Merchant guild

“ Ecclesiastics and women might also be members of the guild, but they were, of course, debarred from becoming burgesses.
The exclusive tendencies which the merchant guild developed made it really an oligarchy, and so there grew up [pg 175] in the towns an ever increasing population that did not share the guild privileges. As the town and its trade developed, the complexity of trade regulations made it a convenience to have guilds with specialized functions, to which the merchant guild might deputize its powers. ”

“ In some boroughs, fines for infractions of these regulations were split between the guild and the government.
In some towns, the merchant guilds attempted to directly regulate the craft guilds. Crafts fought each other. There was a street battle with much bloodshed between the goldsmiths and the parmenters and between the tailors and the cordwainers in 1267 in London. There was also a major fight between the goldsmiths and the tailors in 1268. The Parish Clerks' Company was chartered in 1233. ”

“ The head officer of the guild usually controlled the borough, which excluded rival merchant guilds. A man might belong to more than one guild, e.g. one for his trade and another for religion.
Craft guilds grew up in the towns, such as the tanners at Oxford, which later merged with the shoemakers into a cordwainers' guild. There were weavers' guilds in several towns, including London, which were given royal sanction and protection for annual payments (twelve pounds of silver for London) . They paid an annual tribute and were given a monopoly of weaving cloth within a radius of several miles. ”

“ Later in the towns, merchant guilds grew out of charity associations whose members were bound by oath to each other and got together for a guild feast every month. Some traders of these merchant guilds became so prosperous that they became landholders. Many market places were dominated by a merchant guild, which had a monopoly of the local trade. In the great mercantile towns all the land and houses would be held by merchants and their dependents, all freeholders were connected with a trade, and everyone who had a claim on public office or magistry would be a member of the guild. ”

“ Guilds are best remembered, however, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as monopolist organisations, and a third of all the towns in England, with the possible exception of London, had their merchant guild, or body of traders and handicraftsmen, engrossing the local commerce to the exclusion of all men without their ranks. The craft guild was a century behind the merchant guild in its rise and development. ”

“ It must not be thought that these tendencies to true democracy were confined to the trades guilds, however. The historian of the merchant guilds has demonstrated that they had the {383} same spirit and this was especially true for the great guild merchant. He says:
"To this category of powerful affinities must be added the Gild Merchant. The latter was from the outset a compact body emphatically characterized by fraternal solidarity of interests, a protective union that naturally engendered a consciousness of strength and a spirit of independence. ”

“ The merchant guild could admit into their guild country villeins, who became freemen if unclaimed by their lords for a year and a day. Every merchant who had made three long voyages on his own behalf and at his own cost ranked as a thegn. There were also some craft guilds composed of handicraftsmen or artisans. Escaped bonded agricultural workers, poor people, and traders without land migrated to towns to live, but were not citizens. ”

“ The town guilds began to have less and less to do with agriculture, although at first they were interested in it. The wealth in the town is turned to trade and manufacture, such as there was in those days. So, by the time of the Norman conquest, in 1006, we hear little of town guilds, but in almost every case merchant guilds. The town guild has become a merchant guild, although composed of the same constituency. The commercial spirit has become the ruling spirit of the town. ”

“ It differed from a trade-union in that the guild was an association of masters and employees, whereas the trade-union is an association of employees only.
Many of the merchant guilds grew wealthy and strong; [7] they obtained Royal Charters from the Crown either by direct payment or by an arrangement to pay a special tax, or secured recognition in the borough charters. By authority of these they were endowed with certain privileges such as: (a) limiting the number of their own members and the number who could participate in any line of merchandising ”

“ In London, the Goldsmiths, the Mercers, and the Saddlers became the first guilds to receive, in 1394-5, charters of incorporation, which gave them perpetual existence. As such they could hold land in "mortmain", thus depriving the King of rights that came to him on the death of a tenant-in-chief. They were called Livery Companies.
In all towns, the organization of craft associations spread rapidly downwards through the trades and sought self-government. Craft guilds were gaining much power relative to the old merchant guilds in governing the towns. ”

“ In all large towns the merchants had formed associations for mutual protection and the advancement of trade, called merchant guilds. Artisans now instituted similar societies, under the name of craft guilds. For a long time the merchant guilds endeavored to shut out the craft guilds,—the men, as they said, "with dirty hands and blue nails,"—from having any part in the government of the towns. But eventually the latter got their full share, and in some cases, as in London, became the more influential party of the two. ”

“ The Tailors' and Linen Armorers' Guild received a charter in 1503 from the king as the "Merchant Tailors" to use all wares and merchandise, especially wool cloth, as well wholesale as retail, throughout the nation. Some schooling was now being made compulsory in certain trades; the goldsmiths' company made a rule that all apprentices had to be able to read and write. There are guilds of ironmongers, salters, and haberdashers [hats and caps]
A yeoman was the second-rank person of some importance, below a knight, below a gentleman, below a full member of a guild. ”

“ The making and selling of goods diverged e.g. as the cloth merchant severed from the tailor and the leather merchant severed from the butcher. These craftsmen formed themselves into guilds, which sought charters to require all craftsmen to belong to the guild of their craft, to have legal control of the craft work, and be able to expel any craftsman for disobedience. These guilds were composed of master craftsmen, their journeymen, and apprentices. ”

“ Such monopoly they claimed against other traders in the same town who had not entered into the combination, and still more so against traders in other towns. The latter they regarded as "foreigners" equally with the traders from Flanders and elsewhere.
The merchant guilds were found in all considerable towns in the eleventh century, and they were followed, a century later, by craft guilds which aimed, in turn, at securing a monopoly of employment for their own particular members. ”

“ We cannot, however, trace many signs of the active intervention of the municipality in the affairs of the Guild Merchant, though it is clear that the jurisdiction of the City authorities remained, in form at least, unaffected by the creation of a Guild Merchant. ”

“ It partook of the nature of monopoly of trade, and had a vast deal to do with the social organization of the town. Its power was exercised in the place of more systematic political town government. However, after the political town government became more thoroughly established, the guild-merchant declined, but following the decline of the guild-merchant, the craft guild developed, which was an organization of all of the manufacturers and traders in a given craft. This seemed to herald the coming of the trade-union after the industrial machinery of society had made a number of changes. ”

“ Aristocracy of money naturally succeeded aristocracy of birth. This plutocracy was represented by the great merchant guilds, whose rise was soon followed by that of the great industrial guilds, destined in some cases to supplant them, but more often to remain their faithful allies. At Florence, the Arte di Calimala which included bankers and finishers and sellers of foreign cloth, was at first the most important of all ”

“ One of the most powerful and best organized guilds is that of the porters. The interior commerce of the country being almost 395entirely on the backs of men and pack horses, these people have the monopoly of it. They number about ten thousand, and are divided by provinces and districts under the orders of chiefs and inspectors. They have very severe rules for the government of their guild, and crimes among them are punished with death at the order of their chief. They are so powerful that they pretend that even the government dare not interfere with them. ”

“ At Paris, the Hanse of the river merchants does not figure among the six guilds which head the list, although they did not actually lose their privileges till the year 1672. In London, [105] the city guilds slowly ceased to have any connection with the crafts whose names they bore. The great capitalists, whether bankers, merchants, or great manufacturers, voluntarily formed themselves into a separate group and, as far as possible, cut themselves clear of the trammels of the guild system. ”

“ But we find—and to their credit be it said—that the guilds have on the whole, and throughout their history, devoted themselves wisely to the promotion of public advantage, always standing shoulder to shoulder against every attempt at royal encroachment upon the freedom of the commoner, advancing wise measures for the government of the city and the undisturbed conduct of business, and taking all proper care that no member of their fraternity or any merchant of their trade should sell under weight or produce articles below a certain standard of quality. ”

“ When Henry IV., on the advice of Montchrestian and Laffemas, wanted to secure French markets to the French by increasing customs tariffs, all the guilds consulted declared themselves in favour of the project, with the exception of the mercers—“sellers of everything, [Pg 79] makers of nothing,” as they were called—thus plainly expressing the hostility of wholesale trade to the exclusive policy which had been pursued by the towns. The great traders represented a revolutionary tendency with regard to the guild system; they were its constant enemies ”

“ The economic aim comes first in time and importance. The guild was first and foremost a fighting organization for the defence of the trade interests of those who belonged to it. It was jealous both of the welfare and of the honour of the craft—two things intimately connected; for it realized that good reputation is one of the conditions of good business. Naturally the first means to suggest itself for the attainment of this double ideal was the regulation of production and sale.
With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an official guarantee to the consumer. ”

“ Numerous books and documents throw much interesting light on their professional ability and productiveness. The guild's moneys and important documents were kept in a safe—called the guild's chest—usually under double lock. There also the old seals of the guild were preserved, which bore inscriptions in German, Latin, or Polish, and, in the middle, the guild's arms, with the tools and insignia of the trade. ”

“ All the workmen, according to their trades, had to belong to companies called "guilds." Each guild had its own officers and made its own rules for looking {45} after its members; and it had to see not only that these members knew how to do their work, but also that they did it properly and charged a fair price for it. ”

“ One serious result of this constant and perfectly legitimate effort to assure the success of the guild was that it produced a strong desire to reduce, or if possible do away with, competition. The Middle Ages did not understand rights except under the form of privileges, and the guild always tended to arrogate to itself the monopoly of the craft which it carried on in a city. It even tried to exclude neighbouring towns from the market, and this was the secret of the desperate struggles which set at enmity Bruges and Ghent, Siena, Pisa, and Florence, Genoa and Venice, etc. ”

“ When the wages received by the journeymen artisans are compared with the prices of commodities previously given, it will be seen how relatively easy were their circumstances; and the extent of their well-being may be further judged from the wealth of their guilds, which, although varying in different places, at all times formed a considerable proportion of the wealth of the town. The guild system was based upon the notion that the individual master and workman was working as much in the interest of the guild as for his own advantage. ”

“ The members of the guilds, all fighting men usually serving under their own guild banners and their own leaders, were an important part of the military force of the medieval cities. Although they might and did fight on one side or the other of some civic quarrel they always stood for order in the community just as they did for honesty in production and trade. ”

“ But after the Conquest guilds began to multiply, and were established for the purpose of promoting religion, charity, and trade. There were the frith guilds, formed for the promotion of peace, and the establishment of law and order: [Pg 121] the religious guilds, which used to hold a festival on the day of the patron saint of the guild, attend church, and perform a miracle play. In the Liber Niger, or Black Book, of the Corporation of London, there is a description of the anniversary feast of the guild of the Holy Cross at Abingdon. ”