were to be handed over to this one guild, and "all shall be as members having one head, one in council, one body strong and friendly." The way in which this statute was drawn shows clearly that the terms "citizen" and "guild-brother" were considered as identical. These statutes contained regulations with regard to the administration of the affairs of the town, its police, markets, and other matters of municipal interest. This appears to have been the period of transition from the older form of the Frith-guild, to the more general form of the local government of the towns. There is also evidence as to the confederation of guilds, not only on the Continent, but in Scotland, where the guilds of Edinburgh, Stirling, Berwick, and Roxburgh united into a general Scottish trade-guild. We have here a kind of prototype of the modern form of amalgamation" by trade societies, into a national union, with branches in every part of the United Kingdom.

§ 13. On the Continent they seem to have taken more essentially a political form than in England, as indeed appears to continue even to this day, for in Germany they participated in the town councils, and even in the confederacies of the German towns or Flemish Hanse. These Continental confederacies of the thirteenth century originated under similar circumstances to the guilds then existing in England: they were instituted in the same spirit, were founded on the same principles, and were governed by similar rules as the Frithguilds, with a corporate existence. They were strongest in the Rhenish towns, where for a time they stepped in to put a stop to club law, and enforced an entire system of law and order, with the authority of an empire. These guilds did not attempt to institute a code of laws, or they might have handed down a long succession of republics; they simply maintained the law as it existed, consolidating order and peace, until a stronger government took the place of the weak and insufficient one then and there existing. The statutes of these guilds were similar in their nature to those at Cambridge, the guild being but the enlarged family, whose object was to afford assistance, as one brother would to another, in all circumstances of life; a special clause in these ordinances ensured common and equal protection

to the wealthy and the poor, and to all sections, clerical, Christian, and Jew.

§ 14. The most complete in point of detail are the statutes of the Danish Frith-guilds, indicated in the following condensed outline. It is considered probable that these guilds were transplanted from England to Denmark under King Canute, about the middle of the eleventh century. These Danish guilds placed themselves under the special patronage of the three Royal Saints of the land, St. Canute the King, St. Canute the Duke, and St. Erich the King, and were called St. Canute's and St. Erich's guilds. The Government fostered and favoured them, as associations for the maintenance of law, order, and security of person and property. These guilds protected their members and avenged them; they atoned for their misdeeds, and prosecuted those who injured them. They rendered aid in distress, and performed services for the dead. The association was based upon the highest honour, purity of life and spotless reputation being the conditions of membership; each member was a pledge of honour for the other. So high was their character that in courts of law a less number of compurgators were required if they were guild-brothers.

§ 15. Although the merchant-guild consisted chiefly of merchants, craftsmen, as such, were not excluded, provided they possessed the full citizenship of the town, which consisted in the possession of estates situated within the territory of the town of a certain value. The separation into classes probably arose by degrees, for the craftsmen originally traded in the raw materials with which they worked; just as the London tailors, in the time of Ed. III., were the importers of the woollen cloth which they made up. With the increase of wealth and of population, there also came a greater division of labour; the richer carried on trade, the poorer became craftsmen. But a newer element was beginning to arise, destined to exert an influence for centuries yet to come.

§ 16. Admission to the town-guild was by means of a property qualification the possession of land within the territory of the town of a certain value; this qualification had the effect of excluding the poorer freemen, a class which of

necessity grew in numbers, if not in wealth, from the guild, which henceforth was constituted of "traders and merchants " only. The new element which was appearing was by the transition from traders and merchants to a class of men who were only admitted to the guild after they had "forsworn their trade for a year and a day." As in article 25 of the statutes of the Berwick-guild, if a butcher was to carry on trade in wool and hides he must forswear his axe; corn merchants must not be bakers. Alas! we find the same spirit still.

§ 17. When the craftsmen were excluded from the guild, they were first governed by it, and then oppressed. The older guilds were favourable to the poor and to those of low station; but a certain amount of independence having been obtained, the old spirit departed, and the privileges won were monopolised by the few more wealthy members. Whilst the battle of freedom was to be fought, the "citizens" were benignant towards the poor so long as they were ready to help; but the possession of power rendered them forgetful of past services, and they, in their turn, became insolent and intolerant. The old brotherly combination being less needed, as a means of resisting baronial influence, the spirit of the Frith-guild degenerated and at last vanished.

§ 18. The accumulation of riches helped to widen this everincreasing breach between the feelings and interests of the different classes; wealth acquired by trade was employed in the purchase of estates and lucrative privileges, which enabled the possessors to live in idleness, until at last it became the symbol of rank and honour, and those only were permitted to remain in the guild who carried on wholesale trade, and even this was becoming more and more restricted.

§ 19. These patricians, having now become the rulers, threw the chief burthen of the taxes upon the governed. The frequency with which these taxes were levied made them more and more oppressive; at the same time the income which the monopolies afforded, together with the corporation property and the revenues which it yielded, were employed for the private use of the ruling families, and in resisting the demands of the oppressed,

20. As the law was at this time in an imperfect state, and badly administered, chiefly by those interested in perpetuating the evils complained of, redress was almost entirely denied to the unprivileged. The worst oppressions, in consequence of the protection given by a noble, or rich man, by those who rendered service, or who paid assessments for this protection, were condoned, until it was feared lest a new kind of serfdom should arise, more to be dreaded than the older form. Out of this arose a deep hatred on the part of the governed against the oppressors, and the one idea which seems to have animated the craftsmen, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the entire abolition of a patrician class. This can scarcely cause surprise, and the feeling which prompted this idea can easily be understood, when all the evils of those bygone times are fully realised.

§ 21. These aspirations were aided and promoted by the degeneracy and mischievous conduct of the patricians themselves; in proportion as the principles of association among the trading classes grew strong, and were cemented with the brotherly love of the Frith-guild, and by the unity of interests which the poor inherit as well as the rich, so were they able to resist the wealthier burghers of the towns, and the contest thus initiated and fomented was fierce and prolonged. The more the interests of the wealthy differed from those of the poor, the closer were the confederacies of the weaker and poorer, and we find that, in the thirteenth century, the most violent struggles broke out between the craftsmen of the town, who were united in the most brotherly way into craft-guilds, and the patricians who formed the merchant-guilds, until towards the close of the fourteenth century, the victory remained almost everywhere on the side of the craftsmen.

§ 22. But during the contest severe penalties were often inflicted upon the craftsmen; for instance, at Magdeburg, in the year 1301, ten aldermen of the craft-guilds were burnt alive in the market-place; at Cologne, after the weavers had lost the "Weavers' Battle" against the ruling families, in 1371, thirtythree weavers were executed; and on the day following houses, churches, and monasteries were searched, all who were found

being murdered; and lastly, 1,800 of those left were exiled with their wives and children, and their hall demolished. The exiled found a home at Aix-la-Chapelle, where they established and extended their trade.

§ 23. Fierce as these contests had been between the patricians and the people, the latter were moderate and even generous in their victory. The idea for which they had fought was equality of political and social rights, and for justice; nor did they forget their guild vow, or abuse their power when they had won the battle. Notwithstanding their hatred of their oppressors and the cruelties of the tyrants when in power, the townsmen did not seek to embody violence in their laws, or to wipe off old scores by retaliating upon those who had formerly been their enemies, or even to exclude them from their fair share in the government. Hence there arose mixed governments consisting of patricians and merchants, a majority of one vote being often left with the former. Thus education and rank found their place in the government of the towns, side by side with traders and workers. In some places, however, the craftsmen compelled the patricians to enter their fraternities, if they wished to take part in the government of the towns; but the great and powerful soon obtained such paramount influence, that new laws had to be made which provided that the "small folk" should form one half of the council of the craft-guild. In the long run, however, the craftsmen did not remain at the head of the town, but the principle for which they contended, and by their efforts had obtained, namely, political equality, was to some extent maintained.

§ 24. In England these contests and changes in the constitution of the towns took place about the same period of time. The ordinance of the citizens of London, in the time of Ed. II., that no person, whether inhabitant of the City or otherwise, should be admitted to the freedom of the City unless he were a member of one of the trades, or mysteries, shows clearly the then preponderance of the craftsmen. The completion of their triumph may be seen in the following account: "In 49 Ed. III. an enactment passed the whole assembled commonalty of the city by which the right of election of all city