General History of Guilds

Guilds – Social, Religious, Merchant
Three general types of guilds have existed throughout recorded history. In this class, we will only deal with the specifically mercatorial guilds. By the way, it is a mistake to think of guilds as being organizations of craftsmen – their primary purpose is to protect the financial interests of the members, and so no distinction is made in period between the guilds for glassblowers and cloth-sellers, under the law. Venice even had a guild of construction supervisors! [Mackenney 10]

Ancient History
At least twelve neo-Babylonian apprenticeship contracts survive, dating from 629 to 495 B.C.E., covering the trades of baking, leatherworking, weaving, fulling, seal-cutting, retailing, and so on [ 99]. It is interesting to note that each of these crafts are represented by modern day guilds in London.

Roman guilds rose in importance, until finally being outlawed repeatedly during the height of Imperial Rome: all "colleges" were suppressed in 64 B.C.E. and reestablished in 58, at a time when aggressive political factions were organizing under the disguise of being social guilds (much as modern trade-sponsored Political Action Committees adopt names that misleadingly suggest they are grassroots organizations). Julius Caesar later dissolved all but the "ancient ones," – that is, newly-founded guilds were still regarded suspiciously, but legitimate & lasting guilds were seen to have a civic purpose. [ 13]

The Anglo-Saxon guild structure was extensive, giving us the word "guild"/"gild", which derived from the same root as "gold".

Guilds, and the master/apprentice relationship, survive today, both symbolically (Masons) and professionally (the IBEW has master electricians, journeymen, and apprenticeship terms). As a measure of their lasting significance, internet searches for information on guilds & apprentices often return mostly modern references.

What Guilds Provide

Fraternity: Simple social fellowship.

• Quarterly meetings of both Winchester and German guilds were referred to as "drinking the guild". [Gross 58]
  
• Masters and journeymen might be expected to pay their share of the annual feast, but the fee could be waived for poor members at the discretion of guild officers. [Mackenney 6]
  
• Guilds provided funerals and widow & orphan funds for poor members, and funded private hospitals (long-term disability health plans!).
  
• Social charity was an important factor as well: guilds improved their communities with poorhouses, alms, orphanages, public hospitals, colleges & universities, and so on. Some of these institutions remain active to this day.
  
• Guilds were expected, and required by law, to participate in ostentatious parade displays on important holy days. A proclamation regarding the Corpus Christi day festivities listed what various guilds would provide: "Taylors: Pilate, with his fellaship, and his lady and his knyghtes, well beseyne", etc. [Webb 54]

Equality: A representative form of self-government was necessary to ensure that the guild members as a whole were protected and aided by the guild. A guild dominated by a few wealthy or noble members would produce little long-term incentive for members to cooperate.

• Even though there were distinctions within the guild itself (Guild Master > Master of the Livery > Bachelor > Journeyman > Apprentice > Servant), guilds were a rare instance in medieval law where a person's born rank was (usually) explicitly disregarded. An exception is the über-political state of Venice, where, by the end of our period, mere apprentices could not rise to be masters of the guild: the nobility had seized management power back from the middle class [Mackenney ?].
  
• Guildsman were obligated to share all purchases with his brethren at cost, preventing the creation of a middleman merchant within the guild. [Gross 49] Furthermore, materials had to be purchased directly from the appropriate guilds; reselling and non-guild wholesaling was prohibited. [Mackenney 19]
  
• Guildsmen were restricted from working at night [Epstein 72] and on Sundays and holy days [Webb]. As the son of small business owners, I remember the stress of competition caused by larger businesses that hired employees to work late hours. These laws guaranteed took pressure off the smaller and poorer shop owners, with adequate rest & recreation for all. Remember also that night work required candles, which the poorest members could not afford to burn at both ends.
  
• Guilds could cooperatively fund foreign ventures, providing a sort of limited liability partnership (including naval insurance) to the individual members attempting risky overseas business. By virtue of the massed wealth of the organization, the burden was spread evenly throughout the membership.·
  

Liberty: Of the City, as in, the "liberty" or "freedom" to conduct business in one's local area, free from tariffs (which is essentially the definition of these two words in our period). More importantly, these provide a filter to distinguish between local, "free" merchants, and "foreign", taxed merchants, so that the latter can be taxed out of competition. (Note that "foreign" in these laws refers to anyone from outside the city!) Remember that these "freedoms" were not self-evident, but were earned privileges.

• Protection of trade secrets, product quality (and thereby public product confidence), import tariffs, restrictions on where, when, and for how long foreign merchants could sell within the city bounds, and so on were implemented.
  
• Eventually, these anti-competitive tendencies of guilds time and time again drew the wrath of people, parliaments, and kings, who protested, sued, and sometimes completely banned the guilds out of the perception that they artificially inflated prices to the detriment of the economy – "price fixing".
  
• The guild ensured that the guild's secrets would be passed along to the next generation, but likewise that they would be kept secret from others – under penalty of law. Thus, information as well as taxation was used to discourage foreign competition.
  
• Andrew Horn, London's City Chamberlain in 1275 , wrote, "there are three methods by which a man acquires the Freedom of the City; first that he be a man born in the City lawfully from his father, secondly, that he be an apprentice with a freeman for seven years and not less, and thirdly that a man may compound the Chamberlain for his freedom before the Mayor and other Aldermen." The latter implies purchase of the right; a fourth, modern method is by honorary bestowal.

The Guild
It is difficult to underestimate the power and importance of guilds in medieval life. Guilds dispensed funds to maintain and replace bridgeworks, roads, city walls, and other public works, all in their own business interests, yet even those who lived outside the cities (as most did), and thus outside the "influence" of the guild, benefitted from this. Amongst their membership, the guilds ruled with the authority of a government, capable of levying fines and trying, convicting, and imprisoning miscreants. Public charities, entertainments (in the form of mystery plays and pageants), hospitals, and schools were sponsored by guilds in displays that blurred self-interest, social consciousness, and one-up-manship of other guilds.

Guilds were licensed or warranted by the Crown. However, once sanctioned they developed great power. Edward the Black Prince wrote a letter to the Lord Mayor of London (chosen by and from the guildsman), courteously requesting as a favor that he appoint one of Edward's favorites to a civil post. It has been said that when the king was not in London, London knew no king but its Mayor.

It might seem that every single craftsman fit neatly into their own appropriate guild. Even wax chandlers and tallow chandlers had two separate guilds in London. However, guilds only existed in major metropolitan areas, where enough artisans existed to justify the organization. Admittedly, this is probably where one would find most skilled labor. Also, somewhat surprisingly one will find oddities such as embroiders as employees of the Grocer's Company of London, instead of the Broiderer's Company. Perhaps this implies that the guilds only controlled retail production; since the grocer's embroiderers were privately retained, they were free to work outside the embroiderer's guild.

Rank Within the Guild

1. Master of the Guild or Alderman (not to be confused with a master of the guild) was the executive head of the guild, selected from the governing body of wardens.
   
2. Wardens of the Guild were a small council elected by the Masters of the Livery to govern the guild. The Warden of the Purse (when such existed) obviously enjoyed power to rival the Master of the Guild. Typically, wardens served a one-year term.
   
3. Masters of the Livery were full members of the guild. They were required to purchase the guild livery (an expensive uniform, typically of two dark colors – for ostentation, not heraldry!), pay a yearly guild fee, and wear it to all guild functions. On the other hand, they were the only ones permitted to elect guild (and civic) leadership, vote on expenditures, and set guild fees
   
4. Bachelors were masters who had not earned the right to join the Masters of the Livery , and so avoided the costly livery & costlier annual fees. In some guilds, these might be Bachelors of the Livery, wearing cheaper livery.
   
5. Journeymen had "graduated" with all the skills necessary to conduct the trade. Journeymen were eligible to purchase or prove their right to "freedom of the city": the right to conduct business in their trade free of tariff, a license to practice (thus, anyone of this rank or higher was termed a "freeman"). They often had to ply their trade as wage workers under a master at relatively low wages (though higher than apprentices, certainly, who sometimes were "paid" only in education) [Epstein 110, 113], though it does not seem that they were permitted to open their own shops. Although they were paid daily (journey" = "day"), they were sometimes protected by a severance clause of as much as two months. [MacKenney 83] Another name for this class of non-elective members of the guild was the Yeomanry [Thornley 5].
   
6. Apprentices entered into a two-way service contract with a particular master for a fixed term. Masters paid hefty fees to the city for each apprentice. Masters might be further restricted in how many they might keep – three, in the case of the Grocer's Guild of London [Rees 116], one in other cases
   
7. Servants enjoyed much less protection before the law, and the guild (essentially a civic branch of government), than apprentices, but typically only served a one-year term. Hiring fairs once a year permitted them to leave an undesirable employer. (So-called "indentured servants" were often actually apprentices in practice.)
   
8. Slaves in Venice by law were typically prohibited from being performing work that is associated with apprentices, which prevents masters from "cheating" the apprenticeship fees, and the protective training requirements essential to long-term guild survival [Mackenney ?]. However, in ancient civilizations such as Rome and Mesopotamia, slaves were specifically apprenticed (such as to a bread baker, for a term of fifteen months [Weisberg 74]), in order to bring a needed skilled worker into a rich household. In these cases, the terms of the apprenticeship contract protected the slave not so much as a person & future guildmember, but as the valuable property of the signatory (the slave's owner).

Privileges of Guild Members
In addition to access to private hospitals, widow endowments, and so on, as mentioned above, members swore to abide by legally-binding decisions of the guild. Trade disputes, and some personal suits (especially those implicitly affecting the guild, such as professional slander), were first handled by being brought before the Masters of the Guild. Members all the way down to apprentices swore to uphold & obey such guild decisions, which could include appealing to the city government to imprison the defendant indefinitely (that is, until the defendant complied with the judgments of the guild).

Social Class
We sometimes develop an attitude that indentured apprenticeship was a loathesome bondage. This is perhaps formed partly from our American heritage, since prisoners in England were often shipped to America as indentured servants, as a form of punishment, and to be sure, this sort of indentured servitude was rough, with few of the privileges that apprentices in the home country enjoyed. However, there were medieval laws mandating labor (such as "Husbandry") for all able-bodied adults without visible support [ xi]. Apprentices were specifically exempted, as they clearly had employment. The Statute of Artificers (1562-3) of England goes further, requiring that any unmarried person under 30 years of age "having been brought up in any of the said Artes Craftes or Sciences... bee reteyned and shall not refuse to serve" when so asked by an artificer. Imprisonment was the punishment for refusal of employment. Again, apprentices were clearly exempt.

There were court cases, and heraldry cases (where suits of social rank were brought), that specifically determined that apprenticeship, or descent from someone who served as an apprentice, was no social stigma, which was significant in that more status-limited society. Perhaps to us the most important distinction was that the English guild masters were the first "common" citizens to have the right to vote for their national government since the Conquest.

Masters & Journeymen
The concept of a "master work" refers to a distinguishing example of a craftsman's skill, which is judged to qualify him for admission to the masters of his guild; however, not all guilds used such a standard, since guilds were generically mercantile in nature. A member of the moneychangers guild would have no such "master work" (5 shekels for only 12 schilling 2 pence!!!).

The advantages to achieving the rank of master, from journeyman, are manifold. Only masters could take apprentices, and it was illegal to use servants for certain types of skilled apprentice work; this limited the effective size of a journeyman's shop to his own produce. No one below the rank of master in London was allowed to vote in civic elections for Mayor, Aldermen of the City, nor Members of Parliament, nor take apprentices. Naturally, all such civic officials were chosen from amongst the masters themselves, and this is generally true of the Mayors of London even in modern times.

Masters vigorously used the guild system to pursue suits against one another, to maintain fair and equitable business standings, as well as to redress wrongs between members that today would appear in civil courts. One master was charged with refusing to wear the livery (presumably because he did not purchase it), and punished by recommendation to the courts that he be jailed until he complied. (He complied the next day.)

To be admitted as Freemen, members took an oath, swearing allegiance to the Crown, obedience to the Wardens, and to "keep secret all the lawful counsels of the said fellowship." [ 80]

The Indentured Contract

:::Click to see enlargement:::

An indentured contract is so called because it is written in duplicate on a single sheet, signed & sealed in duplicate, and then cut on a jagged or curved line (in heraldry, a zigzagging line of division is called "indented"), with copies given to both principal signatories. Another term for this is chirograph, and they served as medieval carbon copies. Most commonly, they were used to document land sales or feudal dispositions, but also were required for taking an apprentice, which signifies the two-way nature of duties & guarantees in the relationship – and the solemnity of the contract.

Signatories
If the apprentice was legally able to enter into contracts, the obvious signatories were the master and apprentice. More typically, they were the master and apprentice's parent, or legal guardian. As today, since the child had no ability to make contracts, the child's legal assent was given by the guardian.

Since apprenticeships typically forbade marriages during their terms, the issue of a woman entering into a contract she could not keep (when her husband assumed that privilege) did not seem to occur. Women have used this "marriage loophole" to escape contracts and debt in our period.

Orphans were wards of the parish until they were old enough to be apprenticed, which provided a tidy solution to all parties. The parish would be relieved of the financial burden, the master would gain an apprentice (free of any sticky familial ties), and the orphan would gain a trade. In some ways, this meant that the children of unwed mothers and poor families could actually substantially improve their social condition, when they were given up or abandoned at the church steps.

Legacy Legalese
Law in England is separated into written law and customary law, and in general law by custom has held precedence. An exemption to written law can be obtained by proving that some condition has existed out of time immemorial, or that it has been in effect for so long that it holds legitimacy out of tradition.

From the vantage point of someone under this legal system, it is clear that contracts must strongly support traditional rights and duties, or they may risk being invalidated by the merest evidence that "it wasn't done that way in the past!" While this greatly oversimplifies the English legal system, it is a quick frame of reference from which we can understand why apprenticeship contracts have changed so little over the centuries. Their wording seems almost as fixed as though given on stone tablets.
We can thus compare phrases from contracts over a broad range of time, and reasonably conclude that medieval contracts employed very similar wordings, first with the translated text of a thirteenth-century apprenticeship indenture:

"May twelfth, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord, 1248.
I, John of St. Maximin, lawyer, place with you John Cordier, money-changer, my son William Deodat, as an apprentice, so that you may teach and instruct him in the art of money-changing, for two complete and continuous years from this date. I promise by this agreement that I will take care that my son will serve his apprenticeship with you and that he will be faithful and honest in all his dealings for the whole of the said period, and that he will not depart from you nor take anything away from you. And if it should happen, which God forbid, that the said William should cause you any loss I promise to reimburse you by this agreement, believing in your unsupported word, etc. Also I promise to give by this agreement for the expenses of the said William food, that is bread and wine and meat, fourteen heminae of good grain and fifty solidi of the money now current in Marseilles, at your request, and to provide the said William with clothing and necessaries, pledging all my goods, etc.; renouncing the benefit of all laws, etc.

To this I, the said John Cordier, receive the said William as a pupil and promise you, the said John St. Maximin, to teach your son well and faithfully the business of money-changing, etc., pledging all my goods, etc.; renouncing the benefit of all laws, etc. Witnesses, etc."

Then, just after our period, we have the following example of the indenture of Isaac Bull, September 29, 1668:

"This indenture witnesseth that ISAAC BULL, sonne of Edward Bull of Donnington,County of Gloucestershire, by and with the consent of said father has put hisselfe Apprentice to and with William Williams of STOW-ON-THE-WOLD, aforesaid carpenter, and after the manner of an apprentice, with him to tarry and dwell from the day of date unto the full end and for the full term of seven years from thence next and immediately following and ensueing fully to be complete, ended during all which term the sayd ISAAC BULL apprentice to and with the sayd WILLIAM WILLIAMS as his master well and faithfuly shall serve, his secrets shall keepe, his commandments lawful and honest everywhere shall doe; fornication in the house of said master, nor without, he shall not commit; hurt or damage to his said master he shall not doe, nor consent to be done to the value of____pds. by the years or above, but according to his power shall lett and hinder or thereof his master inform.
Taverns or Alehouses of Custom, he shall not haunt or freequent unless it be about his master's business here to be done. All dyce, cards or any other unlawful games he shall not play.

The goods of his said master Inordinately he shall not waste, nor them to anybodie lend without his master's lycense or consent.

Matrimonie with any woman during or within the sayd terme he shall not contract nor espouse nor from his service neither by day or by night shall absent himself as well in words as In deeds, - and sayd William Williams unto the sayd ISAAC BULL his sayd apprentice in the craft trade, mystery or occupation of a carpenter the which he usith after the best manner that he can or may shall show, teach, instruct and inform or cause to be showed, taught, instructed and Informed as much as thereunto belongeth or in any way appertanyeth, and in due manner chastise him, finding unto his sayd servant meate, drink, washing and lodging to an apprentice of such a trade, craft, mystery or occupation.

In witness thereof the sayd master and servant of these presents, Indentures interchangeable, their hands and seals have set, the twentyninth day of September in the twentieth day of the raine of our Sovraine Lord, King Charles the Second, Anno Domine 1668

MEMORANDUM: It Is concluded and agreed that the sayd William Williams he is to give his sayd servant one X (axe) and a Squire and a handsaw, foure Nogars, a paire of chysells, a gauge and a hamer and sayd ISAAC BULL is to have at the five years end three pounds a year.

Sealed and delivered In the presence of JOHN BULL. Frances Gardiner.

Apprenticeship
As previously mentioned, apprentices stood to gain much from their relationship with the master. Despite this, there are complaints throughout history specifically protesting the behavior of bands of apprentices, and perhaps for this reason both civil and guild laws frequently forbade apprentices to be away from their master's residence after curfew. Many of these troubles have the tone of "townies versus gownies" conflicts; in essence, there were many parallels then (and now) between university students and these "trade school students". The most common term for a Roman guild was "collegium" [ 11], and, importantly, the very word "apprentice" is derived from the French "apprendre", "to learn".

Apprentices almost always resided in the master's house; this is mandated in many apprenticeship contracts. Their moral behavior was expected to be paramount, and became the direct responsibility of their master, at least according to the contracts, and in Florence at least it was forbidden to take apprentices who had a misdemeanor on their record [ 66].

Their clothing was regularly and strictly regulated, both in their indentures and by civil and guild law, to prohibit an excess of fineries (perhaps to limit their apparent social station). Occasionally the guild would specify a livery for apprentices. Many indentures required the master to provide clothing for the apprentice.

Sometimes the apprentice was guaranteed an annual stipend (which would probably be in practice a monthly allotment). A raise might be stipulated at a certain point, demonstrating the apprentice's ever-increasing value to the employer. Some contracts permitted the apprentice to "buy out" of his service one or two years early. This price would therefore represent the net worth of the apprentice's produce for two years, as an upfront sum.

Most contracts required the master to provide adequate and healthy food and drink to the apprentice, sometimes with meat portions stipulated. In some cases, however, the father of the apprentice agreed to deliver a set quantity of livestock and/or grain each year, to compensate for the child's meals. As mentioned, a stiff fee was collected by the guild when an apprentice was taken, usually paid by the master, but occasionally by the apprentice. Some contracts even required a yearly payment to the master, but most showed the flow of money, if any, traveling in the opposite direction (as even beginning apprentices could benefit the bottom line). Typically, the master was also required to provide the apprentice with the tools of his trade, upon completion of the term of service.

Apprentices would be expected to swear an oath to the guild, almost identical to the terms of the Freemen's oath mentioned above, with an additional onus to serve their Master according to the terms of their apprenticeship. Dancing, dicing, card playing, frequenting taverns, fornication, fencing, wearing lace, and stealing or wasting their masters' goods in excess of a set amount were commonly prohibited by indenture and guild law.

Laws prescribed the minimum age of an apprentice, sometimes at eight years [104], and sometimes the maximum age at which they could be constrained to serve. Faced with the problem of accurately gauging the age of young apprentices, one law stipulated the minimum apparent age of new apprentices (since birth certificates were unknown). Older apprentices might start their terms between 14 and 21 years of age, when they were able to enter into legal contracts on their own, and were generally then given stipends in recognition of their greater worth [104].

Terms of service ranged from 1 to 12 years or more, with 7 years being a typical length, and were either specified by law or by custom. The differences depended upon the nature of the trade, and not surprisingly varied throughout history [ 66-8, others], as shown in the following table.

The punishment for runaways was imprisonment, followed by an extension of their contractual servitude equal to their absence. Disobedient apprentices could be also remanded to the guild or courts for corporal punishment, of course.

Laws specifically prohibited beating apprentices (as opposed to servants!). Remember: You can't beat apprentices! (One assumes that a little light correction is still considered educational, and thus in the interests of the student...) Apprentices were allowed to bring suit in the guilds against their masters for violations of their contracts, and did so with mixed success, for lack of teaching [ 67], immoral influences (running a bawdy house) [ 399-433], and beatings. In a case in which apprentices complained of beatings, the decision notably ordered that the master's wife may henceforth not discipline the apprentices.

Women and Families
Women and girls were admitted into guilds as "masters", "mistresses", and "dames" (probably completely synonomous terms; the phrase "mistresses and dames of the guild" appears in one record, specifically guaranteeing them equal rights with male masters). I could find no instance of a guild prohibiting female members. These opportunities were not restricted to traditionally female trades such as weaving – a female master of the grocer's guild is mentioned in London's records – although they were apparently more common in those industries. Some women were admitted as journeymen and masters upon the death of their husband, admitting that a woman could either "absorb" the trade by working alongside him, or that she had in fact been a shadow partner all along. Furthermore, some women were admitted into the freedom entirely on their own doing, whether by learning the trade within their family business, or by purchase, having moved into the guild's city with the requisite skills. Wives and widows of members(who had not remarried) were specifically granted "equal claims upon the benevolance" of the fraternity of Grocers. [ 23-4]

The legal term for a woman with the ability to own property and enter into contracts, independent of hir husband's authority and responsibility, was "femme couvert", a "(self) covered woman". This stature was granted both to widows who could prove to the courts that they had the wherewithal to continue the family business, and to women who owned business or lands prior to entering into marriage (in which case the legal stature was a sort of pre-nuptial agreement, protecting her properties & incomes).

Bear in mind that the entire family of a free merchant was a de facto corps of servants and apprentices, where the spouse was potentially a co-master, or at the least a "personnel manager" in charge of the household chores, upkeep, meals, and general wellbeing of the staff. Children of guild masters were allowed to sue directly before the city government for freedom of the city, and to join the guilds as journeymen. However, they were also apprenticed, sometimes serving lighter terms (by a year or two) than those without such backgrounds [ 67]. To what degree this is a mark of social advantage, as opposed to an assumption that they enter the contract already partially trained, is not known.

Young girls were apprenticed to masters of either gender. In the case of male masters, they were probably supervised by the master's wife). Remember that a large number of apprentices were very young (as young as 7, certainly), and might still need nanny-like supervision. These outnumbered the male apprentices in traditionally female industries, although the majority of guild masters were still probably male. I have found only one reference so far of a male apprentice to a mistress (in the suit alleging the mistress was running a bawdy house, above).

In pointing out these somewhat surprising advantages, I do not wish to imply that the guild structure was some sort of greatly enlightened body, far ahead of its time, but rather that prejudice has often given way before simple practicality, and the guilds ultimately were opportunistic organizations. Less surprising is that the apprenticeship contracts of women might differ in that domestic duties were specifically mentioned [ 109], reducing the apprentice to a part-time scullery maid. This is not to say that male apprentices were not also expected to assist in domestic chores, but their contracts did not dwell on this matter.

Foreign Relations
There was a law in Venice requiring guilds to only admit apprentices who were native Venetians. In this case, being born to two Venetian citizens was sufficient to claim natural status, regardless of birthplace. [?]

Contrarily, a Dublin law prohibited guildsmen from taking Irish apprentices and servants! [26]

Trade laws in London restricted the business of foreign merchants in the following ways [385]:

• As mentioned, the primary restriction was by tariffs, which is what Freemen (guild members) of the city were free from.
  
• They were restricted to do business only within the confines of the walled section surrounding the docks. There were serious fines prescribed for a foreign merchant caught smuggling a wagonload of goods through the gates. Thus, some more convenient, and possibly better-appointed, shopping areas were off-limits to these merchants.
  
• They were restricted from living outside of this district, which further limited their ability to form financial relationships, and to illegally practice their trade outside the area.
  
• They were prohibited from staying in London any longer than 40 days.
  
• Partly to reinforce the limit of their stay, they were prohibited from purchasing furniture ("immoubles", literally from the French word for "immovable", implying the permanent nature of the purchase). If they were discovered owning such, their entire cargo on board ship could be forfeit!
  
• In some instances, the appropriate guild might be permitted first pick of all imported goods, purchasing at regulated prices, or the foreign merchants might be prohibited entirely from retail trade.

However, wherever there is trade protection, there will also be legal loopholes to the policy: Denmark merchants were granted full freedom of England at one time, and London entered into an agreement with four associated cities of Picardy, essentially extended full freedoms to all – a sort of "Most-Favored Nation status". [ 385]

Bibliography
Acts of Court of the Mercer's Company, 1453-1527.
[Cambridge University Press 1936]

Besant, Sir Walter. Mediæval London, (Vol 1) Historical & Social.
[Adam & Charles Black, London 1906]

Epstein, Steve A. Wage & Labor Guilds in Medieval Europe.
[University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London 1991]
ISBN 0-8078-1939-5

Green: "Apprentice Indenture of Joseph Green sicclesmith (1730)." (c)
Cutlers Company, Extracts from the Records of the Cutlers Company
(Cutlers' Company, Sheffield, 1972), Plate 77.

Gross, Charles. The Gild Merchant (Vol. I).
[Clarendon Press, Oxford 1890/1927/1964]

Karras, Ruth Mazo. The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1989, no. 2 (Winter) (University of Chicago, Chicago 1989)

Mackenney, Richard. Tradesmen and Traders, The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250 – c. 1650. [Croom Helm, London & Sydney 1987]

Rees, J. Aubrey. The Worshipful Company of Grocers, An Historical Retrospect, 1345-1923. [Chapman and Dodd, Ltd, London and Sydney 1923]

Staley, Edgcumbe. The Guilds of Florence. [Methuen & Co, London 1906]

Thornley, John Charles and George W. Hastings. The Guilds of the City of London and their Liverymen. [London & Counties Press Association, Ltd, London]

Weisberg, David B. Guild Structure and Political Allegiance in Early Achaemenid Mesopotamia. [Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1967]

Webb, John J. The Guilds of Dublin.
[Kennikat Press, Port Washington N. Y. & London 1929]
ISBM 8046-0806-7

Interesting Sites on the Web
Brew: "Draft Indenture of Apprenticeship - Thomas Brew to Messrs. Brookman."
[Link]

Churchyard: "Apprenticeship Indenture of Henry Churchyard," 1845, age 15
[Link]

Green: "Apprentice Indenture of Joseph Green sicclesmith (1730)." (c) - Cutlers Company, Extracts from the Records of the Cutlers Company (Cutlers' Company, Sheffield, 1972), Plate 77.
[Link]

Money-Changer: "Apprenticeship Agreements: To a Money-Changer," 1248. Medieval Sourcebook, (c) Paul Halsall, October 1998.
[Link]

Oxford: An anthology of Chancery English (1384-1462). "1455: Petition of the Citizens of Oxford."
[Link]

Somerset: "A Somerset Apprentice Indenture," 1756, age 7
[Link]

London Livery Companies
[Link]

Writ by the hond of maistr Emrys Eustace, dicit Broom.
Discere et docere.