Further, the barons, wishing above all things at this juncture to conciliate the citizens, desired that they would put in writing anything they might desire in augmentation of their liberties, and undertook, if the thing were reasonable, to bring it before the King and Council. Then this Mayor called upon the craftsmen and ordered them to make such provisions as should be to their own advantage. “Accordingly, after this, from day to day, individuals of every craft of themselves made new statutes and provisions, or rather such as may be called ‘abominations’—and that solely to their own advantage, and to the intolerable loss of all merchants coming to London and visiting the faire of England and the exceeding injury of all persons in the realm.” This was the first trades union. Their rules were drawn up by the working men themselves. The memory of the old frith guilds had by this time perished, but there were fraternities, or religious associations, which would help them to some knowledge of the rules which they should lay down. Such as they were, the Chronicler tells us, they were not carried into effect. In 1263-64 Thomas FitzThomas was again elected Mayor; but the King refused to receive him, being “for many reasons greatly moved to anger against the City.” In the same year began the Barons’ War, in which the Londoners played a conspicuous, if not a noble, part. They reduced the castle of Rochester; they destroyed the palace at Isleworth, belonging to Richard, the King’s brother; they murdered five hundred Jews; they pillaged the property of the foreign merchants; and at the battle of Lewes they ran away. Peace being made in the following year, Henry, now a prisoner, was made to hold a Court in St. Paul’s, where the Mayor, again Thomas FitzThomas, and the Aldermen swore fealty to him. A marginal note of the Chronicle completes the history of this oath. “Then those who were present might see a thing wondrous and unheard of in this age: for the most wretched Mayor, when taking the oath, dared to utter words so rash as these, saying unto his lordship the King in presence of the people, ‘My lord, so long as unto us you will be a good lord and King, we will be faithful and duteous unto you.’” The Mayor was four hundred years before his time.