SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



were ordered to be elected yearly to inquire into the observance of this rule 

 and of others for the good of the craft, which was suffering great shame 

 and disadvantage ' by the frauds and deceits of divers men ignorant of the 

 said craft.' 1 The dyers, too, were ordered to close up their ranks, to put 

 down the untrained workmen who were bringing discredit on their craft ; 

 and in 1425 their position was confirmed by royal charter. There is 

 something familiar too in the cry of the masters in the next century.* 



' Divers persons,' they complain, ' dailly taken upon theym to receyvc into theire 

 houses wollen yarn made of flolckes and thrummes (waste, or inferior wool), and the same 

 yarn deceytefully weve in theire lomes into the liknesse of Brodemedes, that afterwards be 

 sent into divers parties beyond see, and there solde to marchauntesstraungiersas true drapery 

 called Brodemedes, to the gretc infamic and disclaundre of this worshipfull Towne.' 



And while the manufacturer denounces shoddy, the voice of the unemployed 

 is uplifted against alien immigration. In 1419 we read complaints of Irish 

 weavers who eluded the rules for apprenticeship ; 8 in 1461 even wives and 

 daughters of weavers were forbidden any employment in weaving, ' by which 

 many men gothe vagaraunt and unoccupied, and may not have ther labour to 

 ther livyng,'* and in the next year fresh protests were made against those 

 weavers who 'receyven Allions,' and 'for ther singular profit provokyn mar- 

 chaunts ... to bring into this Towne people of divers Countrees, not born 

 under the King's obeisaunce but rebellious, which bene sold to them as hit 

 were hethen people.' 1 The other crafts * were in equal difficulties over the 

 uncraftlike spirit of the age. Men would get themselves shaved at home, or 

 by their neighbours, to the grief of barber journeymen who had served their 

 seven years' apprenticeship. 7 The cordwainers would not attend their own 

 guild-meetings ; and the hoopers were rebellious over the wages allotted 

 them (covenant servants 40^. a year ; journeymen is. a week and their 

 'table'). 8 The tailors too (1401) had to issue regulations against bad work, 

 and against tailors who were not members of the guild. 9 



Complex indeed was the web of interests through which the paternal 

 municipality of the middle ages strove unflinchingly to find its way. In 

 this case its efforts tended on the whole to the depression of the craftsmen, 

 already weakened, as we have seen, by the crowding of the labour market. 

 Their complaints that they were being deprived of their right to walk in the 

 guild processions testified to their own sense of their declining position. 

 Wealth could still be amassed in the cloth trade at the close of the fifteenth 

 century (as is shown by the accounts of the Merchant Taylors, and by the 

 frequency with which bequests of cloth and ' cloth-houses ' occurred in the 

 wills of Bristol burgesses of the period), 10 but not by the actual manufacturer. 

 The age of the great merchants was approaching, and Bristol enjoyed as fine 

 a succession of merchant princes as any town in the realm. Chief among 



1 Little Red Book, ii, 76. ' Ibid. 123. ' Ibid. 



Ibid. 127. 'Ibid. 128. 



* The Little Red Book mentions seventeen craft-guilds, besides two religious fraternities, the Kalcnders 

 and Mariners. 



' Little Rid Book, ii, 135-41. ' Ibid. 1 59-66. 



' The Merchant Taylors' Guild was founded by royal charter I 392, and continued to issue ordinance* 

 till 1640. It became finally extinct early in the nineteenth century. See F. F. Fox, The Ancient Fraternity of 

 Merchant Taylors of Bristol. 



10 T. P. Wadley, 'Great Orphan Book, and Book of Wills,' Brill, and Glouc. Arth. Six. Tram. 1886. 



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