THE MASTER, WARDENS, AND ASSISTANTS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF DRAPERS 1913-1914 MASTER. Colonel Starling Meux Benson, LL.D. WARDENS. Lieut.-Col. John Lewis Rutley, V.D. Arthur George Ashby. John Barrow. Webster Glynes. Sir John Aird, Bart. ASSISTANTS. CLERK. Ernest Henry Pooley. Johnson, arthur Henry HE History of The an Introduction on London and her Gilds up to the close of the XVth Oxford University Press Humphrey Milford M. A. 1603-1 Bates 8.7-41 (1) PREFACE T is the play of economic interests and social forces which chiefly determines the movements of history and gives it its true meaning, and of all the outward forms, which these interests and forces assumed, few are more important than the mediaeval Gilds. The Gild belongs to the period which has been called that of 'Town Economy', when each city and its neighbourhood was looked upon as a self-containing and economical unit, based on a jealous protective spirit. As long as this lasted the influence of the Gilds was all-pervading. They did not confine themselves exclusively to their industrial functions. They influenced the social environment and the civic structure of the town to which they belonged; they formed as it were the warp of its social and economic structure. They took part in its public burdens, they shared in its civic joys and griefs, in its fortunes good and evil. The initial comes from the Ordinance Book, p. 75. 2 The classification is that of Bücher, Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft; cf. translation by Wickett, especially pp. 114 ff. A 3 |