"assayen weights, powders, confeccions, platers, oyntments and all other things belonging to the same crafte." The goldsmiths had the assay of metals, the fishmongers the oversight of fish, the vintners of the tasting of wine, &c. The companies enforced their regulations on their members by force. Many of their ordinances looked to the domestic affairs and private conduct of the members. The grocers ordain "that no man of the fraternite take his neyghbor's house y^t is of the same fraternite, or enhaunce the rent against the will of the foresaid neyghbor." Perjury is to be punished by the wardens and society with such correction as that other men of the fellowship may be warned thereby. Members reduced to poverty by adventures on the sea, increased price of goods, borrowing and pledging, or any other misfortune, are to be assisted "out of the common money, according to his situation, if he could not do without." Following what appears to be the natural law of their being, the companies gradually lost their industrial character. The course of decay would seem to have been the following. The capitalists gradually assumed the lead in the various societies, the richer members engrossed the power and the companies tended to become hereditary and exclusive. Persons might be members who had nothing to do with the craft, and the rise of great capitalists and the development of competition in trade made the regulation of industry by means of companies no longer possible. For an account of the "degeneration of craftgilds" a general reference may be made to Brentano, _On Gilds_ (1870), and C. Gross, _The Gild Merchant_ (2 vols., 1890). The usurpation of power on the part of the richer members was not always effected without opposition. Brentano refers to a pamphlet on the Clothworkers' Company, published in 1649, which asserts that "the commonalty" in the old charters meant, not the whole gild, but only the masters, wardens and assistants. Herbert records a dispute in the Goldsmiths' Company in 1529. The mode of electing officers, and the system of management generally, was challenged by three members who called themselves "artificers, poor men of the craft of goldsmiths." The company, or rather, the wardens, the assistants and livery presented a petition to the lord mayor, which was answered by the discontented craftsmen. The dispute was carried into the court of chancery and the star chamber. The artificers accused the company of subverting their grants, misappropriating the funds and changing the constitution of the society, and they complain of this being done by the usurpation of persons who "were but merchant goldsmiths, and had but little knowledge in the science." In 1531 the three complainants were expelled from the company, and then the dispute seems to have ended. In the last stage of the companies the members have ceased to have any connexion with the trades, and in most cases their regulative functions have disappeared.