GUILD 



GUILD 



GUILD 



IN TRADE AND CRAFTSMANSHIP 



G. H. Leonard, Prof, of Modern History. TTniv. Coll., Bristol 



Trade Unions is an article allied to this one. See also Apprentice- 

 ship ; Industrial Revolution and the entries on the various livery 

 companies. Guild Socialism is the subject of a separate article 



The word guild, alternatively 

 gild, the u being inserted to indicate 

 the hard sound of g, is derived 

 from A.S. gild, payment, but its 

 primary meaning is an association 

 of some kind. Even before the 

 Norman Conquest English and 

 other European people were accus- 

 tomed to form themselves for 

 social and religious purposes into 

 associations, artificial families of 

 brethren and sistren which were 

 called guilds or gilds, from the geld 

 or payment out of which the feasts 

 and masses for the souls of the de- 

 parted were provided. Such guilds, 

 developing in many interesting 

 ways, in Germany as well as in 

 England, existed side by side 

 with the commercial and industrial 

 guilds of the Middle Ages, in which 

 the religious and social side was 

 always strongly insisted on. 



Early in the 12th century, deal- 

 ers and the few men more or less 

 permanently engaged in handi- 

 craft, who were now making their 

 appearance in the towns, were 

 beginning to form themselves into 

 associations to supervise and regu- 

 late local trade. No privilege was 

 more coveted in the town charters 

 than the recognition of such an as- 

 sociation of merchants. The mer- 

 chant guild laid down rules for the 

 honest conduct of trade, managed 

 the markets, but above all secured 

 for its members freedom from tolls, 

 and the right of keeping much, at 

 all events, of the buying and selling 

 within the borough in their own 

 hands, keeping out the foreign 

 merchant from abroad, and the 

 local dealer equally a foreigner 

 who lived, perhaps, only jus* out- 

 side the town walls. 



Guildship and Burgessship 



Though most members of the 

 merchant guild were commonly 

 also members of the municipal gov- 

 ernment, guildship and burgessship 

 were not at first identical terms. 

 Only gradually did the two bodies 

 become one. It is not easy to define 

 the early relations of the local au- 

 thority, whether merchant guild or 

 municipality, to the craft guilds, 

 which are found in almost every 

 industry and every town at the 

 end of the 14th century, while some 

 of them, e.g. several of the weavers' 

 guilds, date back at least two 

 centuries earlier. In England, at 

 all events, the craft guild appears 

 to develop from the natural group- 

 ing together of men engaged in the 

 same kind of work and living, ac- 

 cording to medieval custom, in the 



same quarter of the town. In the 

 first instance, the purpose of this 

 may have been largely religious, 

 but as industry expanded and 

 new and highly specialised trades 

 sprang up, a need for a more de- 

 tailed supervision and government 

 in the interest of seller and buyer 

 alike, which the older bodies real- 

 ized they could hardly supply, led 

 to the regular formation, under the 

 municipal authority, of responsible 

 organizations of men engaged in a 

 particular trade. There are many 

 references also to women as 

 members of guilds, though in cer- 

 tain cases this was by no means 

 encouraged. 



Functions of Craft Guilds 



It was the duty of the wardens 

 and aldermen of the new craft 

 guilds to keep the trade in good re- 

 pute, making " reasonable ordin- 

 ances " for the observance of proper 

 standards of size and quality, 

 providing for skilled workmanship, 

 and in some cases settling prices, 

 though this was apparently more 

 often the duty of the municipal 

 authority. Everyone believed 

 that there was such a thing as a 

 just price, which depended on the 

 cost of materials, and on a reason- 

 able wage which would enable the 

 worker to support himself and his 

 family according to the standard 

 of the class to which he belonged. 

 In the early days, when markets 

 were small, and industry was of a 

 comparatively simple character, 

 such prices and wages were really 

 easy to determine, and general 

 regulations as to methods of work, 

 hours of labour, etc., comparatively 

 easy to enforce, but it was necessary 

 to insist that all who worked at a 

 particular trade should be members 

 of the guild, though to no honest 

 man would membership be denied, 

 provided he held the proper quali- 

 fications. 



The necessary guarantees of 

 character and skill were provided 

 in the system of apprenticeship, 

 which, beginning in the middle of 

 the 13th century, soon became an 

 integral part of the social and 

 economic life of the people. The 

 " prentice," on signing his in- 

 dentures, was taken into the 

 household of a master craftsman, 

 there to be taught, not only the 

 " mistery " (minister ium) or trade, 

 with its secrets, but to be bred up 

 in religion and good manners as a 

 Christian and a citizen. It was the 

 duty of the master, in loco parentis, 

 to provide bed, board, suitable 



clothing, general oversight, pat- 

 ernal advice and chastisement 

 Sometimes even a school education, 

 perhaps including in certain trades 

 the knowledge of foreign languages. 



By the custom of London, 

 which soon became general, the 

 period of apprenticeship was one 

 of seven years ; a man was not con- 

 sidered to have grown into " full 

 knowledge of his art " until the 

 age of twenty- three. The ap- 

 prentice might then, in the earlier 

 days, produce his masterpiece, and 

 be accepted as a master who might 

 set up for himself in business and 

 marry. But though little capital 

 was needed a man's tools and 

 shop being all that was generally 

 required it was usual that a few 

 years should be spent as a journey- 

 man paid originally by the day. 



As time went on, however, it 

 became increasingly difficult for 

 the journeyman to become a 

 master, the members of the old 

 guild abusing the trust which had 

 been tacitly given to them on be- 

 half of the community. Closing the 

 doors to newcomers, or to men who 

 could not afford to pay a large 

 entrance fee, in order to keep up 

 prices that were no longer reason- 

 able, they attempted to keep the 

 monopoly of sale at all events in 

 their own hands. A further di- 

 vision of labour was now rapidly 

 developing. Hitherto masters and 

 men had been of the same class. 

 Their interests were ultimately the 

 same. But evidence soon appears 

 of a cleavage between the wealthy 

 members, the traders and shop- 

 keepers who were accumulating 

 capital in the modern sense, and 

 ceasing to follow their trade, as of 

 old, in the workshop itself, and the 

 actual producers, comparatively 

 few of whom could hope to better 

 their position the hired men, with 

 a new sense of class consciousness, 

 who began to found, within the 

 guild, new associations of labour, 

 yeomen guilds as they were called, 

 antagonistic to the masters, and 

 using from time to time the now 

 familiar weapon of the strike. 

 Decline of the Guilds 



Four stages are recognized in 

 the history of English industry. 

 The second stage, that of the guild 

 when for the first time a class of 

 professional men for whom manu- 

 facture was a primary vocation, 

 had replaced the family system, in 

 which the household itself supplied 

 nearly all its own wants, was now 

 in turn to be slowly superseded by 

 the domestic system in which, 

 before the era of machinery and the 

 modern factory, capitalists for the 

 most part put out their work to be 

 done in the homes of the people, 

 and were virtually independent of 



