One of the surprise film hits of last year was called The Dig, a dramatisation of the discovery just before the Second World War of a Saxon burial ship in Sutton Hoo.
The Sutton Hoo find was the largest treasure trove ever discovered but it was not Tutankhamen and the original excavator, played by Ralph Fiennes, was not Indiana Jones.
However the larger significance of the find was highlighted when a coin is discovered and Fiennes identifies it as Saxon, which suggests that the Dark Ages weren’t as dark as everyone thought and not everyone was painting themselves blue and slaughtering everyone else all the time.
It proved that there was trade throughout the country hundreds of years earlier than thought and the centre for those Grocers and Taylors and Mercers – if not Information Technologists and Tax Advisers – was then, as 1,000 years later, probably in London.
By contrast the aristocracy and in many respects the monarchy constituted a land-grabbing gangsterism that according to historian Tom Hollander* evolved in the tenth century through the new technology of impregnable castles.
Zoom (sic) forward a couple of hundred years and London, in particular, boasts a sophisticated echelon of merchants and artisans banding together to lay down rules and carve out their own slivers of security if not paradise, many of which are still around today in the form of well hidden halls.
Nevertheless two questions that often sit quietly at the back of the class and remain ignored in illustrious Livery histories are why they needed this structure in the first place – guilds already provided much of the fraternity and shared information trades needed. Second, why did they need an expensive club house when, by and large they only got together once a year in the early days. Both questions are addressed by Caroline Barron in her scholarly and detailed analysis of medieval London*.
There had been guilds for centuries. People who worked in the same trade tended to live in the same area and attend the same church as many City street names suggest – Bread Street, Fish Street. There were logical legal reasons why those loose relationships would become more formal – “A particular threat to the livelihood of the group or some perceived advantage in association or a brush with royal tax collectors or judges” (Barron).
In the 12th and 13th centuries those pressures escalated as London’s population rocketed to 100,000 leading to too many people and too little work. There were spats with rivals that led to new groups – in 1300 the burellers (cloth merchants) complained to the Mayor about prices charged by the weavers. There were also internal pressures – in the late 13th century the skinners banded together to hold down the wages charged by piece workers. And as ever, there were the dreaded foreigners who needed to be kept out.
At the time London was a gold-rush town if you could afford to get a toe hold. All you needed was the cash to buy the freedom of the City. The freedom was granted by the Aldermen who were nearly all from the Great Twelve – merchants. In 1312 the less powerful artisans won the right to control entrance of other members of their own profession and seven years later Edward II granted the Great Charter which literally set the seal on the way London was run for the next 250 years with the growing importance of apprenticeships and tying your future to one group or other being the way to make your fortune.
Sixty years later another event would send serious jitters through the authorities and lead to a further lurch towards official status. The Peasants Revolt in 1381 led to fears that several guilds or fraternities were hotbeds of rebellion. There was a wide-ranging investigation and all guilds had to justify their existence.
What emerged from this was not a nest of reds under the bed but a bunch of illegal property owners that had disguised their assets through trustees or foefees which meant they could avoid buying a Royal licence.
As a result guilds began to apply for a Royal Charter – effectively medieval articles of association – and thus became Companies. The Skinners and Grocers were early adopters in 1393; the Cooks were late to the party in 1482. This meant that they could hold property ‘In Mortmain’ – or forever.
Coincidentally the new Companies began to mark out their identity with unique clothing – or Livery – but the liveries, while colourful, were not as significant as the Company halls. They were in many ways unnecessary – members of the trade had historically met once a year for their annual feast and there were plenty of places for hire. In 1423 the Brewers hired out their relatively new hall to 15 companies including the ‘footballpleyers’ (London super league?). On the other hand many of the Companies were acquiring baggage – silver plate bequests that needed to be stored, records that needed to be filed. They also had staff. Most just had a beadle but many were beginning to acquire Clerks and some companies even a rent collector, gardener and cook. The Cooks finally acquired their own hall on a plot acquired in 1500.
Perhaps more importantly the Companies had made it. Monarchs who were less stable or wealthy than their divine right suggested had been trading power and influence for cash payments from their increasingly rich neighbours in the City and as Barron writes “It was in the hall that members (and their wives) might enjoy the style of living that members of the retinue of a great household might experience in his household
The Livery Companies had become an urban, democratic aristocracy and they wanted to reflect that status.
The trading significance of that Saxon coin had come a long way but it wouldn’t last. As the Cooks joined the ‘A’ list with a swanky new refurbished hall Livery Companies were already struggling with interlopers from outside the City walls and by 1600 a new force – the East India Company – signalled the beginning of global trade and the end of the protectionism that boosted those early cartels.
London In The Middle Ages – Government and People 1200-1500. Caroline Barron. Oxford Univesity Press.
Millennium. Tom Holland. Hachette
A History of the Worshipful Company of Cooks. Alan Borg. Jeremy Mills Publishing
Next time – Charity. Did it really begin at home?
