In the chapter on City Factions it is shown that, a hundred years before the date of their ordinances (1348), Thomas FitzThomas, the Mayor, had allowed the trades to draw up statutes for themselves, and had given them Charters which the following Mayors disallowed. These statutes, we are told in contemporary authority, had caused “intolerable loss” to merchants frequenting London. It is reasonable to conclude that they were drawn up by, and in the interests of, the craftsmen, and not by those who were able to take a wider view of trade than protection and high wages. I have drawn up a list of the trades whose ordinances, as given by Riley, were submitted to the Mayor and Aldermen in the fourteenth century, with the dates of the regulations so drafted, and the subsequent date of the corporation as claimed by the present companies. This document, like others in Riley’s _Memorials_, is most interesting as marking a definite stage. The trades have now learned, after a great deal of quarrelling, vague jealousies and suspicions, to formulate what they call the “points” of their craft. That their careful and judicious regulations, such as those I have quoted, were drawn up by the leading men of the craft, the masters and employers, cannot be doubted. They are not the work of ignorant men: they bear the impress of shrewd and experienced employers, whose conclusions and recommendations were drawn up for them by clerks skilled in the arrangement. What is it that the Pewterers ask? 1. That the Mayor and Aldermen will consider the points of their trade, and that they will provide redress for faults. Observe that they have no authority of their own such as they afterwards obtained as a company. 2. An assay of the material. 3. Admission, by apprenticeship, “according to the usage of the City.” 4. Protection against “foreigners,” _i.e._ persons not freemen of the City. 5. No secret profits by making vessels of false alloy for export to country fairs and markets. 6. The responsibility of every workman for his own work. 7. Penalties for damaging a master’s goods and for infringing the rules of the craft. [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO THE GRANGERISED EDITION OF BRAYLEY’S _LONDON AND MIDDLESEX_ In the Guildhall Library, showing the Arms of the twelve principal City Companies.]