reach, for in 1439 ^we ʃɪ¹¹^ William Estfeld, a mercer of London,
made Knight of the Bath¹. As the merchant found acceptance
in the circles of the gentry, civic office became an object of
competition with the knights of the county ; their names were
enrolled among the religious fraternities of the towns, the
trade and craft guilds ; and, as the value of a seat in parlia-
ment became better appreciated, it was seen that the readiest
way to it lay through the office of mayor, recorder, or aiderman
of some city corporation.

492. Beside these influences, which without much affecting
the local sympathies of the citizen class joined them on to the
rank above them, must be considered the fact that two of the
most exclusive and ‘ professional ’ of modern professions were
not in the middle ages professions at all. Every man was to
some extent a soldier, and every man was to some extent a
lawyer ; for there was no distinctly military profession, and of
lawyers only a very small and somewhat dignified number. Thus,
although the burgher might be a mere mercer, or a mere saddler,
and have very indistinct notions of commerce beyond his own
warehouse or workshop, he was trained in warlike exercises,
and he could keep his own accounts, draw up his own briefs,
and make his own will, with the aid of a scrivener or a chap-
lain who could supply an outline of form, with but little fear of
transgressing the rules of the court of law or of probate. In
this point he was like the baron, liable to be called at very
short notice to very different sorts of work. Finally, the towns-
man whose borough was not represented in parliament, or did
not enjoy such municipal organisation as placed the whole
administration in the hands of the inhabitants, was a fully
qualified member of the county court of his shire, and shared,
there and in the corresponding institutions, everything that
gave a political colouring to the life of the country gentleman
or the yeoman.

Many of the points here enumerated belong, it may be said,
to the rich merchant or great burgher, rather than to the
ordinary tradesman and craftsman. This is true, but it must

¹ Ordinances of the Privy Council, vi. 39.

XXi.]            Artisans and Labourers.

be remembered always that there was no such gulf between the
rich merchant and the ordinary craftsman in the town, as
existed between the country knight and the yeoman, or between
the yeoman and the labourer. In the city it was merely the
distinction of wealth ; and the poorest apprentice might look
forward to becoming a master of his craft, a member of the
livery of his company, to a place in the council, an alderman-
ship, a mayoralty, the right of becoming an esquire for his life
and leaving an honourable coat of arms for his children. The
yeoman had no such straight road before him ; he might im-
prove his chances as they came ; might lay field to field, might
send his sons to war or to the universities; but for him also

the shortest way to make one of them a gentleman was to send
him to trade ; and there even the villein might find liberty
and a new life that was not hopeless. But the yeoman, with Different
^x . ,             ,                        position of

fewer chances, had as a rule less ambition, possibly also more the country
ɪ.         .              yeoman.

of that loyal feeling towards his nearest superior, which formed
so marked a feature of medieval country life. The townsman
knew no superior to whose place he might not aspire ; the
yeoman was attached by ties of hereditary affection to a
great neighbour, whose superiority never occurred to him as a
thing to be coveted or grudged. The factions of the town were
class factions and political or dynastic factions, the factions of
the country were the factions of the lords and gentry. Once Town

,         .                                                   . .       .     ,                         . struggles.

perhaps in a century there was a rising in the country ; in
every great town there was, every few years, something of a
struggle, something of a crisis, if not between capital and labour
in the modern sense, at least between trade and craft, or craft
and craft, or magistracy and commons, between excess of con-
trol and excess of licence.

493. In town and country alike there existed another class Artisansand
of men, who, although possessing most of the other benefits of
freedom, lay altogether outside political life. In the towns
there were the artificers, and in the country the labourers, who
lived from hand to mouth, and were to all intents and Jiurposes
‘ the poor wlɪo never cease out of the land.’ There were the
craftsmen who could or would never aspire to become masters,

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