Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
In London in 1392 craft guilds included: baker, fishmonger (cut
up and sold fish), fruiterer, brewer, butcher, bird dealer,
cook, apothecary (sold drugs he had ground up), cutler (made
knives and spoons), barber, tailor, shoemaker, glover (made
gloves), skinner (sold furs), girdler (made girdles of cloth to
wear around one's waist), pouchmaker, armorer, sheathmaker,
weaver, fuller (made cloth full and dense), painter, carpenter,
joiner (woodworker who finished interior woodwork such as doors
and made furniture), tiler, mason (cut stone for buildings),
smith (made metal tools for stonemasons and builders), tallow
chandler (made candles and sometimes soap from the fat and
grease the housewife supplied), wax chandler (made candles),
stirrup maker, spurrier (made spurs), and hosteler (innkeeper).
However, the merchant guilds of the goldsmiths, vintners (sold
wine), mercers (sold cloth), grocers, and drapers (finished and
sold English cloth) were still strong. The goldsmiths, tailors,
skinners, and girdlers bought royal charters, which recognized
their power of self-government as a company and their power to
enforce their standards, perhaps throughout the country. Freemen
in one company could practice the trade of another company.
There were paint mills and saw mills replacing human labor. Women
who spent their days spinning with the new spinning wheel were
called "spinsters".
Many of the guilds bought sites on which they built a chapel,
which was later used as a secular meeting place. The guild
officers commonly included an alderman, stewards, a dean, and a
clerk, who were elected. The guild officers sat as a guild court
to determine discipline for offences such as false weights or
measures or false workmanship or work and decided trade disputes.
The brethren in guild fraternity were classified as masters,
journeymen, or apprentices. They were expected to contribute to
the support of the sick and impoverished in their fellowship.
Their code required social action such as ostracizing a man of
the craft who was living in adultery until he mended his ways.
The rules of the Company of Glovers were:
1. None but a freeman of the city shall make or sell gloves.
2. No glover may be admitted to the freedom of the city unless
with the assent of the wardens of the trade.
3. No one shall entice away the servant of another.
4. If a servant in the trade makes away with his master's
chattels to the value of 12d., the wardens shall make good the
loss; and if the servant refuses to be judged by the wardens, he
shall be taken before the mayor and aldermen.
5. No one may sell his goods by candle-light.
6. Any false work found shall be taken before the mayor and
aldermen by the wardens.
7. All things touching the trade within the city between those
who are not freemen shall be forfeited.
8. Journeymen shall be paid their present rate of wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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