Early Trading Conditions 19 



into the combination, and still more so against traders in 

 other towns. The latter they regarded as " foreigners " 

 equally with the traders from Flanders and elsewhere. 



The merchant guilds were found in all considerable towns 

 in the eleventh century, and they were followed, a century 

 later, by craft guilds which aimed, in turn, at securing a 

 monopoly of employment for their own particular members. 



Coupled with the guilds there was much local regulation of 

 the prices and qualities of commodities through the setting-up 

 of such institutions as the " assize " of ale, of bread and of 

 cloth ; while the justices had, in addition, considerable powers 

 in regard to fixing the rates of wages and the general conditions 

 of labour. 



All this system of highly-organised Protection, not so much 

 for the country as a whole as for each and every individual 

 town in the country, might serve in comparatively isolated 

 communities ; but it could not prevail against increased 

 intercourse, the growing competition of developing industries, 

 a broader area of distribution for commodities made in greater 

 volume, and a wider demand for foreign supplies. It was thus 

 doomed to extinction as these new conditions developed ; but 

 it nevertheless exercised an important influence on our national 

 advancement, since it was the impulse of corporate unity, 

 fostered by the merchant guilds, and strengthened by the 

 system of manorial courts for the enforcement of the local 

 laws and customs in vogue in each separate manor before the 

 common law of the land was established, that led to so many 

 English towns securing, from King or overlord and notably 

 in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the influence 

 of the merchant guilds was especially great those charters 

 which so powerfully stimulated the growth of the great towns, 

 of English citizenship, of individual freedom, and of national 

 prosperity. Ashley well says, in this connection : 



" Wide as were the differences between a civic republic 

 of Italy, or an imperial city of Germany with its subject 

 territory, and a little English market town, there was an 

 underlying similarity of ideas and purposes. Each was a body 

 of burghers who identified the right to carry on an independent 

 trading or industrial occupation with the right of burgess-ship ; 

 who imposed restrictions on the acquisition of citizenship, with 

 the object of protecting the interests of those already enjoying 



