INTRODUCTION.

The division of the MS., labelled in the Gild Hall Catalogue, into two volumes is entirely arbitrary; the MS. itself forms one uninterrupted whole of three hundred and eighty-one folios.1 Paper folios numbered one to thirty-six are bound in the same volume; these are not printed, as it is exceedingly doubtful whether at any time they formed part of the original MS. They include a great deal of treasonable matter; possibly the wary York Council watched the swing of the pendulum between the claims of the Yorkist Richard III. and the Tudor heir of the house of Lancaster, and thought it wiser to omit them from the permanent register, when victory fell to Henry VII.

Broadly speaking this volume covers a century from 1388 to 1488. It is difficult to know why for so long historians looked askance at a period vitalized by Shakspere, immortalized by Agincourt, marked by extraordinary civic development and interesting constitutional experiments. Many investigators have found the evidence conflicting and have made little effort to reconcile seeming contradictions; they have given pictures either of unmitigated gloom or exhilarating prosperity-both equally misleading. It was essentially an age of transition, with all the weaknesses and strength inherent in such a period. Constitutional progress had outrun the growth of adminstrative capacity; the machine had not a sufficient number of highly skilled men to guide it. But the chaos that resulted from this breakdown, disastrous as it was to men of the fifteenth century, ought to be stimulating and instructive to their descendants. The times were peculiarly rich in men of consummate ability but insatiable ambition. Still it is a century of startling contrasts; the pathetic failure of Richard II., the meteoric brilliancy

1. A Catalogue of the Charters, House Books, etc., of the Corporation of York, compiled by William Giles, Deputy Town Clerk, p. 7. All scholars interested in municipal history owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Giles for this exceedingly valuable catalogue. To my predecessors in research among the York Archives, Drake, Davies, Scaife, and Dr. Collins, editor of the Freemen of York, it is impossible for me adequately to express my obligations. 2. C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century,

of Henry V., the tedious feebleness of Henry VI., the magnificent force of Richard III., offer dramatic possibilities of the highest order. With the exception of Henry VI., the kings, splendid failures as most of them are, failed through superabundance not through lack of initiative and enterprise. Too often crime cleared the way for the consummation of their activities, "God take King Edward to his mercy and leave the world for me to bustle in," is put by Shakspere into the mouth of Richard III., but the desire to be the foremost man of the age was common to the majority of the nobility; the large family of Edward III. had royalized too many of its members. The decimation of this class was the necessary prelude to the expansion of the real strength of the nation, the workers; the overweening ambition of the baronage facilitated their own destruction. From the evidence of the Memorandum Book, York, though strongly Yorkist in sympathy, stood aloof from these dynastic quarrels. The inhabitants were engaged in amassing wealth, the market place was more attractive to them than the battlefield. In spite of the terrible wastage of life, the black death had not affected cities so disastrously as country districts. The changes in centres of population, brought about by the great pestilence, were in favour of places connected with the woollen industry. Architectural activities1 are a conclusive proof of progress, and York though it did not increase the number of its churches during the fifteenth century, beautified some, rebuilt or enlarged others; the common or gildhall belongs entirely to this period. This prosperity of York, at a time when so much indisputable evidence of decay and depopulation elsewhere exists, was due to its being the great centre of the northern textile trade.

In 1377 the population of York according to the poll-tax returns was 13,500, the total population of England being about two and a quarter millions. London had a population three times as great; Bristol was probably about the same size. Plymouth and Coventry2 distinctly smaller; Norwich numbered

1. W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. I., p. 371. The population of Coventry in 1520 was only 6,601 persons; see M. D. Harris, Coventry Leet Bk., Early English Text Society, 1907-1913, p. 675.

2.

POPULATION OF YORK AND OTHER TOWNS

111

about 5,500 people,1 Lincoln, Salisbury, Lynn, and Colchester had still fewer inhabitants. But although in population York was the second city in the kingdom, in wealth, according to the payments made to the loan demanded in 1397, it was only the sixth town in England. London paid £6,666 13s. 4d., Bristol £800, Norwich £333 6s. 8d., Lynn £266 13s. 4d., York £200 Os. Od.2 Compared with other towns in Yorkshire York paid twice as much as Hull, three times as much as Scarborough, more than four times as much as Pontefract, and ten times as much as Whitby.

Medieval statistics are not entirely trustworthy, but some idea of the number of people working in the textile industry can be gained from contemporary documents. In 1394 there were 800 weavers in or near the city.3 There were 3251 masters of different crafts either directly or indirectly connected with the trade; if to these 1,125 workers apprentices and journeymen are added, a considerable proportion of the total population must have owed their subsistence to the woollen manufacture. The list of freemen bears out this contention. During the first half of the period, on an average, 105 people were added to the freemen each year, the highest total for a single year being 196, the lowest 31; in 1405, 136 men were enrolled, 41 trades were represented, of these 35 people are entered as having no trade. There are 8 mercers, 7 tailors, 6 weavers, 5 bowers, 5 clerks, 4 barkers, 3 millers, 3 barbers, and 3 mariners. Skinners, potters, dyers, masons, butchers, saggers, shearers, taverners, fishmongers, cordwainers, and spurriers, have each two representatives. One member of each of the remaining twenty-three trades, merchants, mercators, coopers, pinners, spicers, tilers, wrights, marshals, curriers, motlemakers, goldsmiths, shipwrights, lorimers, glasiers, tincklers, drapers, carvers, rapers, fletchers, cardmakers, joiners, locksmiths, chullours was enrolled, and 11 men claimed their freedom by patrimony. In 1408, 84 new freemen represented 35 different trades. Five years later 196 freemen were enrolled.

1. Records of the City of Norwich, vol. II.,

2. Quoted in Cunningham, op. cit., p. 385.

3.

p. cxxii.

Exch. K.R. Accts., 18 and 19, Ric. II., bdle. 345, No. 16, m. 1-20. 4. Mem. Bk., I., p. xxxiv.

They were engaged in 69 different industries. It is with the doings of these men, the makers of industrial York, that the Memorandum Book is chiefly concerned. The leisured class were practically non-existent. They resided almost entirely in monasteries and nunneries, often as paying guests, and were, of course, outside civic jurisdiction. A few of the baronial class had residences in York, but they, as well as the heads of the great religious houses, were constantly absent.

The question of the percentage of inhabitants, who were not franchised, is difficult to answer. During the hundred years from 1388 to 1488, 84 women and 30 foreigners took their freedom. The liberties of the Castle, S. Mary's, S. Peter's, S. Leonard's and Davy Hall must have included many people who had trading and other privileges without being franchised or members of any mistery.2 Doubtless they represent an element of freedom, for they must have acted as a drag on the wheel of the juggernaut of rigid gild organization.3 The sanctuary dwellers, too, were not under civic control. The cappers recognized the undermining potentiality of these abnormal areas; in 1482 they passed an ordinance, which probably refers both to liberties and sanctuaries*; "No maistre of the said occupacion gyff no werk to wyrk to no maner of person dwellyng in Seynt Marygate, ne in Seint

"The freedom

1. Freemen of York, Surtees Soc., vol. 96, pp. 86-213. of the city is to be obtained in three different ways. First, by servitude; that is, the applicant must have served his full time as an apprentice before his enrolment; secondly, by patrimony; that is, the children of a freeman can claim their freedom as their heritage; thirdly, by redemption; that is, by order of the Mayor and Court of Aldermen, which means that the recipient obtained it either by purchase or that it was given to him, without payment, as a reward for some more or less important services rendered to the city." p. xiii.

2. The phenomena of liberties has not so far had the attention to which its importance in civic development entitles it. They are a survival from the period when the city was under feudal government and represent the pre-constitutional phase of civic life. Probably the weavers' mistery in early gild history had some of the characteristics of the liberties. In York there was constant strife between the ecclesiastical liberties and the civic community in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, cf. Mem. Bk. I., pp. 13, 45, 216. F. Drake, Antiquities of York, pp. 326, 581. E. Gordon Duff, English Provincial Printers, pp. 56, 57, gives an example of a man moving from the liberty of S. Peter's to Blake Street, when he was obliged to become a freeman, though he had worked as a printer for several years. 3. G. Unwin, Gilds of London, p. 250.

4.

Mem. Bk., p. 285. Rolls of Parliament, III., 504.