Part 13
What do we find, then? This very remarkable fact. The churches are full of monuments to dead citizens who are _armigeri_. Take two churches at hazard. The first is St. Leonard's, Milk Street. Here were buried, among others, John Johnson, citizen and butcher, died 1282, his coat of arms displayed upon his tomb; also, with his family shield, Richard Ruyener, citizen and fish-monger, died 1361. The second church is St. Peter's, Cornhill. Here the following monuments have their shields: that of Thomas Lorimer, citizen and mercer; of Thomas Born, citizen and draper; of Henry Acle, citizen and grocer; of Henry Palmer, citizen and _pannarius_; of Henry Aubertner, citizen and tailor; and of Timothy Westrow, citizen and grocer. In short, I do not say that the retail traders were of knightly family, but that the great merchants, the mercers, adventurers, and leaders of the Companies were gentlemen by descent, and admitted to their close society only their own friends, cousins, and sons.
The residence and yearly influx of the Barons and their followers into London not only, as we have seen, kept the city in touch with the country, and prevented it from becoming a mere centre of trade, but it also kept the country in touch with the City. The livery of the great Lords compared their own lot, at best an honorable servitude, with that of the free and independent merchants who had no over-lord but the King, and were themselves as rich as any of the greatest Barons in the country. They saw among them many from their own country, lads whom they remembered in the hunting-field, or playing in the garden before the timbered old house in the country, of gentle birth and breeding; once, like themselves, poor younger sons, now rich and of great respect. When they went home they talked of this, and fired the blood of the boys, so that while some stayed at home and some put on the livery of a Baron, others went up to London and served their time. So that, when we assign a city origin to the families of Coventry, Leigh, Ducie, Pole, Bouverie, Boleyn, Legge, Capel, Osborne, Craven, and Ward, it would be well to inquire, if possible, to what stock belonged the original citizen, the founder of each. Trade in the fourteenth century, and long afterwards, did not degrade a gentleman. That idea was of an earlier and of a later date. It became a law during the last century, when the county families began to grow rich and the value of land increased. It is fast disappearing again, and the city is once more receiving the sons of noble and gentle. The change should be welcomed as helping to destroy the German notions of caste and class and the hereditary superiority of the ennobled House.
As for the political power of London under the Plantagenets, it will be sufficient to refer to Froissart. "The English," says the chronicler, unkindly, "are the worst people in the world, the most obstinate, and the most presumptuous, and of all England the Londoners are the leaders; for, to say the truth, they are very powerful in men and in wealth. In the city and neighborhood there are 25,000 men, completely armed from head to foot, and full 30,000 archers. This is a great force, and they are bold and courageous, and the more blood is spilled the greater is their courage." The deposition of King Edward II. and that of King Richard II. illustrate at once the "presumption and obstinacy" and the power of the citizens. Later on, the depositions of Charles I. and of James II. were also largely assisted by these presumptuous citizens.
The first case, that of Edward II., is thus summed up by Froissart:
When the Londoners perceived King Edward so besotted with the Despencers, they provided a remedy, by sending secretly to Queen Isabella information, that if she would collect a body of 300 armed men, and land with them in England, she would find the citizens of London and the majority of the nobles and commonalty ready to join her and place her on the throne. The Queen found a friend in Sir John of Hainault, Lord of Beaumont and Chimay, and brother to Count William of Hainault, who undertook, through affection and pity, to carry her and her son back to England. He exerted himself so much in her service with knights and squires, that he collected a body of 400 and landed them in England, to the great comfort of the Londoners. The citizens joined them, for, without their assistance, they would never have accomplished the enterprise. King Edward was made prisoner at Bristol, and carried to Berkeley Castle, where he died. His advisers were all put to death with much cruelty, and the same day King Edward III. was crowned King of England in the Palace of Westminster.
When, in the case of Richard II., the time of expostulation had passed, and that for armed resistance or passive submission had arrived, the Londoners remembered their action in the reign of Edward II., and perceived that if they did not move they would be all ruined and destroyed. They therefore resolved upon bringing over from France, Henry, Earl of Derby, and entreated the Archbishop of Canterbury to go over secretly and invite him, promising the whole strength of London for his service. As we know, Henry accepted and came over. On his landing he sent a special messenger to ride post haste to London with the news. The journey was performed in less than twenty-four hours. The Lord Mayor sent the news about in all directions, and the Londoners prepared to give their future king a right joyous welcome. They poured out along the roads to meet him, and all men, women, and children clad in their best clothes. "The Mayor of London rode by the side of the Earl, and said, 'See, my Lord, how much the people are rejoiced at your arrival.' As the Earl advanced, he bowed his head to the right and left, and noticed all comers with kindness.... The whole town was so rejoiced at the Earl's return that every shop was shut and no more work done than if it had been Easter Day."
The army which Henry led to the west was an army of Londoners, twelve thousand strong. It was to the Tower of London that the fallen King was brought; and it was in the Guildhall that the articles drawn up against the King were publicly read; and it was in Cheapside that the four knights, Richard's principal advisers, were beheaded. At the Coronation feast the King sat at the first table, having with him the two archbishops and seventeen bishops. At the second table sat the five great peers of England. At the third were the principal citizens of London; below them sat the knights. The place assigned to the city is significant. But London had not yet done enough for Henry of Lancaster. The Earls of Huntingdon and Salisbury attempted a rebellion against him. Said the Mayor, "Sire, we have made you king, and king you shall be." And King he remained.
It was in this fourteenth century that the city experienced the most important change in the whole history of her constitution, more important than the substitution of the Mayor and Aldermen for the port-reeve and sheriff, though that was nothing less than the passage from the feudal county to the civic community. The new thing was the formation of the city companies, which incorporated each trade formally, and gave the fullest powers to the governing body over wages, hours of labor, output, and everything which concerned the welfare of each craft.
There had been many attempts made at combination. Men at all times have been sensible of the advantages of combining; at all times and in every trade there is the same difficulty, that of persuading everybody to forego an apparent present advantage for a certain benefit in the future; there are always black-legs, yet the cause of combination advances.
The history of the city companies is that of combination so successfully carried out that it became part of the constitution and government of the city; but, which was not foreseen at the outset, combination in the interests of the masters, not of the men.
The trades had long formed associations which they called guilds. These, for some appearance of independence, began to arouse suspicion. Kings have never regarded any combination of their subjects with approbation. The guilds were ostensibly religious; they had each a patron saint--St. Martin, for instance, protected the saddlers; St. Anthony, the grocers--and they held an annual festival on their saint's day. But they must be licensed; eighteen such guilds were fined for establishing themselves without a license. Those which were licensed paid for the privilege. The most important of them was the Guild of Weavers, which was authorized by Henry II. to regulate the trades of cloth-workers, drapers, tailors, and all the various crafts and "mysteries" that belong to clothes. This guild became so powerful that it threatened to rival in authority the governing body. It was therefore suppressed by King John, the different trades afterwards combining separately to form their own companies.
We are not writing a history of London, otherwise the rise and growth of the City companies would form a most interesting chapter. It has been done in a brief and convenient form by Loftie, in his little book on London (_Historic Towns Series_). Very curious and suggestive reading it is. At the period with which we are now concerned, the end of the fourteenth century, the companies were rapidly forming and presenting regulations for the approval and license of the Mayor and Aldermen. By the year 1363 there were thirty-two companies already formed whose laws and regulations had received the approbation of the King. Let us take those of the Company of Glovers. They are briefly as follows:
(1) None but a freeman of the City shall make or sell gloves.
(2) No glover shall be admitted to the freedom of the City unless with the assent of the Wardens of the trade.
(3) No one shall entice away the servant of another.
(4) If a servant in the trade shall make away with his master's chattels to the value of twelvepence, the Wardens shall make good the loss; and if the servant refuse to be adjudged upon by the Wardens, he shall be taken before the Mayor and Aldermen.
(5) No one shall sell his goods by candlelight.
(6) Any false work found shall be taken before the Mayor and Aldermen by the Wardens.
(7) All things touching the trade within the City between those who are not freemen shall be forfeited.
(8) Journeymen shall be paid their present rate of wages.
(9) Persons who entice away journeymen glovers to make gloves in their own houses shall be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.
(10) Any one of the trade who refuses to obey these regulations shall be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen.
Observe, upon these laws, first, that the fourth simply transfers the master's right to chastise his servant to the governing body of the company. This seems to put the craftsmen in a better position. Here, apparently, is combination carried to the fullest. All the glovers in the City unite; no one shall make or sell gloves except their own members; the company shall order the rate of wages and the admission of apprentices; no glover shall work for private persons, or for any one, except by order of the company. Here is absolute protection of trade and absolute command of trade. Unfortunately, the Wardens and court were not the craftsmen, but the masters. Therefore the regulations of trade were very quickly found to serve the enrichment of the masters and the repression of the craftsmen. And if the latter formed "covins" or conspiracies for the improvement of wages, they very soon found out that such associations were put down with the firmest hand. To be brought before the Mayor and Aldermen meant, unless submission was made and accepted, expulsion from the City. So long as the conditions of the time allowed, the companies created a Paradise for the master. The workman was suppressed; he could not combine; he could not live except on the terms imposed by his company: if he rebelled he was thrust out of the City gates. The jurisdiction of the City, however, ceased at the walls; when a greater London began to grow outside Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate, and on the reclaimed marshes of Westminster and along the river-bank, craftsmen not of any company could settle down and work as they please. But they had to find a market, which might be impossible except within the City, where they were not admitted. Therefore the companies, as active guardians and jealous promoters of their trades, fulfilled their original purposes a long while, and enabled many generations of masters to grow rich upon the work of their servants.
Every company was governed by its Wardens. The Warden had great powers; he proved the quality, weight, or length of the goods exposed for sale; the members were bound to obey the Warden; to prevent bad blood, every man called upon to serve his time as Warden had to undertake the office. The Warden also looked after the poor of the craft, assisted the old and infirm, the widows and the orphans. He had also to watch over the fraternity, to take care that there should be no underselling, no infringement of the rate of wage, no overreaching of one by the other. He was, in short, to maintain the common interest of the trade. It was a despotism, but, on the whole, a benevolent despotism. The Englishman was not yet ready for popular rule; doubtless the jealousies of the sovereign were allayed by the discovery that the association of a trade was a potent engine for the maintenance of order and the repression of the turbulent craftsman. How turbulent they could be was proved by the troubles which arose in the reign of Henry III.
The great companies were always separate and distinct from the smaller companies. For a long time the Mayor was exclusively elected from the former. Even at the present day, unless the Mayor belongs to one of the great companies, he labors under certain disadvantages. He cannot, for instance, become President of the Irish Society.
By the end of the fourteenth century, then--to sum up--the government of London was practically complete and almost in its present form. The Mayor, become an officer of the highest importance, was elected every year; the Sheriffs every year; the Aldermen and the Common Councilmen were elected by wards. The Mayor was chosen from the great companies, which comprised all the merchant venturers, importers, exporters, men who had correspondence over the seas, masters, and employers. Every craft had its own regulations; no one could trade in the City who did not belong to a company; no one could work in the City, or even make anything to be sold, who did not belong to a company. Wages were ordered by the companies; working-men had no appeal from the ruling of the Warden. From time to time there were attempts made by the craftsmen to make combinations for themselves. These attempts were sternly and swiftly put down. No trades-unions were suffered to be formed; nay, even within the memory of living man trades-unions were treated as illegal associations. The craftsman, as a political factor, disappears from history with the creation of the companies. In earlier times we hear his voice in the folkmote; we see him tossing his cap and shouting for William Longbeard. But when Whittington sits on the Lord Mayor's chair he is silenced. And he remains silent until, by a renewal of those covins and conspiracies which Whittington put down so sternly, he has become a greater power in the land than ever he was before. Even yet, however, and with all the lessons that he has learned, his power of combination is imperfect, his aims are narrow, and his grasp of his own power is feeble and restricted.
For my own part, I confess that this repression, this silencing of the craftsman in the fourteenth century, seems to me to have been necessary for the growth and prosperity of the City. For the craftsman was then incredibly ignorant; he knew nothing except his own craft; as for his country, the conditions of the time, the outer world, he knew nothing at all; he might talk to the sailors who lay about the quays between voyages, but they could tell him nothing that would help him in his trade; he could not read, he could not inquire, because he knew not what question to ask or what information he wanted; he had no principles; he was naturally ready, for his own present advantages, to sacrifice the whole world; he believed all he was told. Had the London working-man acquired such a share in the government of his city as he now has in the government of his country, the result would have been a battle-field of discordant and ever-varying factions, ruled and led each in turn by a short-lived demagogue.
It was, in short, a most happy circumstance for London that the government of the City fell into the hands of an oligarchy, and still more happy that the oligarchs themselves were under the rule of a jealous and a watchful sovereign.
So far it was well. It would have been better had the governing body recognized the law that they must be always enlarging their borders. Then they would have begun in earnest the education of the people. We, who have only taken this work in hand for twenty years, may not throw stones. The voice of the educated craftsman should have been heard long ago. Then we might have been spared many oppressions, many foolish wars, many cruelties. But from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century the craftsman is silent. Nay, in every generation he grows more silent, less able to say what he wants; more inarticulate, more angry and discontented, and more powerless to make his wants heard until he reaches the lowest depth ever arrived at by Englishmen; and that, I think, was about a hundred years ago.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Especially Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_.
V
PLANTAGENET
III. THE PEOPLE
Through broad Chepeside rode the great lord--haply the King himself--followed by his regiment of knights, gentlemen, and men-at-arms, all wearing his livery. The Abbot, with his following, passed along on his way to Westminster in stately procession. The Alderman, in fur gown and gold chain, with his officers, walked through the market inspecting weights and measures and the goods exposed for sale. Priests and friars crowded the narrow ways. To north and south, in sheds which served for shops, the prentices stood bawling their wares. This was the outward and visible side of the City. There was another side--the City of the London craftsman.
[Illustration: OLD CHARING CROSS]
Who was he--the craftsman? Whence did he come? London has always opened her hospitable arms to foreigners. They still come to the City and settle, enjoying its freedom, and in the next generation are pure English. In the days of Edward the Confessor the men of Rouen and of Flanders became citizens with rights equal to the English. Later on, the names of the people show their origin and the places whence they or their forefathers had come. Then William Waleys is William the Welchman; Walter Norris is Walter of Norway; John Francis is John the Frenchman; Henry Upton is Henry of that town; William Sevenoke, Lord Mayor of London, took his name from the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent, where he was born. The first surnames were bestowed not only with reference to the place of birth, but partly to trades, partly to the place of residence, partly to personal defects or peculiarities. But it is obvious from the earliest names on record how readily London received strangers from any quarter of western Europe, Norway, Denmark, Flanders, Lorraine, Picardy, Normandy, Guyenne, Spain, Provence, and Italy. It is noteworthy in studying the names, first, that, as was to be expected, there is not in the fourteenth century a single trace of British or Roman-British name, either Christian or surname, just as there was not in the Saxon occupation a single trace of Roman customs or institutions; next, that the Saxon names have all vanished. There are no longer any Wilfreds, Ælfgars, Eadberhts, Sigeberts, Harolds, or Eadgars among the Christian names. They have given place to the Norman names of John, Henry, William, and the like. The London craftsman was therefore a compound of many races. The dominant strain was Saxon--East Saxon; then came Norman, then Fleming, and then a slight infusion of every nation of Western Europe.
In the narrow lanes leading north and south of the two great streets of Thames and Chepe the craftsmen of London lived in their tenements, each consisting of a room below and a room above. Some of them followed their trade at home, some worked in shops. There were those who sold and those who made. Of the former, the mercers and haberdashers kept their shops in West Chepe; the goldsmiths in Guthrun's Lane and Old Change; the pepperers and grocers in Soper's Lane; the drapers in Lombard Street and Cornhill; the skinners in St. Mary Axe; the fish-mongers in Thames Street; the iron-mongers in Ironmongers' Lane and Old Jewry; the vintners in the Vintry; the butchers in East Chepe, St. Nicolas Shambles, and the Stocks Market; the hosiers in Hosiers' Lane; the shoemakers and curriers in Cordwainer Street; the paternoster-sellers in Paternoster Row; patten-sellers by St. Margaret Pattens; and so forth.