searchers of the gild, who had to testify and witness that he was a fit and proper person to be a master of the craft, and that he possessed property to the value at least of four marks that is about £40 in modern money, so that if he loses or spoils a cloth entrusted to him, he can repay the value; special precautions were taken to prevent any fuller to whom cloth was committed absconding with it.

Unfortunately, as no names of York capmakers are given, and as the ordinances are undated, it is impossible to assert with any degree of certainty the period, when they were enacted.1 Only one clause differs essentially from the ordinary gild regulations. Women are legislated for apparently on the same terms as men. No work was to be given to any man or woman, who had not been apprenticed to the artifice unless he was a master or she was franchised. No one was allowed to take an apprentice unless he or she was franchised and of the liberty of the city. Two ordinances were added in the year 1440, the growth of oligarchical power is clear, no allusion is made to the desires of the capmakers, the aldermen and twenty-four apparently imposed their will regardless of those for whom they legislated.

3

The ordinances of the tapiters,2 makers of tapestry hangings, carpets and coverlets belong to the early fifteenth century. They formed a large and important gild, numbering fifty-seven members. York had not yet begun to feel the competition of the weavers of the country districts, a competition which in the next century was to cost the gild a thousand pounds (modern money), for in order to destroy their rivals, they procured an act forbidding coverlets to be made outside the city York. The ordinances have many clauses peculiar to themselves. No master or his wife or his servant was allowed to accompany merchants buying coverlets or tapestry, but the buyers were to be allowed a free choice; whatever goods were confiscated the council chamber was to have two-thirds, and the four searchers the remaining third. If a master were found to be unskilful and incapable of improvement, his loom was confiscated. Additions were made to these

1. Mem. Bk., pp. 77, 78.

2. Ibid., 84, 85, 86.

3.

34 and 35 Henry VIII., cap. 10, York Municipal Records, vol. XVII. (May, 1542), fol. 11. Cf. State Papers Domestic, Eliz. cclii., 2.

ordinances in 1419, the searchers were to be assisted in their examination of candidates for admission as masters, by four members of the craft. The rules against the admission of foreigners were made more stringent; no master was to take an apprentice unless he was English born and a free man, "liber homo"; and if any foreigner of whatever nationality he might be, wished to set up as a master tapiter in York, he must pay to the council chamber 53s. 4d. and to the support of the pageant of Corpus Christi.

1

The gild of tailors was unusually large, 128 masters are mentioned by name, they all took up their freedom between 1349 and 1384; the ordinances are dated 1386, two years after the last enrolment. The four searchers were to be elected by the masters of the craft, and fines for unpunctuality or neglect of attending meetings, payable either in money or wax, were to go to them. The more serious offence, neglect of paying pageant money was fined very heavily; in modern money the fine would amount to nearly £8, only half of this was appropriated by the searchers, the rest was to be paid to the council chamber on Ouse bridge. One regulation brings before us very vividly the contrast between business methods in medieval and modern times. A tailor who pawned gentlemen's garments "les garmentz des prudhommes," at which he was working was to be fined £15 modern money for each offence. Above the remainder of the ordinances, a brief resumé of the contents is written in English and in a different hand. Complaints against the exactions for the pageants plays are common to all the gilds, the tailors, however, fined their searchers £15, if they spent more than £5 on collecting the pageant dues, and all other petty expenses during the year. The troublous times of Henry VI., which found their climax in the disastrous Wars of the Roses, are reflected in the ordinances. The year following the death of Henry V., a new regulation was drawn up by the mayor, aldermen, twenty-four, searchers and council of the craft; it ordained that no master tailor nor servant was to call together a meeting of the craft nor to make any livery of cloth without the consent of the searchers and council, for fear of the distress and harm that might ensue 1. Mem. Bk., pp. 94-100.

to the chamber and people of the city, and the craft itself. The fine for the offence was prohibitive, £75 for a master, five pounds for a servant,1 modern money.

The ordinances of the shearmen belong to the fifteenth century. One clause strikes an unfamiliar note, in modern times the avowed policy of many social reformers is to force masters to pay a higher rate of wages, but the medieval shearmen were fined for paying high wages.2 If a master paid his servant more than 2d. a day with his meat and drink he incurred a penalty of £2 10s.

The constantly recurring regulations with regard to Sunday work are absent, but the shearmen were to observe the same saints days as were kept by the masons of the church of Saint Peter's.3 It is seldom that any account is preserved of the rebellion of a craftsman against the rule of his gild. A certain Thomas Lonkesby, however, had broken the ordinances and refused to obey the searchers' commands. Both searchers and Lonkesby appealed to the mayor and council; the arbitration resulted in a victory of gild authority, if the rebellious shearman again offended he was to pay almost double the normal fine for his contumacy.

6

But the shearmen were comparatively of small importance, the dyers stood high among the textile crafts of the city. The earliest York dyer mentioned in the freemen's roll was Geoffrey de Laicester in 1323,5 dyeing, however, was carried on in Wakefield, Halifax, Bradford and Skipton at a much earlier date. The ordinances were probably compiled about 1390. The gild was large, fifty-nine members of whom two were women, one possibly the daughter of a former master, the other the widow. No dyer was allowed to send his servants outside the city walls to meet the country folk bringing in their wool and cloth to dye,

1.

Mem. Bk., p. 101. As the allusions to the pageant plays are more frequent in the latter part of the Memoranda Book, the history of the gilds on the social and religious side is reserved for the following volume.

66

2. W. Cunningham. Industry and Commence," vol. I., pp. 329, 334, 379. Mem. Bk., pp. 106, 107.

3.

4. Ibid., p. 108.

5.

Freemen of York, op. cit., p. 22.

6. Pipe Roll, 28 Henry III., m. 3. Rec. Ser.), xxxix., p. 272.

D

Wakefield Court Roll (Arch. Soc.

lest the strangers should smuggle in their goods by help of the dyer's servants and thus escape paying to the mayor and bailiffs the murage and tolls, which were their due. Competition was sternly repressed, no master was by gifts or other allurements to entice a customer away from another dyer, credit was forbidden, payment had to be made when the goods were delivered. It is difficult to realize how trade was carried on under all these hampering rules and regulations, possibly, however, the medieval law maker did not expect literal fulfilment of the enactments, though they must have presented a ready means of raising money, when gild funds were low. Dyers' widows were allowed to carry on their husbands' trade for a year without any change of management, then one of their servants had to take up the freedom of the city or his mistress had to pay a fine of £15.1 Some idea of the importance of the textile industry in York in medieval times may be gained from the fact that only five of the seven gilds give statistics, the number of masters in these five gilds amounted to 325. When to these figures, the journeymen and apprentices are added, it becomes clear what an important factor the clothiers must have been in the life of a city, that is estimated to have contained only between 11,000 and 13,000 inhabitants. This calculation does not include certain subsidiary trades such as glovers and cardmakers, both integrally bound up with the fortunes of the manufacturers of cloth.

Although the textile gilds far outstripped the metal working gilds in importance and influence, still York had ten gilds, buckler makers and sheathers, goldsmiths, pinners, founders, firesmiths, ironmongers, cutlers, bladesmiths, girdlers and pewterers in connection with the iron industry. Probably most of the metal for the more ornamental kinds of ironwork was brought from a distance. But York was surrounded by a number of villages, where it is known that the ore was worked from a very early period; Kirkby Overblow, Spofforth, Otley, Knaresborough, Glaisdale, as well as most of the large Yorkshire monasteries had extensive forges, where iron was made into

1. Mem. Bk., pp. 112–115.

3

vendible form, even in the 13th century.1 Later many of the Yorkshire streams had on their banks forges similar to the one of which an interesting account is preserved in the Durham Auditors' Records;2 but although chiefly occupied in smelting, these country iron workers probably produced a certain amount of nails, possibly even of rough thwitels, which they would sell at the fairs. The competition, however, between them and the York craftsmen would be of the slightest. The comparatively large number of the York metal working gilds taken in connexion with their limited number of members, points to an industry organized on highly specialized lines. The gildmen might buy some local iron from the country forges, but the bulk of their work would require iron of a better brand.

The regulations of the buckler makers and sheathers are the first ordinances entered in the Memorandum Book, but they are undated and of no intrinsic interest.3

Enacted almost a century earlier in 1307, the ordinances of the girdlers present a great contrast to those of the weavers. Neither king, sheriffs nor council appear in the formula of authorization. The ordinances were granted" at the askyng the gyrdlers and revettours and all that langes to that crafte, be the assent of John Askham than maire and all the commonalte of the Cite of York." The elaborate arrangements about the payment of the royal tax are naturally absent as the girdlers paid no tax, but a complicated series of ordinances deal with the restrictions of trade. The girdlers were not to buy anything necessary for their craft from anyone, unless he belonged to the franchise of the city, nor were they to sell to any strangers or unfranchised men; strangers were not to be taken into their service, unless they brought letters

1. Dugdale, Mon. Angl., vol. I., p. 811. L. C. Miall "Ancient Bloomeries in Yorkshire," Arch. Journal., vol. I., pp. 112, 113. Burton Mon. Ebor., p. 175, J. C. Atkinson, " Iron Working in Cleveland," Arch. Journal, vol. VIII., pp. 30-48. The researches of Mr. Vellacott into the early history of Yorkshire iron mining, Victoria History, vol. II., prove conclusively how general the working of iron was in medieval times. "Fifteenth Century

2. Durham Auditors' Records, 5, 149, printed in a Iron Master," English Historical Review, XÎV., 1899, p. 509–529.

3. Mem. Bk., p. 29.

4. This is, of course, a fifteenth century translation of the 1307 ordinances which were either in Anglo-French or Latin. Mem. Bk., pp. 180, 181., ante pp. xxvii.