GILD REGULATION. 457 



this quasi-political character at the time when they were 

 practically identical with the municipal governments, and 

 they retained it in large measure after they became separate. 

 One proof of this is that they had their own laws and courts, 

 in which civil causes might be determined. 



At the outset one of these merchant-gilds included the 

 various kinds of traders inhabiting the place. Each member 

 of it was a maker of the article he dealt in a substantial 

 artisan having such property and household as enabled 

 him to carry on a business and train an apprentice. His 

 membership conferred gild-privileges on his wife, daughter, 

 and maid-servants, and in most cases on his widow. But 

 whereas originally each master was himself a worker, in 

 course of time, as towns grew and some masters prospered 

 more than others, there arose distinctions: differentiation 

 began. Becoming rulers of the gild, its wealthier members 

 grew into a gild-aristocracy; and as fast as there arose a 

 class of masters distinguished from the class of workers, the 

 class of masters strove to monopolize gild-privileges, and 

 successfully sought to keep out the inferior class, not only by 

 prohibitory payments but even by regulations which ex 

 cluded manual workers sometimes all those who had &quot; blue 

 nails.&quot; Thus, in Scotland, according to Burton, men were 

 made &quot; incapable of holding the rank of guild-brethren, un 

 less they should abandon the pursuit of their craft with their 

 own hands, and conduct it solely by employing hired opera 

 tives.&quot; As is remarked by Mrs. Green in her Town Life in 

 the Fifteenth Century : 



1 A close caste was easily developed out of the compact body of 

 merchants and thriving traders who formed the undisputed aristocracy 

 of the town, and whose social pre-eminence doubtless went far to 

 establish their political dominion.&quot; 



And she adds that &quot; there is evidence to show that it often 

 preceded by a long time the charters which make it legally 

 binding.&quot; 



The incorporated bodies formed and developed in these 



