therefore such commissioners were now sent out to manage the dissolution of the Chantries and Hospitals it was feared that disturbance would arise beyond the power of the government to manage. The more politic plan was therefore adopted of enlisting the people themselves in the cause as much as might be.

Injunctions[120] were issued “to the Parson, Vicar, Curat, Chaunter, Priests, Churchwardens, and two of the most honest Persons of the Parish of being no Founders, Patrons, Donors, Lessees, nor Farmers of the Promotions of Corporations hereafter recited.”

These, or four of them, were to make a return as to the number of “Chantries, Hospitals, Colleges, Free Chapels, Fraternities, Brotherhoods, Guilds and Salaries, or Wages of Stipendiary Priests” in their parish, together with all particulars as to the revenues, ordinances, objects, abuses, names and titles of the same. Full lists were to be drawn up of the lands and possessions of the Chantries, Colleges, and Gilds, and enquiry was instituted respecting any recent dissolutions or alienations which might have been made in prospect of the recent Act.

The contingency alluded to in the last article has sufficed to provide some writers with an excuse for the measure destroying the Chantries. No doubt the shock which the action of Henry VIII. in reference to the monasteries had given to all forms of corporate property had led many of the Gilds to attempt the realization of their property. All such transactions were to be null and void.

Accordingly the commissioners went down to each town and hamlet and took full particulars of all matters concerning the Gilds and Chantries. “All such as have enye vestments or other goods of the Co^y [of Mercers are ordered] to bring them in,” in order to be sold, with the rest of the Chantry fittings, “to the most p’fitt.” The fate of the other kinds of property held by the Gilds, such that is as could not be definitely made out to have been intended for the support of obits and the maintenance of lights, seems to have depended considerably on fortuitous circumstances. In each individual case the Gild had to secure for itself the best terms it could. Sometimes its property was obtained by the town, either by grant or by purchase[121]. At Shrewsbury the almshouses of the Drapers and Mercers survived[122], and the vicar of S. Almond’s Church in the same town still receives the yearly sum which the Shearmen settled on the chaplain they maintained in that church.

As for the object which the Act itself alleged to have been the motive for the destruction of the Chantries, namely the desire on the part of the government to devote the revenues to the foundation and improvement of grammar schools, it was forgotten as soon as parliament had separated. Strype[123] is obliged to confess that the Act was “grossly abused, as the Act in the former King’s reign for dissolving religious houses was. For though the public good was pretended thereby (and intended too, I hope), yet private men, in truth, had most of the benefit, and the King and Commonwealth, the state of learning, and the condition of the poor, left as they were before, or worse. Of this, great complaints were made by honest men: and some of the best and most conscientious preachers reproved it in the greatest auditories, as at Paul’s Cross, and before the King himself. Thomas Lever, a Fellow, and afterwards Master of St John’s College in Cambridge, in a sermon before the King, in the year 1550 showed ‘how those that pretended, that (beside the abolishing of superstition) with the lands of abbeys, colleges, and chantries, the King should be enriched, learning maintained, poverty relieved, and the Commonwealth eased, purposely had enriched themselves.... And bringing in grammar schools, which these dissolved chantries were to serve for the founding of, he told the King plainly ... many grammar schools, and much charitable provision for the poor, be taken, sold and made away; to the great slander of you and your laws, to the utter discomfort of the poor, to the grievous offence of the people, to the most miserable drowning of youth in ignorance.... The King bore the slander, the poor felt the lack. But who had the profit of such things, he could not tell. But he knew well, and all the world saw, that the Act made by the King’s Majesty and his Lords and Commons of his Parliament, for maintenance of learning and relief of the poor, had served some as a fit instrument to rob learning, and to spoil the poor.’” The measure was indeed an act of spoliation devoid either of excuse in its cause or benefit in its results. The suppression of the Monasteries could doubtless be amply excused, but no real justification is possible for this attempted wholesale seizure of institutions founded and maintained for the benefit of the poor, for the relief of suffering, and for the regulation of industry and police. As regards the last—the regulation of industry and police—the attempt was to a certain extent foiled, but in other respects it succeeded only too well. Even on the Gilds which escaped its effects were disastrous. Their spiritual aspect was taken away; their prestige and authority very materially lessened. For they completely changed their nature. Instead of being brotherhoods of workmen,—masters, journeymen, and apprentices,—striving together for the common good, they now became simply leagues of employers, companies of capitalists. The new powers which the masters obtained were used to still further oppress the craftsman, who was sufficiently degraded already through a variety of causes. He was too poor and powerless to be able to take any part in the new companies, and continued to sink deeper and deeper into degradation and misery. And this, too, in spite of the great and rapid development of trade which came simultaneously with this weakening blow at the authority and stability of the Gilds. Shrewsbury participated in this expansion of industry, and in the latter portion of the sixteenth century was peculiarly prosperous. There was no migration of its trade to the freer air of the neighbouring villages. The town was successful in retaining its monopoly.

But these two causes, (i) the weakening of the Gilds and their change of character, and (ii) the vast development of trade which the age was witnessing, combined to render the companies which survived the Reformation quite unable to perform the work which the mediÆval Gilds had done. Yet then above all was a controlling and a guiding power essential. Elizabeth in consequence found that one of her first measures must be in remedy of this condition of affairs.

---