Part 7 (2/2)

Under the incentive of the example of the monasteries, the great ladies recognized and frequently performed their full duty toward their dependants. The Countess of Richmond maintained a number of poor people within her own walls. In the sixteenth century, Lady Gresham left, by her will, tenements in the city, the rents of which were to be used for the poor. The Countess of Pembroke built an almshouse and procured for it a patent of corporation. These are but a few of many ill.u.s.trious examples of large charities which serve to brighten the pages of mediaeval history.

In the Middle Ages, charity was a personal obligation. With the elimination of personal service, charity came increasingly to be dispensed by voluntary a.s.sociations. Of such organizations may be instanced the Sisters of Charity and, in recent years, the various orders of deaconesses. For although charity has gone outside the bounds of the Church, its ministrations are directly traceable to the convents, and it yet finds its most appropriate relations and allies to be religion and the Church.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WOMEN OF THE INDUSTRIAL CLa.s.sES

The most remarkable fact of the twelfth century in England was the growth of the towns. As has been already observed in a previous chapter, the conquest of Britain by the Normans modified the insularity of the people and brought them into closer communication with the people of the continent. One of the most marked effects of this change was the introduction into the country of skilled Norman craftsmen. The stimulating effect of the influx of these specialized workmen was in result not unlike the general awakening of trade and commerce throughout Europe, at a later time, as the result of the Crusades.

The expansion of England's industry was also favored by the vigorous administrations of Henry I. and Henry II. Another contributive factor was the decline in power of the barons. Henry I. pitted the town against the castle in order to counterbalance the vast influence which was exerted by each. Henry's policy of limiting the independence of the barons was furthered by the introduction of scutage, by which the king was enabled to call to his aid mercenary troops and did not have to rely wholly upon the feudal forces. Then, too, the a.s.size of Arms restored the national militia to its former importance. Such, in brief, were the const.i.tutional measures by which the towns were advantaged and their position as related to the castles in a sense reversed. The liberty of the latter became increasingly curtailed, while that of the former was correspondingly augmented.

The town and the castle, however, were not antagonistic, the interests of the former being furthered by the protection of the latter. The monastery, also, aided the town by attracting trade. There was little difference in conditions of life between the town and the country; both engaged in agriculture as well as in trade, and both were governed by a royal officer, or, it might be, by some lord's steward, while, of course, the houses were somewhat more cl.u.s.tered in the town than in the country, and the town possessed the merchant guild. It is impossible to trace guilds to their origin, although Brentano seeks to fix England as their birthplace. This is possible, however, only by narrowing the definition of a guild to fit the English type.

The earliest unmistakable mention of the merchant guild is at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. Under Henry I., grants of merchant guilds appear in royal town charters, and are frequently met with during succeeding reigns. By such charters the original voluntary a.s.sociations became exclusive bodies, to which trade was confined. The retail trade of the town was restricted to members of the guild individually, while the trade coming to the town was shared by them all collectively. The burgesses generally found it to their interest to become members of the guild, and all townsmen of importance were traders. Ecclesiastics and women might also be members of the guild, but they were, of course, debarred from becoming burgesses.

The exclusive tendencies which the merchant guild developed made it really an oligarchy, and so there grew up in the towns an ever increasing population that did not share the guild privileges. As the town and its trade developed, the complexity of trade regulations made it a convenience to have guilds with specialized functions, to which the merchant guild might deputize its powers. It was quite natural, too, that men working at the same trade, and having social and neighborhood a.s.sociation, should desire to have a guild which would represent their distinctive interests. Thus the craft guild arose, not in antagonism to the merchant guild, but as a special agent of it.

So, in the reign of Henry I., there came about the a.s.sociations of the weavers, cordwainers, and fullers. By the end of the fourteenth century craft guilds were numerous, and in some places the merchant guild was superseded by them. In their composition the guilds were made up of masters, journeymen, and apprentices, from whom were elected the officers and a.s.sistances. Women were members of these craft guilds, although they do not appear to have taken part in the business administration. ”The charter of the Drapers speaks of both brethren and sistren, and the list of members, as given on the occasions of 'cessments' shows women-members, both wives of corn-brethren, independent tradeswomen, and widows of deceased brothers.”

The relation of the women to some of the guilds seems to have been largely a social one. Thus, we read in the rules of the Calendar Guild, a religious fraternity, that the wives of guild members had gone to such extremes in their entertainment of the guild as to cause it to be stipulated that no woman should spend in excess of a certain specified sum for hospitality toward the guilds; for these guilds were formed for various purposes besides trade, and were in the nature of friendly societies. In addition to their commercial side, they were ”a.s.sociations for mutual help and social and religious intercourse amongst the people.” The proportion of women in the members.h.i.+p was always large. In her introduction to _English Guilds_, Miss Toulmin Smith says that ”scarcely five out of five hundred were not formed equally of men and women.... Even where the affairs were managed by a company of priests, women were admitted as lay members, and they had many of the same duties and claims upon the guilds as the men.”

Women's a.s.sociation with the guild was not a merely nominal one, for they shared in all of its privileges and contributed to all of its funds, although the payments asked of them were sometimes smaller. The female as well as the male members had a right to wear the livery of the guild. Women were engaged in trade and even in manufacture, and so had direct interest in the craft guilds, aside from that which they would naturally feel through the relations thereto of their husbands and brothers. In the work of his trade a member was always allowed to employ his wife, his children, and his maid, for the whole household of the guild brother belonged to the guild. In later times this led to the degeneration of the guilds into mere family monopolies.

The fraternal feature of the craft guild reminds one of the same features of the benevolent orders of the present time. If a member of the guild, male or female, became impoverished through mishap, they were cared for, and, if need arose, were buried; dowerless daughters were provided with marriage portions, or, in case they wished to enter the religious life, they were provided with the means to do so. Nor must we overlook the large influence which the guilds exerted on the side of morality, attaching, as they did, the greatest importance to the moral character of their members.

The great Drapers Company embraced in its members.h.i.+p many women who trained apprentices and carried on business, as did the male members.

The rules of the company provided that ”every brother or sister of the fellows.h.i.+p taking an apprentice shall present him to the wardens, and shall pay 13/4.” The craft guilds exerted an admirable influence in the raising of woman to the same plane of respect as that held by men.

The equality which was accorded them in these a.s.sociations amounted to a recognition of their intellectual and business capabilities as being of the same order as those of the men. The respect which was shown them is ill.u.s.trated by a provision of the same company to which we have just referred. It was ordered that when a ”sister” died she should be interred with fullest honors; the best pall was to be thrown over her coffin, and the fraternity were to follow her to the grave ”with every respectful ceremony equally as the men.” On the death of a male member of a guild, his widow was privileged to carry on his trade as one of the guild; and if a woman married a man of the same trade who did not have the freedom of the guild, he acquired it by virtue of the marriage; but should a woman marry a man of another trade, she was thereby excluded from her guild connection. Such were the relations of woman to the guilds. But Brentano notes an exception to the rule that a widow who married again a man of the same trade conferred the freedom of the guild upon him: ”The wife of a poulterer may carry on the said mystery after the death of her husband, quite as freely as if her sire were alive; and if she marries a man not of the mystery, and wishes to carry it on, she must buy the (right of carrying on the) mystery in the above described manner; as she would be obliged to buy the mystery, if her husband was of the mystery and had not yet bought it; for the husband is not in the dominion of the wife, but the wife is in the dominion of the husband.”

The democratic nature of the guilds tended to lessen cla.s.s distinctions and to bring about a true fellows.h.i.+p on the plane of equality. The a.s.sociations, as has been said, provided for their members with loving care, and followed them with love to the grave: ”the ordinances as to this last act breathed the same spirit of equality among her sons on which all her regulations were founded, and which const.i.tuted her strength.” In cases of insolvency at death, the funerals of poor members were to be respected equally with those of the rich. ”The honor paid to the dead was also a.s.sociated with the duty of benevolence;” thus, for instance, in the statutes of the fullers of Lincoln, it is said: ”When any of the brethren and sistren die, the rest shall give a halfpenny each to buy bread to be given to the poor, for the soul's sake of the dead.” The Grocers Company admitted women after marriage to members.h.i.+p in their fraternity, and they ”enter and are looked upon as of the fraternity for ever, and are a.s.sisted and made as one of us; and after the death of the husband, the widow shall come to the dinner and pay 40d. if she is able.”

In the fourteenth century it was by no means unusual for women, even though they were married, to carry on successfully large commercial enterprises in their own name and by their individual effort. In the _Liber Albus of London_, which was compiled in the fourteenth century, there occurs an ordinance relating to this subject: ”and where a woman _coverte de baron_ follows craft within the said city by herself apart, with which the husband in no way intermeddles, such woman shall be bound as a single woman as to all that concerns her said craft.

And if the husband and wife are impleaded in such case, the wife shall plead as a single woman in the Court of Record, and shall have her law and other advantages by way of plea just as a single woman. And if she is condemned, she shall be committed to prison until she shall have made satisfaction; and neither the husband nor his goods shall in such case be charged or interfered with.” It will be seen from this that women were accorded wide liberty in the conduct of business and, whether married or single, preserved their independence of action and control of property. The right that woman enjoyed before the courts of being sued and of suing was, however, a negative one.

The distresses to which women were subjected by the peculiar form of liberty which they enjoyed is ill.u.s.trated by the following quotation from an enactment in the Statute of Laborers in the reign of Edward III: ”Every man and woman of our realm of England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able of body and within the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, not exercising any craft nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper land about whose tillage he may himself occupy, and serving any other, if he be in convenient service (his estate considered), be required to serve, he shall be bounden to serve him which so shall him require.... And if any such man or woman being so required to serve will not the same do,... he shall be committed to the next gaol, there to remain under strait keeping, till he find surety to serve in the form aforesaid.”

All of the oppressive enactments regulating the wages of laborers and fixing the maximum of the sum that they were at liberty to accept affected women equally with men. An enactment of Richard II. provided ”that no artificer, labourer, servant, nor victualler, man or woman, should travel out of the hundred, rape, or wapentake where he is dwelling, without a letter-patent under the King's seal, stating why he is wandering, and that the term for which he or she had been hired has been completed.” Otherwise the offender might be put in a pair of stocks, which was to be provided in every town.

The guild system, despite its att.i.tude toward women, was the beginning of the narrowing of her industrial sphere. Prior to the importation of skilled laborers in textile and other branches of industry, such activities were identified with the homes of the people, not merely in that the industry itself was conducted in them, but that the product was limited to the needs of the household, the demands of charity, and such surplus as was used in trade. The guild broadened the meaning of industry to meet the demands of a rising commercial system whose trade routes became clearly established and extended throughout Europe and into the East. So that, while the industry of the women artificers became limited in that many things which had largely occupied their hands became the settled occupations of men, the products which still depended mainly upon their industrial activity became much more widely dispersed, and made them factors in the developing industries to which England is so deeply indebted for her trade supremacy. With the decline of guilds, there was a return on a very large scale to the system of home industry, when every farmstead and rural cottage became a manufacturing centre. The development of the factory system of the eighteenth century, upon the introduction of improved machinery for manufacture, completely removed industry from the home and created the modern factory town.

It is not our purpose to do more than suggest the influence which the guilds exerted in bringing woman into the larger stream of English life by the definition of her legal status which her industrial consequence and activities made necessary. It has been already remarked that the statutes of the times made her personally responsible before the law as an industrial factor. In this way, woman became increasingly regarded as a social integer rather than as simply a domestic incident. This was a distinct gain in the end, however crude the conception at first. The complex questions of woman's social status are still largely centred about the question of her industrial place. The insistent claim of the s.e.x that they shall be regarded as worthy of a part in the world's work projects into the discussion of the place that she shall occupy many other questions concerning matters which are immediately involved. It is not too much to say that all of the issues which arose during the modern period, and together form the specifications of the platform of ”woman's rights,” find their beginning in this first responsible relation of woman to the industry of the nation. Society is established upon an economic basis, and so the problem of the duties and responsibilities of woman in a public way must be centred about industry. It will not do to criticise the crudeness of the early legislation regarding woman when she first stepped into the arena of a.s.sociated industry, and to remain oblivious to the fact that the question of her industrial status is no more satisfactorily determined after the lapse of centuries. It is true that the question during these centuries became greatly involved at times, as, for instance, at the period of the great industrial revolution; but, with all the aspects which the question a.s.sumes to-day and the problems which are related to it, the crux of the matter is the same as it was at the time of the rise of the guilds.

The guild ordinances took the view of woman as an industrial unit, without regard to her personal relations. If she became a merchant and a.s.sociated herself with the guild, she was under the same laws regarding financial responsibility as was any other member. The fact that she was a woman, or that she was married and had children, did not const.i.tute a plea in her behalf for different treatment from that accorded a guild brother. If a woman-merchant became a debtor, she had to answer in court as any other merchant, and ”an accyon of dette be mayntend agenst her, to be conceyved aft' the custom of the seid lite, w[^t] out nemyng her husband in the seid accyon.”

The legislation of the period generally recognized the equality of the s.e.xes in the matter of labor. An ordinance of Edward IV., made in the borough of Wells, provided that both male and female apprentices to burgesses should themselves become burgesses at the expiration of their term of service. Similar statutes relating to apprentices in London likewise made no distinction between boys and girls. The problems centring about woman's relation to industry not having arisen, the fact of her employment presented no serious difficulties.

When the proclamation of 1271, relating to the woollen industry, was issued, it permitted ”all workers of woolen cloths, male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands, to come to England to follow their craft.” Indeed, the women were less fettered than the men in their industrial avocations, for, while by the statute of 1363 the men were limited to the pursuit of one craft, women were left free in the matter.

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