may rather be described as forms of industrial self-government,
the basis of union being the membership of a common trade,
and the authority of the society extending to the general welfare,
spiritual and temporal, of its members. It must be remembered
that they flourished at a time when the separate interests of
master and servant had not yet been created; and, indeed,
when that fundamental division of interests arose, the companies
gradually lost their functions in the regulation of industry.
The fact that the craftsmen were a homogeneous order will
account for the wide authority claimed by their societies, and the
important public powers which were conceded to them. In
the regulation of trade they possessed extensive powers. They
required every one carrying on the trade to join the company.
In 1363, in answer to a remonstrance against the mischief caused
by “the merchants called grocers who engrossed all manner of
merchandize vendable, and who suddenly raised the prices of
such merchandize within the realm,” it was enacted “that all
artificers and people of mysteries shall each choose his own
mystery[1] before next Candlemas, and that, having so chosen it,
he shall henceforth use no other.” L. Brentano (On Gilds) holds
that it is wrong to represent such regulations as monopolistic,
inasmuch as there was no question whatever of a monopoly in
that time nor until the degeneration of the craftgilds into limited
corporations of capitalists. In the regulation of trade the right
of search was an important instrument. The wardens of the
grocers are to “assayen weights, powders, confeccions, platers,
oyntments and all other things belonging to the same crafte.”
The goldsmiths had the assay of metals, the fishmongers the
oversight of fish, the vintners of the tasting of wine, &c. The
companies enforced their regulations on their members by force.
Many of their ordinances looked to the domestic affairs and
private conduct of the members. The grocers ordain “that no
man of the fraternite take his neyghbor’s house yt is of the same
fraternite, or enhaunce the rent against the will of the foresaid
neyghbor.” Perjury is to be punished by the wardens and society
with such correction as that other men of the fellowship may be
warned thereby. Members reduced to poverty by adventures
on the sea, increased price of goods, borrowing and pledging,
or any other misfortune, are to be assisted “out of the common
money, according to his situation, if he could not do without.”
Following what appears to be the natural law of their being, the companies gradually lost their industrial character. The course of decay would seem to have been the following. The capitalists gradually assumed the lead in the various societies, the richer members engrossed the power and the companies tended to become hereditary and exclusive. Persons might be members who had nothing to do with the craft, and the rise of great capitalists and the development of competition in trade made the regulation of industry by means of companies no longer possible. For an account of the “degeneration of craftgilds” a general reference may be made to Brentano, On Gilds (1870), and C. Gross, The Gild Merchant (2 vols., 1890). The usurpation of power on the part of the richer members was not always effected without opposition. Brentano refers to a pamphlet on the Clothworkers’ Company, published in 1649, which asserts that “the commonalty” in the old charters meant, not the whole gild, but only the masters, wardens and assistants. Herbert records a dispute in the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1529. The mode of electing officers, and the system of management generally, was challenged by three members who called themselves “artificers, poor men of the craft of goldsmiths.” The company, or rather, the wardens, the assistants and livery presented a petition to the lord mayor, which was answered by the discontented craftsmen. The dispute was carried into the court of chancery and the star chamber. The artificers accused the company of subverting their grants, misappropriating the funds and changing the constitution of the society, and they complain of this being done by the usurpation of persons who “were but merchant goldsmiths, and had but little knowledge in the science.” In 1531 the three complainants were expelled from the company, and then the dispute seems to have ended. In the last stage of the companies the members have ceased to have any connexion with the trades, and in most cases their regulative functions have disappeared. The one characteristic which has clung to them throughout is that of owners of property and managers of charitable trusts. The connexion between the companies and the municipality is shortly as follows. The ordinance of Edward II. required freemen of the city to be members of one or other of the companies. By the ordinance of 49 Edw. III. (1375), the trading companies were to nominate the members of common council, and the persons so nominated alone were to attend both at common councils and at elections. An ordinance in 7 Richard II. (1383) restored the elections of common councilmen to the wards, but corporate officers and representatives in parliament were elected by a convention summoned by the lord mayor from the nominees of the companies. An act of common council in 7 Edw. IV. (1467) appointed the election of mayor, sheriffs, &c., to be in the common council, together with the masters and wardens of the companies. By 15 Edw. IV. masters and wardens were ordered to associate with themselves the honest men of their mysteries, and come in their best liveries to the elections; that is to say, the franchise was restricted to the “liverymen” of the companies. At this time the corporation exercised supreme control over the companies, and the companies were still genuine associations of the traders and householders of the city. The delegation of the franchise to the liverymen was thus, in point of fact, the selection of a superior class of householders to represent the rest. When the corporation lost its control over the companies, and the members of the companies ceased to be traders and householders, the liverymen were no longer a representative class, and some change in the system became necessary. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 reformed the representation in several particulars. The liverymen of the companies, being freemen of the city, have still, however, the exclusive power of electing the lord mayor, sheriffs, chamberlain and other corporate officers.
The contributions made by the companies to the public purposes of the state and the city are interesting points in their early history. Their wealth and their representative character made them a most appropriate instrument for the enforcement of irregular taxation. The loan of £21,263, 6s. 8d. to Henry VIII. for his wars in Scotland, in 1544, is believed by Herbert to be the first instance of a pecuniary grant to the crown, but the practice rapidly gained ground. The confiscation of ecclesiastical property at the time of the Reformation affected many of the trusts of the companies; and they were compelled to make returns of their property devoted to religious uses, and to pay over the rents to the crown. In course of time the taxation of the companies became “a regular source of supply to government.” The historians of the city have for the most part described these as unjust and tyrannical exactions, but, looking at the representative and municipal character of the companies, and the purposes to which their contributions were applied, we may regard them as a rough but not unfair mode of taxation. The government, when money was wanted for public works, informed the lord mayor, who apportioned the sums required among the various societies, and issued precepts for its payment. Contributions towards setting the poor to work, erecting the Royal Exchange, cleansing the city ditch, discovering new countries, furnishing military and naval armaments, for men, arms and ammunition for the defence of the city, are among what Herbert calls the sponging expedients of the government. The crown occasionally interfered in a more unjustifiable manner with the companies in the exercise of their patronage. The Stuarts made strenuous efforts to get the control of the companies. Terrified by the proceedings in the quo warranto case, most of the companies surrendered their charters to the crown, but such surrenders were annulled by the act of 2 William and Mary
- ↑ Properly the word should be spelled, as it was originally, “mistery;” it comes through the O. Fr. mestier, modern métier, from Lat. ministerium, service, employment, and meant a trade or craft, and hence the plays acted by craftsmen and members of gilds were called “mystery plays” (see Drama). For the word meaning a hidden or secret rite, with which this has so often been confused, see Mystery.
