history 10

HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY

CHAPTER X

THE GUILD SYSTEM

by H.L. HAYWOOD

IN some form or other the guild, like the poor, has been

always with us - always, at least, since human society

became somewhat more complex than it was when all men

of a tribe were engaged in a single common pursuit, as in

hunting or farming. Stripped to its essentials, a guild is an

association entered into voluntarily by its members for

mutual support and assistance in a particular enterprise or

set of enterprises: In ordinary speech the guild is

distinguished from the cult in that it is formed for utilitarian

purposes, whereas the cult is intended to promote exercises

of religion and worship. Yet there is no sharp line of

cleavage between the two, since their objectives frequently

shade into one another. Medieval Operative Masonry

partook of both characteristics, so intertwined that it would

be a hopeless task to undertake to separate them. This was

not unusual or peculiar to Masonry, but was so frequent in

the Middle Ages as to be regarded as commonplace.

In the simplest forms of society the principal tie between

individuals is the bond of blood relationship. If a man is

prosperous, he shares his prosperity with needy kinsmen; if

he is in distress, they succor him; if he is slain, they avenge

him; if he is subject to fine or pecuniary liability, they ransom

him. But, as clans grow large and their interests multiply,

individuals are necessarily thrown into new alignments.

Some of them become hunters, some farmers, some

soldiers, some fishers, some artisans, some merchants.

Those engaged in a particular calling discover they have

common interests which they alone can promote as against

all the rest of the community. Unless they can unite and

formulate certain principles for the conduct of their business,

they will suffer from ruinous competition among themselves,

to say nothing of that which may be offered by casual

poachers upon premises they would like to regard as their

own.

The economic thrust and pressure which draw them together

in the first place continue afterwards to force them into closer

association. The mere fact of their segregation in an especial

unit serves to divide them further and further from other

units. The bonds of consanguinity become weakened, but

the guild bond becomes stronger and ever stronger until at

last the guild itself has taken over most of the protective

obIigations which once belonged to the clan. Generally

speaking, this process tends to become retarded in rural

communities and accelerated in cities. The reasons .therefor

are not far to seek. The relative simplicity and homogeneity

of agricultural life naturally preserve the sense of family

responsibility, but the complexity of urban and industrial life

tends to break it down, thus forcing the individual to seek

something else in its place. Guilds may be expected to

become more numerous and more important in proportion as

urban development assumes a larger place in the affairs of

nation or people.

A characteristic phenomenon of European civilization in the

Middle Ages was the development of the city. The feudal

system which rose upon the ruins of the Roman empire was

essentially rural. The land was parceled out among military

chieftains, each of which established his castle where

conditions served and then made it as impregnable to

assault as he could. The land and all the people round about

belonged to him. Tenants of the various holdings were his

vassals, obliged to perform prescribed services for their

tenures, to furnish him with fighting men, to enroll

themselves under his banner when he sounded a call to

arms. Over the common people he possessed the absolute

power of life, torture and death. Serfs and villeins had to

swink and sweat that he and his might possess whatever

luxuries their fancies craved; they could be put to death for

leaving their abodes without his permission. He in turn

acknowledged allegiance to his king, performing homage for

his holdings and rendering military service, except when, as

often happened, he felt himself strong enough to resist the

king on the field of battle.

The development of cities gave to this system its death blow.

The basis of prosperity in the city was not tenure of the land

but industry and commerce. Great aggregations of men

became impatient of feudal restraints and constantly

struggled for the right of local self-government. Originally

under the government of dukes or bishops, they fought for

and ultimately obtained their freedom, with government in

the hands of their own Councils and Boards of Aldermen.

Ambitious monarchs found in these free cities means for

resisting the arrogance of rural barons. In return for

successive grants of immunity they submitted to taxation,

and, as they had more resources with which to meet levies

of men and money, it paid the ruler to do business with them

upon reasonably moderate terms. By a natural process of

political evolution this everywhere gave rise to a sense of

nationalism, which had been impossible under the narrow

parochial restraints of the feudal system, and against that

nationalism the feudal system pounded itself into

destruction.

In the upbuilding of those cities, the guild system played a

leading part, and continued to play it until, by its own

arrogance and prosperity, it in turn became a brake upon

progress and had to be cast aside. Its own beginnings were

humble - so humble, in fact, that it is now impossible to trace

them with exactitude. It is not even possible to determine the

exact origin of the word, guild, itself. Blackstone in his

Commentaries said that a gild - the alternative spelling

frequently used and perhaps etymologically more correct

than the modern form - signified among the Anglo-Saxons a

fraternity which derived its name from a verb meaning "to

pay," since every member was expected to pay his share of

the common expense. Others derive it from a Scandinavian

word, gilde, a festival in honor of the god, Odin; others from

the Breton word gouil, meaning a holiday or feast; others

from the Welsh word gmylad, also meaning a festival.

By whatever name it was called, whether guild, company,

corporation or mystery in England, gild in North Germany,

metier in France or arte in Italy, it was an association of

persons engaged in the same art, trade or commercial

pursuit. There are those who believe it first appeared in Italy

as a logical successor to the Roman collegium. This

hypothesis is not implausible, yet it ought not to be trusted

too far, since such societies are a wholly spontaneous

development springing from economic, social or political

necessity. The guild in all human probability arose

simultaneously in more than one country. The Lombard

cities of Northern Italy offered a highly favorable opportunity

and in them guilds undoubtedly did enjoy greater prosperity

than in any other part of the Europe of that day. But they

were common in France at the time of Charlemagne in the

eighth century; they had appeared in England in the seventh,

something of the kind was known in Scandinavia in the sixth

century and by the time of the Norman conquest of Britain

they were scattered over all of Northern and Western

Europe.

The first allusion to them in England is found in the laws of

Ine, a West Saxon monarch who died in the year 726. From

the context it is apparent that they were then developments

of the frith - from an AngloSaxon word meaning peace - guild

previously established by the Vikings as organizations to

suppress piracy. English frith guilds were associations of

neighboring householders who gave security to one another

for the preservation of the peace. That is, they were

voluntary alliances formed by responsible citizens, for mutual

support and protection in a country which was wild and

lawless, much as Vigilance Committees were later formed in

the American Far West. Indeed the famous Texas Rangers

of our own Southwest came into being in much the same

manner and for much the same purpose.

All that has ever been necessary in order to form a society of

this kind has been the existence of a general need and the

presence of a few like-minded persons. For that matter, the

need may be in itself negligible. Human beings are naturally

imitative. In modern times, if a merchant hits upon a novel

means of advertising, his wares, almost instantly a dozen

variants and adaptations of the idea will appear. If a song

writer attains popular success with a ditty about blackbirds,

there will a deluge of songs about redbirds, blue-birds, and

birds of every other hue and description. A secret society like

Freemasonry, once it becomes generally admired, presages

the formation of innumerable societies modeled on the same

general plan.

So it was with the guilds of the medieval period. The only

test required of such a system was that it work. Once

convinced of that, men could be expected form themselves

into all sorts of similar societies land for every conceivable

purpose. Such was in fact the case. There were guilds of

masons, of carpenters, of tailors, of weavers; guilds of

householders, of merchants, of mechanics, of priests; there

were political guilds, professional guilds, religious guilds,

convivial guilds, burial guilds, guilds for social, ethical, moral,

religious, and philosophical instruction.

Most important of all, in their influence upon the history of

their times, were the merchant guilds. These organizations

became in time not only the bulwarks of trade in their

respective communities but also the common carriers, the

bankers, the promoters of industry and commerce for all of

Europe. In a time of general unrest and turbulence, they

exercised a steadying influence, and in their portage of

articles of luxury as well as of necessity they became useful

agents in the development of culture and civilization.

It should be remembered that in the towns sharp social

distinctions were drawn between bondsmen and freemen.

None was admitted to these guilds who was not free. For

convenience, men in the same branch of trade had their

places of business - and usually their homes - in the same

quarter of the city. It was necessary that they have some

voice in the government of that section. They had a common

meeting place, usually called a guildhall, to which they

repaired for social relaxation as well as for business. They

watched strictly over the conduct of their workmen and

apprentices.

The principal merchant guilds developed somewhat after the

fashion of what in modern times is called a "vertical trust."

That is, they enjoyed a monopoly of trade in their local

territories and this carried with it the control of all its

incidental branches, from the production of raw material to

the sale or exchange of the finished product. They could say

how much of a given commodity could be thrown upon the

market, how much must be withheld; they supervised

importations and exportations, not infrequently using their

own ships. They established standards of quality, arbitrarily

fixed prices and wages, and strictly controlled trade

practices. They might even say what kind of clothing it was

suitable for the various grades of employees to wear and, if

necessary, procure legislation to enforce such sumptuary

decrees. The members enjoyed peculiar privileges and

immunities; the societies had their respective coats of arms

and appropriate places

in the official life of the municipality. In time they ceased to

become known as guilds and were called corporations and

companies. It is not unjustifiably extravagant to say that

these associations and their successors, the great trading

companies of England, laid the foundation upon which the

commercial supremacy of the British Empire was erected;

that to their influence more than to any other was due that

zeal in exploration and adventure which ultimately enabled

Britain to boast of being Mistress of the Seas and which

certainly made her mistress of colonies and plantations in

every continent and upon a thousand islands.

In itself, however, the vertical trust arrangement had fatal

weaknesses and was not destined to perpetuation. The

merchant guild, in its quest of monopoly, proceeded upon

the theory that a whole industry should be brought under

single control. Weavers, dyers, tinkers shipwrights smiths in

gold and silver, masons, carpenters, blacksmiths and

workers at numerous other crafts soon found their own

interests seriously compromised by such a scheme. Now

these workmen had their own guilds, some of them older

than those of the merchants; where they did not, they

hastened to create them. The concern of each little society

was not an industry but the immediate sub-division of that

industry which constituted its own industrial province. The

tendency of the merchant guild was toward unification; that

of the craft guild was divisive. The merchant guild might, for

instance, look upon the leather trade as one business, but

the workers became specialists as they increased in skill,

tanners, harness makers, saddle makers, bridle makers,

shoemakers, boot makers, and each of these separate

branches supplied justification for the organization of a

separate society.

Economic conflict between these two organizational systems

was natural and inevitable. No person well read in English

history could have much doubt which of the two would

ultimately triumph. The Briton is naturally jealous for his

personal rights and is remarkably obstinate and persistent in

his defense of them. His home is his castle, his private

affairs are nobody else's concern, and his business is his

own, to be administered by himself or the agents he may

appoint. To this day British industry has resisted that

tendency to centralization which is so distinctive of American

industrial development, and remains divided up among

relatively small manufacturing establishments which in the

United States ordinarily would be amalgamated into unified

concerns.

By uniting themselves into small groups, the workers were

able to preserve craft identity. They exercised the sharpest

supervision over the admission of new members, taking care

that accessions of competent workmen should not be so

numerous as to lessen the chances of remunerative

employment for those already belonging. By limiting the

number of apprentices a master workman could engage,

they not only insured a somewhat fixed membership,

proportionally based upon the available work, but they also

guaranteed to the apprentice himself closer personal

attention than he could hope to receive if there were too

many beginners to share the master's time. His term of

service was a long one - usually running for about seven

years. During that time he was fed, bedded and clothed at

the master's expense and often in the master's household. In

his private conduct he was subject to the master's discipline,

and this sometimes extended even to chastening with the

rod. In return, the master undertook to teach him his trade so

that, at the expiration of his apprenticeship, he would be able

as a journeyman to earn his livelihood. If he then continued

to improve in skill, he might hope to become a master

workman, with the right to take contracts, hire journeymen

and enroll his own apprentices.

This system brought about the closest imaginable relations

among members of the same craft guild. The guild was itself

a kind of family affair - so much so, indeed, that in many

societies only the sons of men engaged in the craft could

become apprentices. Its members dwelt in proximity to one

another; in their social enjoyments they played together and

ate together in a close and exclusive intercourse. They not

infrequently dressed alike, at least to the extent of wearing

some peculiar and distinctive article of apparel by which they

could be identified. They were pledged to assist one another

in sickness or distress an to succor one another in danger.

Some of the guilds maintained schools for the instruction of

the children of the members; remnants of such schools exist

in England to this very day, Corpus Christi at Cambridge

being a conspicuous example. They thus stood separate and

apart from the rest of the community.

In a very real sense, the craft guild came to stand as

custodian of the personal welfare of its members. It is a

mistake not infrequently made to confuse these bodies with

the trade unions of today. For one thing, the trade union is

an organization of employees formed to enable them to

bargain collectively with their employers and to resist

employer encroachments upon employee rights and

privileges. The craft guild included both employers and

employees. It was frequently governed not by the employees

but by the master workmen who were also, and incidentally,

employers. These were known commonly as wardens and

there were usually two and sometimes four of them. In some

cases they were selected at annual assemblies of the craft

to serve for a year. In others they were appointed by the

municipal authorities. It was their business to approve or

reject work turned out by the members, to see that labor was

honestly and satisfactorily performed, that the craftsmen

received their proper pay and that the personal conduct of

the members did not violate that salutary discipline which

was intended to maintain the craft in good repute with the

world at large.

Methods of formal induction into membership varied greatly.

In some cases it was by oath administered in some form of

ceremonial initiation. In others it was merely by placing the

name on the society's rolls. Some of the guilds possessed

secret and semi-religious rites; almost all of them were

religious in so far as they acknowledged allegiance to

Church, adopted particular saints as their patrons, and made

a practice of attending divine services on designated days.

Some of them admitted women and some did not. Although

there were distinctions of apprentices from journeymen, or

fellows of the craft, and distinctions of fellows from masters,

these as a rule applied only to the personal consequence of

each individual among his brethren.

Among the mason guilds there actually were but two classes

- on the one side apprentices and on the other Fellows and

Masters - since a Fellow might at any time become a Master

by the simple process of taking a contract to perform a given

work and hiring other Fellows to help him perform it. He

might take apprentices provided he could furnish sufficient

employment for a required number of enrolled workmen. In

voting at assemblies, the ballot of the Fellow ordinarily

counted for as much as did that of the Master. In general it

may be said that an apprentice might become a Fellow upon

the completion of his indentured term of service and upon

proper evidence of his skill as a workman, presented to the

wardens of the guild and by them accepted as satisfactory.

In trades requiring a high degree of manual dexterity, as in

carving, painting, or engraving, he might be required to

submit a masterpiece. In France and Germany it was often

required of an apprentice that, after his freedom from

indentures, he spend a year or more traveling among the

guilds of communities remote from his home, earning a living

by his art and improving in knowledge and experience.

In addition to the merchant and craft guilds there were

innumerable religious and social guilds of all kinds. Some

were powerful institutions in their own right and some were

mere auxiliary bodies. Nearly every large church of the

Middle Ages had many such auxiliaries, each dedicated to

the service of a particular saint and consecrated to the

performance of some special task. Some of these were

purely mystical and devoted to exercises of meditation and

prayer; others were practical and looked after the

management of parish houses and schools, the support of

indigent priests, the maintenance of church property, the

collection of funds for charitable and missionary purposes.

Some became separate and semi-ecclesiastical entities, with

their own chapels and chaplains, colleges, asylums. A few

became identified with the production of religious dramas

and mystery plays. The mystery play, of course, had nothing

to do with a "mystery" in the modern sense. The word

mystery as thus used was derived from the Middle English

word misterie, meaning a trade or employment, which in turn

was derived through the French from the Latin word

ministerium. A mystery play was therefore a play which

illustrated some practice or doctrine of a given trade. Many

medieval guilds performed them and it is not at all

improbable that the Drama of the Third Degree of modern

Freemasonry is a survival of this custom.

It is evident that with so many societies flourishing thus side

by side the guilds must have been profoundly, influenced by

contact with one another. Although; each might preserve its

separate identity, a considerable cross pollination of ideas

must have taken place. Indeed this is not a matter of mere

inference. There are records of great pageants in England

which were managed much after the fashion of the Mardi

Gras parade in New Orleans, the Veiled Prophet parade in

St. Louis, the Priests of Pallas parade in Kansas City and

kindred affairs in modern America. Places in the line of

march were assigned to various important craft guilds. Each

prepared a tableau which was staged upon a cart or "float"

and which usually represented some episode from Biblical

literature. This arrangement in itself discloses a degree of

common understanding and purpose. Moreover it shows that

the craft guild and the strictly religious guild sometimes

overlapped in their functions, a matter of no little

significance.

In England the guild system reached its peak in the reign of

Edward III, or toward the close of the fourteenth century,

when some 40,000 religious and trade societies were listed.

They ranged in size from a handful of men to the 15,000

members of the Corpus Christi guild at York. But the system

contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Trade

and merchant guilds came first into conflict with one another

and then with the economic changes which ushered in the

modern era of trade and commerce. Religious guilds came

into conflict with modern theories of government. But the

principal trouble with the guild system was that it could not

stand prosperity. Originally poor and humble and with ideals

of service, it became rich and arrogant and lustful of power.

Then it awoke one morning to find it had outlived its

usefulness; awoke as the spoiled favorite of an Eastern

potentate sometimes awakes, to find one standing at her

bedside with a bowstring.

How the system and municipal government complemented

each other has already been indicated. The more important

guilds were corporations with definite privileges, prerogatives

and responsibilities. They contained the germ of the

municipal borough of more modern times, but care should be

taken to differentiate between their constitution as private

societies and the public functions which those societies

occasionally performed. Theoretically, at least, the function

of the guild in public affairs was to represent the interests of

its particular trade or set of trades. In return for this privilege

it agreed that the management of its business should be

conducted in the public interest. If the municipality might not

infringe upon the prerogatives of the guild, neither might the

guild or its members use those prerogatives to the

disadvantage of the public at large. Since the society

represented its trade, it had a right to say what individuals

might belong to that trade; individuals who belonged to no

trade therefore had no representation and were likely to find

themselves without citizenship. Not least important of the

guild's privileges was a local monopoly of its peculiar

business; membership in it was obligatory upon all persons

who would practice that business in that community. Since it

had the right of saying who should be admitted, excluding all

others, its power was tremendous. Sometimes it did not

hesitate to admit persons who were not in the trade at all -

honorary members they might be called. This custom of

"accepting" outsiders for their general standing in the

community brought into the guilds some of the outstanding

persons of medieval English history, including King Edward

III, King Henry IV, King Henry VI and King Henry VIII, but it

also introduced an element of discontent, as practical

workers observed the waxing power of these illustrious

patrons. It was probably in accordance with this custom that

the operative masons first began to "accept" non-masons.

As the larger societies gained in wealth and prestige, they

steadily usurped authority. They had helped to break down

the feudal system and strengthen the monarchy, but in time

they resisted and even challenged the authority of the

monarch himself. In so doing they were but bringing their

destruction nearer. Meanwhile their power was being

steadily undermined at home. In their increasing arrogance

they tended to break down the old democratic relationship

which bound all members, from apprentice to master, into

one society of friends and brothers. The masters developed

into an employing class and the fellows into a class of

workers by the day. As the gulf widened, the masters used

the machinery at hand for their own aggrandizement. To

resist them, the journeymen, forced into a new class

consciousness, began organizing guilds of their own. This

was bitterly opposed by the masters, who invoked the civil

law to stop the practice, but without effect. On the one hand

there was constant effort to encroach upon the rights of the

individual worker; on the other determined resistance to the

tyrannical methods of the employer. The struggle endured

for centuries, but the guild system, thus disunited, gradually

broke up and disappeared.

Long before this came to pass, however, a royal sword had

been unsheathed against the great religious guilds of

England. These bodies had become immensely rich and

powerful in the time of the Crusades and they possessed

many of the most desirable holdings. In the long and bitter

struggle between Henry VIII and the papacy, they were

almost unanimously on the side of the Church. Convinced

that he could not carry on his work of reformation until this

opposition had been destroyed, Henry struck with

characteristic vigor and effectiveness. He despoiled the

religious guilds of their temporal property, which he declared

forfeit to the Crown. He forbade other guilds to make gifts of

money to churches and finally, in 1547, the religious

societies were formally suppressed.

A system so extensive could not be wholly eradicated. It was

bound to leave many survivors which, under other names

and in other forms, continued to function. The religious guild

in modified guise has continued to the present day in both

the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches. The

merchant guild left its influence upon the later trading

companies of England. It is possible that trade unions and

friendly societies of the present owe something to the craft

guilds, although this possibility is more easily exaggerated

than demonstrated. But there is one conspicuous survival

out of the guild system, and that one is the institution of

modern Freemasonry.