Thus if there were men in the mediaeval town who were not members of some trading or craft body, they would in all probability be members of some society based merely on religious or social feeling. The whole tendency of mediaeval society was toward organization, combination, close union with one's fellows. It might be said that all town life involved membership in some organization, and usually in that one into which a man was drawn by the occupation in which he made his living. These gilds or the town government itself controlled even the affairs of private economic life in the city, just as the customary agriculture of the country prevented much freedom of action there. Methods of trading, or manufacture, the kind and amount of material to be used, hours of labor, conditions of employment, even prices of work, were regulated by the gild ordinances. The individual gildsman had as little opportunity to emancipate himself from the controlling force of the association as the individual tenant on the rural manor had to free himself from the customary agriculture and the customary services. Whether we study rural or urban society, whether we look at the purely economic or at the broader social side of existence, life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was corporate rather than individual. *18. BIBLIOGRAPHY* Gross, Charles: _The Gild Merchant_, two volumes. The first volume consists of a full account and discussion of the character and functions of the gild merchant, with a number of appendices on cognate subjects. The second volume contains the documents on which the first is based. Seligman, E. R. A.: _Two Chapters on Mediaeval Gilds_. Brentano, L.: _The History and Development of English Gilds_. An essay prefixed to a volume of ordinances of English Gilds, edited by T. Smith. Brentano's essay is only referred to because of the paucity of works on the subject, as it is fanciful and unsatisfactory. No thorough and scholarly description of the craft gilds exists. On the other hand, a considerable body of original materials is easily accessible in English, as in the following works:-- Riley: _Memorials of London and London Life_. Smith, Toulmin: _English Gilds_. Various documents illustrative of town and gild history will also be found in Vol. II, No. 1, of the _Translations and Reprints_, published by the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania. Better descriptions exist for the position of the gilds in special towns than for their general character, especially in London by Herbert, in Hull by Lambert, in Shrewsbury by Hibbert, and in Coventry by Miss Harris. CHAPTER IV MEDIAEVAL TRADE AND COMMERCE