The first craft gilds which come into notice, were those of the weavers; the weavers of London date their charter from the reign of Henry I. There were also gilds of weavers in London, Lincoln, and Oxford in existence before 1130.[431] Just as the gild-merchants obtained a legal recognition of their existence, so the craft gilds also in course of time received recognition from the king, whilst those gilds which were not authorised were amerced as "adulterine." No attempt, however, seems to have been made forcibly to dissolve the adulterine gilds. The only definite provision contained in these charters of recognition was, that no one within the specified area should follow the craft unless he were a member of the gild. This provision, however, involved the imposition of conditions of membership, and a general power of supervision over the members of the craft. We are concerned in this thesis only with the educational significance of the gilds; hence we need not discuss further their economic aspects. It is, however, interesting to note that the social value of these gilds survived their economic functions. Judged from an economic standpoint, they began to degenerate during the fourteenth century. They had come into existence in response to the impulse arising out of a vague sense of the value of association of membership in a corporate body; against this spirit, the sense of individualism, which particularly manifested itself at the time of the Reformation, asserted itself and ultimately triumphed. The gild system was of considerable importance from the point of view of education. We may note that the gild spirit manifested itself among teachers. They organised themselves into a form of association. Gradually, they laid down the conditions of membership of their body. In course of time, legal recognition was received from pope or emperor or king, and the embryo university gradually obtains general recognition. "The rise of the universities," says Rashdall, "was merely a wave of that great movement towards association which began to sweep over the cities of Europe in the course of the eleventh century." We may next note that the gilds we have described proved to be the means by which the growing social consciousness of the nation evinced an interest in education. The term "social consciousness" is vague, and is capable of being variously defined. The origin of the phenomenon may be traced to the gregarious instinct, when the resulting consciousness is merely the "consciousness of kind," to use Professor Giddings' phrase. A higher stage of development is reached when an individual member of a group recognises the relationship in which he stands to the other members of the group, together with a realisation of the duties which such relationship involves. A still higher degree of development of the social consciousness results when the group as a whole recognises that it possesses social duties and responsibilities.