The Mediaeval Gilds, Tramping Networks and Operative Trades:

COURTESY LODGEROOM INTERNATIONAL
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'Operative' derives from the latin 'operarii' for 'handicraftsman', while the original 'lodges', first referred to in England around AD1200, were site buildings for workmen to eat in, keep their tools in and for the conduct of their fraternal business.244 There is little doubt that the name 'free-mason' existed for a particular kind of operative stonemason, viz, one who worked with 'free stone' said to be favoured for figure carving, while others worked with 'rough' stone and were 'rough masons'.245 But the notion of a 'free' man able to practice a craft only because 'he' had attained 'his' free status was also common.

In general, it is believed that an artisan became 'free' to the trade when 'he' (usually but not always male) achieved 'master' status, which meant 'he' had passed through the intermediate 'degrees' and had completed a 'master piece.' The craft gild commonly comprised three classes of members - the masters, the journeymen and the apprentices, matching exactly the 3 'Craft' degrees of 'evolved' SF. The levels or degrees were not arbitrary. Cipola has observed:


Class and group conflicts played a fundamental part in determining who could and who could not form a guild...Within the guilds, a definite order of precedence faithfully reflected the distribution of power.

This Italian scholar acknowledged the range of functions guilds carried out but had no illusions about their political role:


All these functions should not be underestimated. But neither should one underestimate the fact that one of the fundamental aims of all guilds was to regulate and reduce competition among their own members...(In) any study of the level and structure of employment and wages in centuries preceding the eighteenth, guilds' actions must of necessity occupy a position of the first importance.246

Lipson came to the same conclusion:


Although wages and prices were often regulated by the municipality and subsequently by the state, the assessment of wages and the fixing of prices were also a common feature of gild activity.247

The SF 'in-house' literature seems most at error when it diminishes the 'benefit society' functions of mediaeval fraternalism. Lipson used these functions of the craft gild's natural enemy, the trading class, to make the observation:


Apart from its control of trade, the merchant gild served other functions which exhibit in a strong light the core of fraternalism inherent in the gild system.248

Lipson noted, as just one craft example among many, that after 1487 poor members of the Carpenters' Brotherhood were to have weekly: 'A reward of the common box of the craft after the discretion of the masters and wardens.' Earlier, in 1333, the carpenters had instituted a provision that


if any brother or sister fall into poverty by God's hand or in sickness...so that he may not keep himself, then shall he have of the brotherhood each week fourteenpence during this poverty, after he hath lain sick a fortnight.249

During his poverty the unfortunate brother was also to receive the livery clothing at the common cost, in order that he might not be put to shame in the presence of the guild assembly. Lipson quotes similar arrangements amongst the 'Taylors', the grocers, the white tawyers, the barber surgeons, the tanners, goldsmiths, weavers, etc, etc. This was no system of welfare without strings:


It was a common stipulation, therefore, that any one admitted to the gild should take oath to keep the ordnances of the craft, and disobedience would thus expose the offender to penalties in spiritual courts.250 [My emphasis]
Lipson concluded:


(In) the effort to provide a fair remuneration for the worker and to reconcile the conflicting claims of producer and consumer,...principles of industrial control and conceptions of wages and prices (were developed by the mediaeval craft gilds) to which we may perhaps one day return.251

Where argumentation between scholars continues over, for example, whether the qualifier 'craft' in front of 'gild' is necessary, at what date it becomes necessary to distinguish artisinal from 'merchant' guilds, and what qualification it actually introduces, differences often seem semantically-based. When it is possible to bring a range of resources to bear, some long-standing positions would seem untenable. The distinctions drawn earlier between town craft organisation and lodges outside town limits would appear to be unrealistic, as would the treatment of stonemasonry, or 'the building trades' as unique.

Ladders of 'degrees' have been dated to before the 10th century eg, seven ecclesiastical degrees from 'ostiary' up to that of bishop.252 In addition to acknowledgement as a 'made' apprentice, and as being 'free' on the trade, specific 'degrees' of skill and status were needed for attainment of the rank of 'master carpenter', 'master fishmonger', 'master felt-maker', and so on.253 SF researcher Speth has studied guilds or Companies of Free Carmen, Free Fishermen, Free Dredgers, Free Fishers, Free Watermen, Free Vintners, etc,254 and SF author (Bernard) Jones has commented:


many a craft that had been a 'mistery' to start with had become...a code or a system of mysteries and secrets, which everybody seeking to join it had solemnly to swear to keep inviolate...fraternities besides the masons had Deacons and Masters and Box Masters..And the Mason's mystery was not alone in veiling its moralisings in allegory and illustrating them with symbols drawn from its own craft.255

Gould noted that 'master-pieces' were required from 'Framework Knitters' as well as from masons256 Nevertheless, he, in particular, was anxious to deprecate suggestions that other crafts than the masons had their secret modes of recognition. It seems to me that one term he uses, 'squaremen', was obviously intended to cover trades which had the square as a working tool, and as later scholars have concluded, he seems wrong to deny that such craftsmen were on the same trajectory as stonemasons.257

Involvement of 'gentry' directly in a lodge or group of lodges, whatever the person's interest in or knowledge of building with stone, was likely at different times for different reasons.258 In other words, it's easy to see that the SF 'transition' involving 'speculatives' was no new or unique organisational device. After Edward III reconstituted and legitimated the trading fraternities by recognising their distinctive liveries259 and providing them with charters or letters patent, the King himself led a rush of non-operatives to join. Presumably meaning he was initiated in a mock-up manner, and given access to some ersatz secrets, it is recorded that he 'became' a Linen-Armourer. His successor Richard II became a brother of the same company and


the great, both clergy and laity, as well as principal citizens, dazzled with the splendour of such associates, hastened in both reigns to be enrolled as tradesmen in the fraternities.260

The records also remind us that a 'writer, politician or solicitor was (often) a member of the Needleworkers Company',


Daniel Defoe was a Butcher, Samuel Pepys a Clothworker, Dick Whittington a Mercer and William 111 a Grocer... while Her Majesty the (current) Queen is associated with the Drapers Company, and HRH the Prince of Wales with the Fishmongers.261

We are told that the Lodge of Free Gardeners at Haddington in Scotland had, from their Incorporation in 1676, accepted the admission of non-gardeners 'at a premium.'262

Haddington, for example, was a Scottish rural town with representatives of all the usual trades and crafts, nine of which, during the 16th and 17th centuries, sought, 'in common with their counterparts in other towns', official recognition as Incorporations from the Haddington Burgh Council in the form of a 'Seal of Cause' or 'Charter':


For such a relatively small Burgh it is perhaps surprising that no less than nine trades and crafts obtained Incorporation status...85%-95% of Scotland's population lived outside of the Burgh's at this time. The Gardeners, therefore, (who lived outside the Burgh) organised themselves as best they could and their ('Interjunctions for ye Fraternitie of the Gairdners of East Lothian') of 1676 suggests that they modelled their organisation on similar lines to other trades.263

Exploring even less usual territory, Le Roy Ladurie wrote of the nomadic sheep herders of (French) Montaillou:


Sometimes for a few seasons, when favoured by good fortune and well rewarded for his labours, Pierre Maury managed to be his own boss. He would then use various techniques: fraternal mutual aid, the hiring of paid shepherds or association with another employer...264

Elsewhere he referred to the 'total brotherhood between friends unlinked by blood' which was central to Occitan culture and which was 'institutionalized in the ritual forms of fraternity' recorded from the beginning of the 14th century.265

The idea of a fraternally-organised nomadic occupation is most intriguing, as the combination of travelling and brotherhood appears in a number of guises in this story. Already referred to is 'the search' at the heart of the chivalric tradition:


The legends of chivalry are the veiled alllegories of the eternal search for spiritual truth in a world of natural realities.

Brydon collected up the worlds of 'bards, troubadors, meistersingers and strolling gypsy players' to spread the net of his generalisation to cover townspeople who might never have left their walled security:


Having spent many years in the study of the old Artisan Guilds, Fraternities and Mystical Associations of Europe, it has always appeared to me that at the heart of these institutions, there lay a ritual symbolism involving a search for something remote, hidden or lost.266

The place of symbolic searching is clear enough in the SF rituals, while actual tramping networks would appear to provide a map of the links between the 'ancient craft organisation' and both speculative freemasonry and the 'modern' labour movement.267 The Webbs observed 'the inevitable passage of (a) far-extending tramping society into a national Trade Union', but gave the phenomenon only limited significance,268 as did Hobsbawm.269

Beginning his corrective, Leeson quoted a 14th century rule of the fullers of Lincoln:


If a stranger to the city comes in, he may upon giving a penny to the wax, work among the bretheren and sisteren and his name shall be written on their roll.270

The 'wax' was for a candle to be lit to the trade's saint. A century and a half later, among the shoemakers of Norwich, the 'stranger' was still charged a penny. A 'stranger' was someone not born within the town or village; he might also be called a 'forren', someone 'from outside', an 'uplander' or an 'alien.' Rules for the entertainment of the stranger varied according to trade, place and circumstances. Tilers who came to Lincoln were told simply: 'Join the gild or leave the city.' Hatters coming to London were quizzed about any debts they might have left in their last employ and coppersmiths admitted strangers who promised to abide by the rules, which included paying into the common fund to care for the 'poor' or unemployed of the craft.

Leeson drew the links between the tramping networks and the constant struggles within trades for control over hours and conditions of employment, including the 'right to search', ie, to look for and confiscate unauthorised work, and over the number of 'masters'.271 The tramping system was more than just an ever-present safety-valve. It was a defining part of the context whether the movement of tradespeople around the country resulted from a need for work, for relief from poverty or to escape unwelcome attentions from the authorities. Linking 'inns of call' where the lodge brothers welcomed, checked and sent on if necessary the tramping 'stranger', the network ultimately became the basis of 'modern' benefit society organisation. Prior to that the 'tramp' card or 'ticket' and the benefits it provided were integral parts of an evolving code of mutuality based on working people's living circumstances.

In 1995 an SF scholar advanced an 'origins' theory based on later versions of these same networks:


In 17th century England, where political and religious factors, as well as outright villainy, might spell danger for a traveller in a strange place, anything which could guarantee him a safe lodging and freedom from betrayal to enemies or rogues would be a great boon. That was precisely what the operative masons could offer to (non-operatives) possessed of their recognition secrets..272

What in mediaeval times were known as 'pilgrims' were a major reason for the English mediaeval 'hospice' being established in certain towns and in certain locations within those towns.273 Ludlow, categorisable as an historian of 'friendly societies' and arguing in 1872 that sufficient vestiges of the 'thousands of fraternities' existing in the 14th century survived to provide a transition to modern 'friendly societies'274, agreed the 'charity' of these 'mutual aid societies' during this 'first European industrial revolution' helped to finance hospitals and chapels as well as the splendid cathedrals.275 The Crusaders were 'wandering brothers', their routes to Jerusalem and back home 'tramping networks'. This material provides much-argued connections between the Crusade's Templar Orders and 'modern' SF, while less controversially, one historian has emphasised the fraternal societies' pageants and banquets along with their charity work:


Among the latter were almshouses, free schools, hospitals, scholarships, lectureships, (and) fellowships.276

'Tramping' was not an exception, an aberration. It was part of an integrated world of gild-activities. Howell summarised the objects of 11th century guilds as 'the support and nursing of the infirm guild-brothers, the burial of the dead, the performance of religious services and the saying of prayers for their souls.' The requirements of a common meal before the annual celebration of 'their' patron saint and alms for the poor were set out, along with 'mutual care of the brothers...by money contributions in case of death, in support of those who went on a journey and of those who suffered loss by fire.' An oath sworn on 'their' saint's relics affirmed 'faithful brotherhood towards each other, not only in religious matters but in secular matters also.' Howell concluded:


To effect these objects a complete organisation existed, and a system of regulations was framed for the purpose of carrying them out...The essence of the manifold regulations in these three guild-statutes appears to have been the brotherly banding together, into close unions, of man and man, sometimes even established on and fortified by an oath, for the purpose of mutual help and support. This essential characteristic is found in all the guilds of every age from those first known to us...to their descendants of the present day, the modern trade unions.277 [My emphasis]

As towns grew in size, new trades and increasing numbers of 'foreigners' threatened to overwhelm the local men, a situation which had to be regulated, most obviously through the numbers allowed to work each craft. Thus, over time, what I will generalise as 'lodge' processes, integrating religious ceremonial with business affairs, had to be made increasingly formal and concerned with disciplined adherence to custom:


The life and soul of the craft-guild was its meetings, which brought all the guild-brothers together every week, month or quarter. For the sake of greater solemnity, these were opened with certain ceremonies; the craft-box, containing the charters of the guild, the statutes, the money, and other valuable articles, having several locks, the keys of which were kept by different officers, was opened on such occasions with much solemnity, all present having to uncover their heads.278

Howell, as did Brentano279, took the time to look at the results provided by a range of specialist researchers. Beside others already referred to, such as Unwin280, serious guild historians whose work rarely appears in SF or LH writing include Eden, Herbert281, Thrupp282, and William Kahl283. Howell might have gone on paraphrasing Brentano's account:


These meetings possessed all the rights which they themselves had not chosen to delegate. They elected the Presidents (originally called Aldermen, afterwards Masters and Wardens).284

Regular, periodic payments were a late development but the moral character of an artisan was a paramount consideration at all times:


The admission of an apprentice was an act of special solemnity corresponding to the important legal consequences it involved. As it was the begining of a kind of Novitiate to citizenship, it generally took place in the Town Hall, in the presence of town authorities, or in solemn meeting of the Craft-Gild...At the expiration of his apprenticeship the lad (then a man) was received into the Gild again with special forms and solemnities, and became thereby a citizen of the town.

Brentano's perspective, as did Cipolla's, encompassed mainland European countries such as France and Germany, information from which sources have been almost entirely dismissed by British SF scholars on what appear to be unreasonable grounds.

In particular, Brentano's approach included much useful detail on the role of inns and innkeepers, of 'travelling payments' and 'travelling networks':


Every Gild and every journeyman's fraternity kept a 'black list'. In this, as well as in the testimonials of travelling journeymen, the names of the reviled were entered, so that the warning against them spread throughout the whole country.285

Disputes when they occurred, were rarely about wages as such, they were about status, privileges and customs, as these embodied payments, demarcation markers, and the like. It was not surprising that when machinery, cross-border trade and entrepreneurial negotiations began to appear that workmen and many employers fought their own trade's Company to have 'the old ways' upheld and sought assistance from municipal authorities, in the first instance, then the law courts.

A number of authors refer to the work of yet-another comparatively unknown author, Toulmin Smith, who collected and annotated over 500 gild-statutes produced in the English Parliament in the years 1388-9 in response to two writs - one addresed to 'The Masters and Wardens of all Gilds and Brotherhoods', the other to 'The Masters and Wardens and Overlookers of all the Mysteries and Crafts.' Ludlow's conclusion was that the available evidence showed conclusively that the gilds of the 14th century 'under forms to a great extent religious' could fulfil the purposes


on the one hand of a modern friendly society, in providing for sickness, old age and burial; on the other hand of a modern trade society, by rules tending to fix the hours of labour and to regulate competition, combined with such friendly purposes as before mentioned.286 (My emphasis)

No doubt there were many deviations from the principle but in theory oaths of secrecy about anything that occurred in 'lodge' were required of apprentices, and master masons are known to have sworn not to pass on 'trade secrets' to their assistants. In 1355 in York the 'Orders for Masons and Workmen' began with:


The first and second masons of the same, and the carpenters, shall make oath that they cause the ancient customs underwritten to be faithfully observed.287