DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 97 



the nobles and country gentlemen who were anxious, as we 

 know from the Paston Letters, to get their nominees elected, 

 also stipulated to make the town easy on the score of the 

 wages. 



The rolls of parliament and the statute book are full of 

 enactments intended to regulate trade and manufactures, 

 weights and measures, markets and prices, currency and ex- 

 change. To deal with them particularly here would be to 

 travel out of the limits which I have proposed to myself, but 

 I have thought it well to give a precis of such documents as 

 bear upon my subject, more or less directly, in the documents 

 printed at the end of the third volume. 



The right to carry on a trade or mystery was early confined 

 to those who had undergone a servitude or apprenticeship in 

 the calling. Apprenticeship, a practice which excited Adam 

 Smith's indignation, was the result of two causes. It was 

 deemed expedient to disarm the suspicions of those who em- 

 ployed agricultural labour, by putting a hindrance, in the form 

 of a long service without wages, on those who aspired to 

 become skilled workmen and dealers, and possibly on artisans. 

 I have already referred to the attempts made in the second 

 parliament of Henry the Fourth, with the object of enacting 

 a property qualification in the case of apprentices, and to the 

 enactment of the apprenticeship statute of 6 Eliz. The other 

 motive was the desire to make the number of members in 

 the guild few, with the double purpose of diminishing com- 

 petition, or securing greater gain, and of protecting the charities 

 of the guild against too large a body of applicants. There is, 

 I believe, no proof, indeed I am pretty sure there could be no 

 proof, that the members of a guild had, when in distress, a 

 legal claim on the surplus revenues of the association; but there 

 is evidence in plenty that the ostensible object of the trading 

 company was the regulation of the business, the guarantee of 

 quality, and the support of destitute members. 



Apprenticeship could probably be traced to as early a period 

 as the charters of the borough towns, or at least to the age of 



VOL. IV. H 



