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.

2

3

vendible form, even in the 13th century. 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; 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.

2.

Durham Auditors' Records, 5, 149, printed in a "Fifteenth Century Iron Master," English Historical Review, XIV., 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.

signed with the seals of four good and true men of the girdlers of the town from which they came. The second set of ordinances are dated more than an century later; the commonalty of York take no part in granting these later regulations, "our worschipful lord the maire of this city and the gude wyse counsell of the chaumbre," are the authorizing body.

The four years' apprenticeship of the first enactments is lengthened into seven years; the stranger was to be admitted as a master, if he paid 10s. to the chamber, 10s. to the craft, 3s. 4d. to the common clerk and 1s. to the mayor's sergeant. If, however, the stranger came to seek work as a wage earner he paid 6s. 8d. to the chamber and craft, and half the master's fees to clerk and sergeant; but he could only be hired by the year. Trading with a stranger was no longer forbidden; beyond a limit of thirty-two miles it was unhampered, but nearer the city girdles were only to be sold at," cried opyn faires"; still the general trend was towards more liberty for the girdler could, with the consent of his craft, carry on his trade within the thirty-two miles radius though outside the city. The searchers were carefully to examine the girdles brought by strangers to the city, but were to report the fault to the mayor, who dealt with the delinquent. If any master was found working himself or allowing his servants or apprentices to work" any setteris day after xij of the clok be strekyn at the cathiderall church of Saynt Petir" he was "to forfet and pay withoute pardon tociens quociens a pound of wax.

2

1

Fifty years later another series of enactments were promulgated. The new ordinances contain several novel features. The making of double studded girdles was forbidden, and any girdler, who was absent from the city for a whole year, could not begin work on his return, until he had satisfied the mayor and chamberlains that his duties for his year of absence had been duly performed, and that he had also paid to the craft his pageant silver and other charges. The last clause of these ordinances shows a distinct increase in the power of the mayor; theoretically he had always had the right to alter gild regulations, but such a bald and uncompromising declaration of prerogative is unusual,

1. Mem. Bk., pp. 183, 184. 2. Ibid., pp. 184, 185, 186.

"forsein alway that if this ordenance or any parte thereof be founde at any time here after preiudiciall unto any of the Kynges poeple, and specially of any of this citee, that than it shalbe leifful to the maire for the tyme beyng by thadvise of hys counsell to amende correcte and refourme it and every parcell therof at his pleisir, etc.1 In 1475 it was enacted that all who made hamydowns within the city should be contributory to producing the girdlers' pageant, the makers were to pay 4d. the sellers iid., if they did not obey the rule, they were liable to a fine of 1s. 8d. The members, however, of the Trinity gild were exempt from this payment, also from the ordinance that forced all makers of leather girdles to pay pageant money. Ten years later, the girdlers had fallen upon evil days, in consideration of "there povertie and sumptuouse charges," the council decided that anyone who made "daggar chapes, purse knoppes, bulyons, book clashes, dawpes, dog colers, girdilles or any other maner gere or harnesse of laton stele or yren," should pay doble and twise as moch as oone of the same craft payeth to ther said padgeant."2

66

The London craft of girdlers in 1327, obtained a charter conferring upon them powers of regulating provincial trade, there is, however, no trace in the Memoranda Book of any such interference, and it seems doubtful whether the power was really operative."

.4

In 1342, the gild of ironmongers consisted of only a dozen masters, they then drew up a stringent regulation against Sunday work, which was re-enacted half a century later A long period elapsed before the ironmongers appear again; but in 1419, that is during 158 years, the gild had only increased by one ; a new difficulty had arisen in 1490; competition was more severe, strangers came into the city sold their wares to their friends, who often resold them at a higher price.5 Thus people from the country who ought to have paid a tax and other customs to the king and the city, would hand over their ironware to their confederates, especially to the tenants of the chapel of Saint Stephen's

at Westmister, who were exempt from paying customs. A fine of £2 10s. modern money was imposed on anyone discovered trying in this way to evade payment of the taxes and customs and infringing the rights of the ironmongers in the city. The rule with regard to opening a shop was very elastic. Apparently, a duly qualified apprentice, after his term of service was elapsed, could begin as a master at once. But, if a man or a woman wished to begin business within the liberty of the city, and had not served an apprenticeship, a payment of £10, modern money, was required. If, however, anyone of limited means, "impotens et minus sufficiens," was wishful to start, then the mayor and ironmongers in consultation could lower the fee to meet the beginner's circumstances.

The gild of the spurriers and lorimers though larger than the ironmongers' gild, consisted in 1387 of only seventeen members, a mere handful of men, when compared with the fifties, sixties and hundreds of the textile gilds. The Memorandum Book contains four sets of regulations passed in 1387, 1401, 1424 and 1426. A novel feature of the 1426 ordinances, is the introduction of a clause that in the future the searchers must submit to re-election at the end of each year of office; the concentration of power in the hands of a small body of men was a salient feature of the later fifteenth century, and the effort of the spurriers and lorimers to prevent a growing evil shows that the gild, small as it was, must have had among its members men of spirit and enterprise.

The pinners, makers not only of pins but of wire articles especially the small needles inserted in the cards used in cloth dressing, enacted in an undated ordinance that no master should give any stranger work unless he was first apprenticed to the artifice" as is the custom for vagrants and vagabonds in the city of London and in other cities of the kingdom."2

The pinners only number seventeen, probably the workers were not very highly skilled, the usual seven years' apprenticeship was reduced to six ;3 all work was done according to the assize,

.3

E. Boileau op. cit. Introduction, c. ii.

In fixing length of apprentice

ship in the Paris gilds no attention seems to have been paid to the difficulty of the trade.