Life in a Mediaeval City, Illustrated by York in the XVth Century — 04 - Chapter IV: Business Life
Galtres Forest and the Fish Pond, both royal property, helped to furnish the king's table with food.
From the royal Larder at York such foodstuffs as venison, game, and fish were despatched salted to wherever the King required them.
C. BUSINESS LIFE
Business, in one form or another, was the occupation of the majority of the citizens.
There were a few capitalist merchants, many traders, and thousands of employed workpeople, skilled and unskilled.
Such street names as Spurriergate, Fishergate, Girdlergate, Hosier Lane, and Colliergate would suggest that men in the same trade had their premises in the same quarter, possibly in the same street.
The English middle class, which had taken form in the fourteenth century, was well established in the fifteenth century, when it became so important as to be an appreciable factor in the national life.
The middle class arose through currency, the use of money to bring in more money by trading.
Trade became the monopoly of the middle class, the successful master-traders.
It was men of this class, the capitalist employers, the merchants and traders who were the mayors and aldermen, who ruled the city.
The exclusiveness, which was eminently characteristic of this class, appeared especially in their attitude towards national taxation and in that towards trade organisations.
With regard to taxation the towns persistently avoided the assessment of individual traders, who did not wish to disclose the amount of their wealth, by agreeing that the whole town should pay to the Exchequer a sum to be raised by the Mayor and Corporation.
The middle class achieved its aims politically by transformation from within.
Instead of making a direct assertive attack, these master-traders usually so developed their own interests within the established institutions (such as the guilds) that they ultimately gained their object quietly and shrewdly.
This class established itself against the King and the nobles on the one hand, and during the century in effective fashion against the workers on the other.
This appears in the more definite distinctions of class among the citizens that arose.
The masters had got the control of the guilds into their own power.
While maintaining the original outward appearance of the guilds as societies of men affected by the same interests in daily life, the employers had actually become a powerful vested class that ruled both city and guild life.
In the fifteenth century the workmen were founding fraternities of their own.
Memory of the Jews, the money-dealers of other times, survived if only from the harrowing stories of the various persecutions that had taken place all over England, and not least in York.
The Jews had been expelled from the country by Edward I. , with the encouragement of the Church, in 1290, partly for economic, partly for religious reasons.
Their supplanters, the Italian bankers, whom Edward favoured, soon acquired from their trading an unpopularity equal to that of the Jews as traders.
The rise of the middle class had coincided with the release of money in coin from the hoards of the Jews, and from the coffers of the Knights Templars, whose order was abolished in 1312. The merchant and trading class, apart from the nobility and the Church, formed the bulk of the people of the nation.
They were the solid part of the nation, that paid taxes, that supplied clerks, monks, and priests, that liberally supported the Church, that kept the nation progressive and solvent by commercial undertakings.
The professions, as we use the term to-day, had not as yet attained sufficient importance for them to form a distinct class division.
There were a few capable physicians, but generally the practice of medicine was shared by the Church and the barber-surgeons.
Priests and officers of the Church had the privilege peculiar to the Church by which even a poor but intellectually capable man could rise to high office and become the social equal of nobles.
Architecture was practised by master-masons under the patronage of leading ecclesiastics and nobles.
Teaching was nearly all the work of the Church.
The lawyers, however, were already to be distinguished from those who gained profit by dealing in goods, for they made profit from transactions on paper, from managing the interests of others, from trading in their own acute mental powers.
The wool trade was by far the most extensive and flourishing trade of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
This was the trade that made England great commercially.
Wool was England's raw material and the source of most of her wealth.
The numerous monasteries had huge sheep-farms.
Edward III.
had encouraged foreign clothworkers to settle in England (in York, as in other places).
The first York craftsmen to be incorporated were the weavers, who received a charter from Henry II.
, in return for which they paid a tax to the King for the customs and liberties he granted them.
The weavers were the largest and wealthiest body of traders.
Guilds had developed from societies of masters and men engaged in the same trade, to the trade-guilds, which in the fourteenth century were trade corporations, the lower ranks of members being the workers, the higher ranks, including the office-holders, the richer merchants, the capitalist employers.
The ruling committees of the trade-guilds made regulations and generally governed their particular trades.
Despite the power of the guilds the municipal authority maintained its supremacy in civic government because it enforced the ordinances of the trades.
Moreover, disputes between the guilds themselves gave the city authority opportunities of increasing its power, of which it availed itself.
The system of serfdom, by which serfs were bound to a particular domain and owned by their overlord, had not yet ceased.
Nearly all the workmen of York, however, were freemen, _i.
e. _ they had full and complete citizenship.
The members of the councils of aldermen and councillors, the mayors and city officials, the members of the trade-guilds, were all freemen.
In the fifteenth century the wealthy and important employers and traders governed the guilds.
They were in the position and had the power to regulate the conduct in every way of their own trades.
Thus, rules were laid down as to the terms of admission of men to the practice of a trade; the government of the guild and the meetings of the members and ruling committees; the moral standard of the members in their work and trafficking; the payments of masters to workers; the prices of goods to be sold to the public or other traders; the rates of fines and the amount of confiscations inflicted on those who broke the rules of their guild; the terms on which strangers, English and foreign, were to be allowed to pursue their trade in the city; whether Sunday trading was to be permitted or not; the duties of the searchers; everything incident to the share of the guild in the city's production of pageant plays.
The question of the terms of the residence and trading of strangers received constant consideration.
The city had, in many respects, complete local autonomy and rules were made with regard to strangers who came to carry on their trades in the city.
From 1459 aliens had, by municipal law, to live in one place only, at the sign of the Bull in Coney Street, unless they received special permission from the Mayor to reside elsewhere.
The guilds were ruled by masters and wardens.
They had their various officials.
The searchers were officers appointed to observe that the rules of the trade were being carried out properly.
They took care that only authorised members pursued the trade of the guild of which they were the officers.
They vigilantly watched the conduct of the members, and it was their duty to take action in case of infringement of the rules and to bring offenders before the Mayor in his court.
The wealthy trading class all over the country did great and lasting work in founding grammar schools and building or rebuilding cathedrals and churches or parts of them.
There was a social side to the guilds.
This appeared in the public processions and the performances of plays, the morality and mystery plays of mediæval England.
There was also a strong religious side to the guilds.
The processions and plays were fundamentally religious.
The Church's festivals were recognised as holidays.
Much money was given and bequeathed for the foundation of chantries, which with their priests have their place also in the educational life of the city.
The merchants lived well.
They were rich from trade, and through the corporate guilds governed their own trades both legislatively and executively; the highest offices in civic life were theirs; they lived in houses as splendid as they cared to have them; they furnished their homes with quantities of silver plate, both for use and for ornament, for this was the most suitable outlet for superfluous wealth in days when modern facilities for investment did not exist; they wore clothes of fine material, richly trimmed; they were honoured citizens; they were earnest in religion and their benevolence to the Church is very remarkable.
They were forming a lesser aristocracy now that they were becoming owners of agricultural land as well as town property.
They had the benefits of wealth and comfort, while they were shrewd enough to avoid the penalties of advertised riches.
A typical instance of a successful merchant who rose to high positions was that of Sir Richard Yorke, who was Mayor of the staple of Calais and Lord Mayor of York in 1469 and 1482, and member of Parliament.
A window in St. John's Church, Micklegate, in commemoration of him is still to be seen.
A
shield bearing his arms (azure, saltire argent) appears in the glass;
another bears the arms of the Merchants of the Wool staple of Calais.
He was knighted by Henry VII.
when that king was in York in 1487. Masters took apprentices, who themselves generally became masters in their turn.
The conditions of apprenticeship were ruled in detail by the guilds.
When a workman became a skilled artisan he was called a journeyman,[3] that is, a man who earned a full day's pay for his work.
The legal hours of work were, from March to September, from 5 a. m.
to 7. 30 p. m.
, with half an hour for breakfast, and an hour and a half for dinner.
Saturday was universally a half-holiday.
There were 44 working weeks in a year and, consequently, a total of holidays and non-working times of eight weeks.
The burden of the very long hours was increased by the great physical exertion required from men who had to do much that is now done with the help of machinery.
The strain was not always unrecognised, for the Minster workmen were allowed a period of rest during the working day.
Some of the men engaged in the construction of the Minster were not York men.
The men employed there were by exception under ecclesiastical control.
They were not governed by any of the city trade guilds.
The master-mason was in charge of the whole of the building operations.
A list of trades in the city will suggest the kinds of business there were.
Some of the names will go far to explain some modern surnames.
_Wool Trades_:-- Mercers.
Tapiters and couchers (makers of tapestry, hangings, carpets, and coverlets).
Fullers.
Cardmakers.
Littesters (dyers, listers).
Shermen (shearmen).
Sledmen.
Dyers.
Weavers of woollen.
_Leather Trades_:-- Barkers (tanners).
Curriers.
_Building Trades_:-- Carpenters, wrights and joiners.
Plasterers.
Tilers.
Ironmongers.
Painters.
Glaziers.
_Food Trades_:-- Spicers (grocers--_Cf.
_ French _épicier_).
Cooks and waterleaders.
Baxters (bakers).
Vintners and taverners.
Bouchers (butchers).
Pulters (poultry-dealers).
Wine-drawers (carters of wine).
Sauce-makers.
[4] _Outfitting Trades_:-- Tailors.
Skinners (vestment makers).
Glovers.
Hosiers.
Hatmakers.
Capmakers.
Cordwainers (cobblers).
Saddlers.
Girdlers and nailers.
Spuriers and lorimers (makers of spurs, bits for bridles, etc. ).
_Armour Trades_:-- Armourers.
Smiths.
Bowers and flecchers (fletchers)--(makers of bows and arrows.
_Cf.
_ French _flèche_).
_Household Trades_:-- Coopers.
Pewterers and founders.
Chaundlers (makers of candles and wax images).
Potters.
Culters.
Bucklemakers, sheathers, bladesmiths.
Drapers.
Linenweavers.
_Miscellaneous Trades_:-- Goldsmiths.
Latoners (workers in the metal called latten).
Barber-surgeons (the mediæval medical practitioners).
Parchemeners and bookbinders.
Scriveners.
Writers of texts.
Ostlers (inn-holders).
Shipwrights.
Fishers and mariners.
Artist craftsmen of York supplied most of the churches of the north of England with their beautiful vessels, furniture, and ornaments.
In the workshops of the city, the metropolis of the north, there were worked and made embroidered vestments of all kinds, engraved chalices and vessels of silver and of gold, and carved work, including statues and images in stone, wood, and wax.
Bells were cast with beautiful lettering.
Brasses for grave-slabs were made bearing finely designed effigies.
Marketing, _i.
e. _ trading, was done mostly at the frequent and regular markets and at the fairs.
The right to hold a market or a fair was among the rights obtained by means of royal charters.
While markets were held once or several times a week or every day, fairs took place more rarely and at some of the most important and popular holiday seasons of the year, like Whitsuntide.
Fairs attracted a much larger public than the markets.
In the city there were markets in different places for different kinds of produce on certain days.
For instance, in the fifteenth century there was a market of live-stock at Toft Green every Friday.
The public squares, called Thursday Market and Pavement, were used as market-places.
Some markets were held in the streets.
Stalls were set up on which to exhibit the wares.
The ordinary foodstuffs and materials, just as in the open market held at the present time in the long and broad Parliament Street, formed of Thursday Market and Pavement and the space formerly occupied by a compact mass of old houses between the two originally distinct squares, were the things sold and bought at the mediæval markets: such as butter, meat, fish, linen, leather, corn, poultry, herbs.
Some, for example butchers' shops, kept open market every day.
Craftsmen worked goods at the premises of their merchant employers, which usually combined the latters' home and workshop; it was chiefly at the markets and fairs that these goods were sold.
Markets and fairs were controlled by the authority, whether municipal or archiepiscopal, that possessed the right of holding them.
Again, particular care was taken to ensure preference being obtained by the citizens over strangers.
The Lammas fairs were held under the authority of the Archbishops, who assumed the rule of the city and suburbs for the period of the fair.
The sheriffs' authority, in consequence, was suspended for that period.
The Archbishop, meanwhile, took tolls, and all cases that arose during the holding of the fair were judged by a court set up by him.
Fairs combined both trading and entertainments, for they were held on public holidays.
They fostered trade and served to provide a change from the ordinary routine of life.
It was perhaps at fairs that mediæval people were at their noisiest, for these were occasions when they gave themselves up unrestrainedly to merry-making, wild and clamorous.
Strolling players and the whole variety of mediæval entertainers set up their stands and booths, and amused the dense surging crowds that thronged the squares and streets.
York had a large overseas trade, especially in wool and manufactured cloth.
Some of its merchants owned property abroad.
Some went abroad and encountered perils by sea and perils from foreigners on the continent.
York traded with the Low Countries, where Veere (near Middleburg) and Dordrecht were ports that ships entered to discharge cargoes loaded on the York quays.
The trade between York and the Baltic ports was much greater than that done with them from any other English port.
Foreign sailors were to be seen in the streets of fifteenth-century York; foreign goods were handled in the city.
Wines were imported from France, fine cloths from Flemish towns, silks, velvet, and glass from Italy, while from the Baltic came timber and fur.
From the North sea came fish, much of which was brought to York from the coast by pack-horse across the moors.
The herring was an important article of food.
Money was measured in marks, shillings, and pence.
Of the current coins those in gold were called the angel, half-angel, the noble, half-noble, and quarter-noble; in silver there were the groat, half-groat, the penny, and half-penny.
The local branch of the royal Mint was housed within the Castle.
The building containing it was rebuilt in accordance with an order of 1423. The coins from this mint, which was at work during a large part of the fifteenth century, bore distinctive marks to show the place of minting.
Silver coins bore the inscription CIVITAS EBORACI.
The archbishops continued to use their privilege of coining money.
The following extracts, interesting for the substance and the literary form, are taken from the city records as published by the Surtees Society, vols.
120, 125, "The York Memorandum Book."
From the ordinances of the Pewterers, 1416. "Ordinaciones pewderariorum.
"Ceux sont les articles de lez pewderers de Lounders, les queux les genz de mesme lartifice dyceste citee Deverwyk ount agrees pur agarder et ordeiner entre eux par deux ans passez, devant Johan Moreton, maire."
Others of the earlier ordinances are in Anglo-French; many are in Latin.
Later ordinances are in English as in the case of those of the Carpenters, 1482, of which the following are the opening paragraphs:-- "In the honour of God, and for the weile of this full honourabill cite of York, and of the carpenters inhabit in the same at the special instaunce and praier of" ...
(here follows a list of names) ...
"carpenters of this full nobill cite, ar ordeyned the xxij^ti day of Novembyr in the xxij^ti yere of the reing of king Edward the iv.
in the secund tym of the mairalte of the ryght honorabill Richard York mair of the said cite, by the authorite of the holl counsell of the said full honourable cite, for ewyr to be kept thez ordinaunces filluyg, "Furst, for asmoch as here afore ther hath beyn of old tym a broderhode had and usyd emong the occupacion and craft above said, the wich of long continuaunce have usid, and as yit yerly usis to fynd of thar propir costes a lyght of diwyrs torchis in the fest of Corpus Christi day, or of the morn aftir, in the honour and worship of God and all saintes, and to go in procession with the same torchis with the blessid sacrament from the abbey foundyd of the Holy Trenite in Mykylgate in the said cite on to the cathedrall chyrch of Saint Petir in the same cite; and also have done and usyd diwyrs odir right full good and honourabill deides, as her aftir it shall more playnly apeir.
It is ordenyd and esyablyshid be the said mair, aldermen, and all the holl counsell of the said full nobill cite, be the consent and assent of all tham of the said occupacion in the said cite, that the said fraternite and bredirhode shalbe here after for ewyr kept and continend as it has beyn in tymis passid, and that every brodir thar of shall pay yerly for the sustentacion thar of vjd, that is to say, at every halff yer iij^d, providyng allway that every man of the said occupacion within the said cite shalnot be compellid ne boundeyn to be of the said fraternite ne brodirhood, ne noyn to be thar of bot soch as will of thar free will."
D. RELIGIOUS LIFE
