With the ideas of the present day, this refusal to allow the craftsmen to combine seems tyrannical. We must go back, however, to the ideas of the thirteenth century. The assumption, the theory, the belief, that the working classes ought to have any voice in the management of their own affairs, if it lingered anywhere in London of the thirteenth century, was a survival of the Folk Mote, the Citizens’ Parliament, of Paul’s Cross. The Folk Mote still continued; it was used for party purposes; it had no real power, but it kept alive the memory of power. It ceased to be held after the thirteenth century; it died out when a Court of Common Council was formed, and it is significant that when the old Folk Parliament ceased to meet we hear no more of the revolt of working men against the companies. What a citizen like Whittington thought and said was something like this: “In a great city the governing class should be wealthy, enlightened, and instructed. It should know the ports of trade, the demand for imports, the markets for exports, the limits of production, the figures which are needed to arrive at wages and retail price. It must also, in an age of artificial courtesy, understand good manners, and not be afraid to stand before kings. As for the men of the other class, who have no knowledge, save of a single trade, it is best for the State that they should be under rule and governance.” And to the best of his ability, Whittington, who was a stern Magistrate yet a just man, did keep the people under rule and governance. I believe that the mediæval masters were, as a rule, and up to their lights, benevolent; they did look after their people; they gave them wages which allowed a higher standard of living than was possible for any other working men in the world; they looked after the old, and they brought up the young. For myself, I cannot but think that had the craftsmen then obtained their desire, the result would have been disastrous to the fortunes of the City. London would have become another Ghent or Bruges; it would be, now, a city of deserted trade. The time was not yet ready for the rule of the people by the people. They wanted education, experience, suffering, before they were able to rule. As yet they understood nothing, absolutely nothing, about liberties; they wanted nothing but the control over their own work. I think, in a word, that Whittington’s views were right for a man of Whittington’s time. CHAPTER VI THE CENTURY OF UNCERTAIN STEPS