An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France,[72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. By the rules of the craft he was required to cherish the boy ‘beneath his roof, at his board and at his hearth.’ If he did his duty, in fact, the master treated the apprentice as his own sons and thrashed him as heartily. The apprentice frequently returned the compliment by making him his father-in-law. Shortly before the expiration of his apprenticeship the young craftsman was examined by a board of _jurés_, and was called upon to give a practical exhibition of his skill. If he succeeded in satisfying them that he could fashion a proper doublet or bake a good loaf of bread, he was allowed to call himself a workman, to practise his trade, and to take his share in the management and the benefits of his guild. Those benefits often included comprehensive schemes of charity and mutual aid. The widows and indigent members of a corporation were provided for by funds to which all had contributed their quota. The standard of efficiency was maintained not only by the vigilance of the jurés, who examined each finished article before it was offered for sale, not only by the fear of a fine which might be inflicted for defective work, but also by the pride and sense of honour fostered in each individual craftsman. It was lowered on the other hand by the excessive conservatism of the guilds, who forbade any underselling or departure from customary models, insisted on a minute and absurd division of labour, condemned all inventions, and nipped all developments in the bud. Such, briefly, was the constitution of the famous mediæval guilds, such were their faults and excellences. The record of these Cathedral windows helps us to realise their importance in the history of Chartres, and also enables us to imagine the state and the character of the old town’s trade. In spite of the exactions and taxes levied by bishop and count, chapter, monastery and viscount, the merchants of Chartres flourished mightily in the thirteenth century, and the fairs of the town held during the four feasts of Our Lady rivalled in importance even those of Brie and Champagne. Chartres was one of the seventeen towns in France where the trades were separate and distinct, and each trade had its statutes regulated and enforced by jurés in the manner I have sketched. She owed her commercial activity to the gatherings of pilgrims at the shrine of Notre-Dame, and when these gatherings ceased her trade drooped and dwindled away till once more, as in the Merovingian days, it was confined to traffic in wool and corn.