THE EEGULATION OF NUMBEKS 281 



who lived in the famihes of the squire or farmer, and who, while 

 in that position, commonly remained single, and married only 

 when by prudence they had saved a sufficient sum to enable 

 them to enter some other position.' ^ Miss Davies, working on 

 figures for the parish of Corsley, found reason for thinking that at 

 any one time there was usually a number of younger people 

 who were debarred from marrying and were waiting their turn, 

 so to speak, until they could step into places vacated by members 

 of an older generation.^ 



9. In addition to those who cultivated the land there were 

 merchants and craftsmen who for the most part lived in the towns. 

 ' The essence of the mediaeval town was the formation of gilds 

 of merchants and craftsmen ' and ' within the limits of the 

 corporation gilds had the monopoly of manufacture or trade '.^ 

 Membership of a guild was a birthright or an inheritance, and new- 

 comers could only enter after a long period of apprenticeship. The 

 result of this system of apprenticeship was to bring about the 

 postponement of marriage, and thus to limit the undue increase of 

 population. ' The position of a son who acquired a holding 

 when his parent died is analogous to that of an apprentice who 

 cannot set up as a master till given permission by the proper 

 authorities. It is quite plain that in the eyes of the ordinary 

 man in the sixteenth century one of the advantages of a system 

 of compulsory apprenticeship was that it prevented youths 

 marrying at a very early age, e.g. an Act (2 and 3 Philip and 

 Mary) forbids the admitting of any one to the freedom of the 

 City of London before the age of twenty-four, and enacts that 

 apprentices are not to be taken so young that they will come 

 out of their time before they are twenty-four. The reason alleged 

 for this rule is that distress in the city of which " one of the chief 

 occasions is by reason of the over-hasty marriages and the over 

 soon setting up of householdes by the younge folke of the city . . . 

 be they never so younge and so unskilful ".' Again a petition of 

 the weavers states (Hist. MSS. Com. Cd. 784, p. 114) : ' whereas 

 by the former good laws of their trade none could exercise the same 

 until he had served an apprenticeship for seven years and attained 

 the age of twenty-four, now in these disordered times many 

 apprentices having forsaken parents and masters . . . refuse to 



* Froude, Henry VIII, p. o, note. ^ Davies, Life in an English Village, 



p. 31, 3 Rogers, Six Centuries, vol. i, p. 106. 



