4. The formation of a Merchant Guild. 5. The rise of a City aristocracy who usurp the power, own the City land, impose taxes, and are insolent towards the craftsmen. 6. The revolt of the crafts against the aristocracy and their ultimate victory after a long struggle. 7. The creation of trade or craft companies, not guilds, solely for trade purposes, under ordinances approved by the Mayor. 8. The conquest of power by the new companies. 9. The complete subjection of the craftsmen for five hundred years to their own companies. PART II ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON CHAPTER I THE RELIGIOUS LIFE If churches and religious houses make up religion, then London of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries surely attained the highest point ever reached in religion. The Church was everywhere. In Appendices IV. and V. will be found a list of the Parish Churches and their patronage. The abbeys, priories, nunneries, and friaries contained a vast army of ecclesiastics from archbishop to Franciscan friar: hermits, anchorites, pardoners, limitours, somnours, church officers of all kinds, were everywhere in evidence. No street but reminded the citizens by the sight of a spire or a wall, that the Church was with him always, to rule his life and to shorten his period of purgatory, on the simple condition of his obedience. Religion endeavoured to rule the whole of society: religion claimed to control the whole conduct of politics and political economy: but the power of religion has never been equal to her ambition: religion could not put a stop to war, or to the violences and outrages of war. Had she been able to do so, the world would now be held and bound in chains and slavery. Yet it was well that there should be the Church to restrain men in some degree. She kept in her own hands, so far, all learning, all science, all the arts, all the professions. The forms, duties, and rules of the Church attended all men from infancy to the grave. At the bidding of the Church the whole nation, from the King downwards, renounced meat for a fourth part of the whole year. This fact alone marks the enormous power of the Church. For hundreds of years the Church preached respect for human life and self-restraint with more or less vigour, and with more or less success. Sometimes the Church has fallen upon evil times; her ecclesiastics have been ambitious, worldly, licentious, avaricious; but they have always been, as a whole, superior to the world around them. Thus it may be said that the Church might always have been better, but that the world was always worse. Let us, then, briefly examine into what was meant by the Religious Life of London in the fourteenth century.