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of refusal the offender was to be punished at the discretion of the mayor.1 But the strangers were elusive; nearly fifty years later the spurriers were still struggling with the problem, the stranger was ordered to pay a yearly tax of 5s. modern money, "to the "sustentacion and brynging furth of the paiaunt of the said craftez.'

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Trade marks, which play an important part in the development of the Sheffield Cutlers' Company," were in use among the York cutlers from a very early date. Each bladesmith is ordered to cut and use his own mark upon the knives, which he makes, different from the mark of any other man of the same artifice.

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The gild of pewterers adopted an unusual policy instead of drawing up their own rules, they took over those of the pewterers of London. But a comparison of the York and London ordinances, which were enacted in 1348, shows few points of resemblance.5 No more London ordinances are extant until 1438, that is until 22 years after the date, when York was said to have adopted the London laws. On 19 Nov. of that year the London company was summoned before the mayor and aldermen and charged with having made ordinances without the council's knowledge or authority. Three months later, the pewterers confessed their faults and their illegal ordinances "were annulled and utterly rejecte." The next month the 1438 regulations were approved by the mayor. It is obvious these new rules were not those in use in York; are the York ordinances the same as those which excited the wrath of the aldermen of London, and were destroyed. The evidence certainly points in that direction, but it is difficult to understand why they were objected to; there seems to be nothing startling or against "the profit of the city" in them. The uncompromising exclusion of the alien and the unfree man are by no means peculiar to the pewterers-the insistence upon a seven years' apprenticeship is common to all gilds. The enactment

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1. Mem. Bk., p. 137.

2.

York Municipal Records, vol. VII., fol. 1096 (29 Jan., 1494).

3. R. E. Leader, "History of the Sheffield Cutlers' Company," passim. Mem. Bk., p. 136.

4.

5. Letter Book, F. fol. 155. H. T. Riley, "Memorials of London and London Life," pp. 241-244.

6. C. Welch. "History of the Pewterers' Company,' pp. 2-5.

that no master was to pay a servant more than 40s. (that is in modern money £30) a year, startling as it seems to the industrial ideas of the 20th century, was only an echo of the national policy expressed in the statute of labourers. Though the solution is not absolutely satisfactory still it seems fairly probable that the York ordinances are the missing London ones. The London pewterers claimed the right of search throughout the whole country, and two searchers were dispatched into Yorkshire for the purpose.1 Both men and women were admitted to the London company but there is no allusion to women in the York gild.

Neither in numbers nor in social status can the metal workers be compared with the cloth workers. Seven of the ten gilds connected with the iron industry only attain to a membership of 79, that is an average of 11 members to each gild, whereas the five cloth manufacturing gilds reach a membership of 325, an average of 65 members to each gild.

The remaining twenty gilds fall naturally into four groups; food producers, as butchers, bakers, saucemakers and fishers; builders, as glasiers, plasterers, joiners and painters; makers of household utensils and weapons of defence, as potters, chandlers, coopers, sadlers, parchment makers, bowers and fletchers; and makers of clothing, as glovers, skinners, cobblers. The barbersurgeons and writers of texts admit of no classification. Thus a man's material well-being turned entirely upon the good management of the gilds. The baker who fed him, the clothier who clothed him, the builder who built his house, the barber-surgeon, who shaved and bled him were not individuals pursuing unhampered careers but part of a highly organised system with rules and regulations that often remained unaltered for a century. A rapidly expanding industrial life circumscribed by an absolutely inelastic set of laws seems to spell disaster, revolution, chaos; but York thrived under the system. The explanation of the anomaly lies in that great national asset, an Englishman's capacity for the good administration of bad law. The craftsman certainly lived with the sword of heavy penalties for slight

1. C. Welch, op. cit. pp. 46, 47.

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offences hanging over his head, but it seldom fell. Mr. Hudson has worked out the fines paid at the Leet Court and handed over to the city chamberlain for the year 1289, in Norwich. By drawing out a balance sheet for the whole city in this year it appears that the total amount of all the amercements entered is £72 18s. 10d. This is equivalent to more than £1,000 at the present value of money. But all that the collectors can account for, even after Easter, is £17 Os. 2d. It is clear that however efficient the system was in preventing offences from passing undetected, it did not do much to deter offenders from repeating them." That under such a system glaring cases of injustice must have taken place is unquestionable. A popular man would escape scot free, an unpopular man would pay the fines that were often needed to keep the gild machinery in working order; still the literal interpretation of the law would have led to worse calamities.

Owing to the assize of bread, the bakers' gild stands on the border line between a state and a municipal undertaking. The earliest ordinances are undated, they possess one novel feature, the masters were to discriminate between the skilled and the unskilled labourer, the former was to receive £1 6s. 8d. and his clothes, the latter only 13s. 4d., without clothes. The regulations of 1479 are given in English, they legislated the place where, and the hours when bread brought from the country may be sold.3 Unfortunately the earliest of the butchers' ordinances are illegible,+ two additional ordinances are inserted later in the volume, one of which prohibited the killing of beasts in the shambles at night, the other forbade butchers to take apprentices for a shorter period of time than seven years.5

The work of the building crafts overlapped considerably, the tilers and plasterers seem to have been at constant warfare. At last in 1413, they submitted their disputes to the mayor and

1. W. Hudson op. cit. p. cxxxix, Leet Jurisdiction. p. lviii.

2. Ante p. xxii.

Selden Soc., vol. 5,

3. Mem. Bk., pp. 29, 43, 168-172. In the British Museum are two interesting MSS., crudely illustrated, containing the ordinances of the bakers, their accounts and records of some of their meetings. Add. MSS. 34605. 4. Ibid., pp. 58, 59.

5. Ibid., p. 59.

new ordinances were enacted to settle their disputes. If in the future any plasterer undertook any tiling work, he was to pay to the tilers' pageant iii d., and the work had to be supervised by the searchers of tilers.1 This policy seems to have been successful, for a few years later the tilers and plasterers united to resist the masons, who had tried to force them to be contributory to their gild, and the quarrel was then referred to the mayor, chamberlains and council.

The craft of joiners was small, it consisted of only ten members. The chief point insisted upon in the ordinances is that a high standard of workmanship was to be kept up and that only the best materials were to be used." The authority of the searchers was emphasized, but there is no allusion to apprenticeship. The painters, stainers and goldbeaters had apparently not been organized before; the masters and artificers, since they were without governance as well of searchers as of ordinances necessary and profitable to all people and to the artificers themselves, requested that the mayor, sheriffs and aldermen of the City of York would grant the articles written below and register them in the council chamber. The date is not given, but the presence of the sheriffs and the language points to the early fifteenth century. Four of the ordinances dealt with the stranger, who could be employed, if he had satisfied the searchers of his ability, and if the master bound himself to engage him for a whole year. Men from other artifices could work at the trade, if they were enfranchised and paid fees to the painters' pageant. No master, however, was allowed to sell paints or brushes to men of another industry. Apprenticeship is not mentioned and the general trend of the articles points to a less rigidly organized system than was usual at that date.3

Potting does not seem to have been carried on very extensively in York, nor do the ordinances give an impression of a wealthy gild. The twelve master potters seem principally concerned with repressing petty larceny, and forbidding hawking

1. Mem. Bk., 148. Cf. L. Toulmin-Smith. xxi., xxiii., xxvii.

2. Ibid., pp. 148, 149, 150.

3. Ibid., pp. 164-166.

"York Mystery Plays, ́ pp.

of wares. The clause dealing with the admission of strangers is extremely stringent, no one of the said artifice was to teach anyone the mysteries of his art who was not a member of the gild, or an apprentice; under a penalty of £5.1

The wax chandlers only number six; their ordinances were drawn up in the year 1417, no fewer than eight different kinds of candles are referred to by name. But their trade was not confined to making candles only, small wax images of various forms were in constant request for ecclesiastical offerings. In order that people should be sure when they bought one of these images, that it was not merely a thin veneer of wax over another substance, but that the wax was of a given thickness over the whole surface, an ordinance was enacted that half a pound of wax should be used in the making of them.2

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The coopers and the joiners at one time formed one gild, after they separated the coopers found the upkeep of their pageant difficult, they appealed to the pity of the mayor their "tresbountinouse seignourie," and described themselves as tres povres gentz si bien destate come davoir." An unusual feature of their ordinances is that their searchers were fined, if they were proved to have conducted their search unfairly.3

The sadlers were a more important body of traders, the gild consisted of 34 members and their ordinances are dated 1387, 1398, 1459, 1470 and 1538. The earliest show a variation from the usual type. The searchers were to be assisted by seven worthy men" prudhommes "; the final clause, too, is an innovation, for all the masters and artificers bound themselves and took a solemn oath to keep, maintain and guard the ordinances for ever in every point, and in testimony of these things they placed their seals thereto. The rules against servants doing work on their own account by night and not in the houses or shops of their masters were very stringent. This fear of servants becoming too independent was not without cause, a few years later “the masters of the London gild of sadlers complained to the mayor

Mem. Bk., pp. 150-151.

2. Ibid., p. 55.

3. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., pp. 88-93.

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