We need not here follow the Guild system through its later stages of decay and dissolution. Where the Guilds did not die they shrank up as a rule into capitalistic and oligarchical associations. Step by step, power within the Guild was taken away from the ordinary Guild member by the creation of privileged orders, access to which was possible only to "men of substance." This process of oligarchization can be traced very clearly in Mr. George Unwin's admirable history of the Guilds and Companies of London. No doubt its coming was more obvious in London than in smaller industrial centres; but the essential features of the change were everywhere substantially the same. The constant attacks on patents and monopolies in the later years of the reign of Elizabeth and under the Stuarts were, in part, attacks upon the privileges granted to mere courtiers and adventurers; but when monopoly came their way, the undemocratic Guilds and Livery Companies were to the full as forward in abusing their powers as the merest of adventurers who found or bought the royal favour. From the time of the Stuarts, at least, the Guild system had ceased to count at all as a method of industrial organization. It is doubtful whether, even in their greatest days, the Guilds ever included the whole personnel of the trades and industries which they controlled, and it is certain that, as the tendency towards oligarchy became manifest in them, they included a steadily decreasing proportion of those whose work they claimed to regulate. Moreover, even of those whom they included, a steadily decreasing number retained any control over their policy.