The journeymen were treated with growing severity. Not only were they forbidden as heretofore to set up for themselves, but their condition was certainly worse in the seventeenth century than in the thirteenth. The working day, which averaged twelve hours, was prolonged to sixteen during the lighter months. Holidays, reduced in number by the Reformation, were in turn reduced by the Catholics. La Fontaine's cobbler, who worked on his own account, complained of M. le curé who De quelque nouveau saint charge toujours son prône. But the journeyman, who had no reason to dislike so many holidays; was not pleased to find their number decreasing in the following century. The increase in the nominal wages was not enough to compensate for the rise in the price of provisions and rent; the value of gold and silver had gone down considerably since the influx of precious metals which the New World had poured over Europe. More than this, at the very time when cheap labour was increasing through the employment of peasants, women, and children, the jealous persistence of the masters in barring entrance into the higher grade to those among their workmen who possessed the necessary capabilities made the price of hired labour fall still lower. _Compagnonnage_ acted as a check on these causes of depression, but it was quite insufficient, and was hampered in many ways. This ever-deepening separation between masters and journeymen was followed by separations between the masters themselves. In certain guilds they became divided into the _young_, _modern_, _old_, and _bachelor masters_--these last ex-officers,--each section possessing different rights. The officers abused their rights to visit, search, seize, and fine; the regulations were so difficult to carry out literally, that it was always possible to discover some weak point in them by means of which a rival could be annoyed. Money could also be made at his expense if the delinquent would and could pay to be let off. The officers thus created a monopoly within a monopoly--and, if we may judge by the enquiries and lawsuits to which it gave rise,[129] an extremely profitable monopoly. In 1684 the officers of the cloth-of-gold and silk workers were convicted of having taken £72 for authorizing a breach of the rules. It may well be imagined what a source of angry discontent were those breaches of trust, and it will be seen to what an extent the guild system had been discredited by the very persons whose mission it was to see it loyally carried out.