England Town and City Guilds, Town and City Freemen (National Institute)

Town and City Guilds
Gazetteers can be consulted to find out whether a place was a city or borough at a certain date. There were no livery companies outside London, only guilds. Many cities such as Shrewsbury had many active guilds representing several occupations. Sheffield had an extremely powerful Cutlers Company, reflecting the importance of this trade there and a history, which includes the apprenticeships 1624-1791, is available (Leader).

The records of the master, pilots and seamen of the Trinity House of Newcastle 1580-1900 are on 6 films starring at. Smaller towns may have had only one craft or merchant guild to which all freemen belonged and which was authorized to regulate trade in their town. Thus, the guild of most 14th century market towns would have included at least one pewterer (Hull).

In 1996 there were 18 cities and towns in England with surviving guilds, ten in Scotland which are not dealt with here, but none in Wales. A brief history of each of these is given by Lane (The Outwith London Guilds of Great Britain. Glaziers Hall, London. FHL book .), from which the chart below is derived; those listed as just freemen would be composed of all freemen in that area.

Freemen
CHART:

Extant English Guilds in 1996

Town and City Freemen
Names of city freemen, also called burgesses or citizens, were registered annually on a series of rolls, which will be at a local archive, and some have been printed and will certainly be in the local library. They include (from early times to at least 1800 except where noted): Canterbury (to 1835), Chester, Coventry (from 1781), Exeter (1266-1967), Gloucester (1641-1838), Great Yarmouth, Grimsby (from 1780), Guildford, King’s Lynn, Lancaster, Leicester, Newcastle upon Tyne (1409-1710), Norwich (1548-1752), Oxford and York (1272-1986), and are often on film.

The best registers list:


 * Date of admission to the freedom of the city.
 * Name of the freeman.
 * Name and occupation of his father.
 * Name of the master if freedom gained by servitude.

It has been estimated that about half of adult males were freemen, but some evaded getting on the lists by not paying their dues, and many lists no longer exist. Family descent can often be traced for a number of generations since the rolls often indicated the relationship of the applicant to a previously admitted freeman. The early freemen of Wells are discussed by Doddrell (Freemen of the Town (City) of Wells. Greenwood Tree (Somerset and Dorset Family History Society) Vol 24 #4, page 132), and a 200-year run of freemen of Gloucester by Prosser (Was Your Grandfather a Freeman of the City? Family Tree Magazine Vol 15 #9, page 16).

Before 1835 only freemen were legally allowed to trade and vote in borough and parliamentary elections. Where there is no printed list of freemen it pays to check the printed Poll Books which show those who voted in parliamentary elections in specific years. Gibson and Rogers (1990) Directory of Poll Books 1696-1872 lists what is available and many are filmed and a number are now available on fiche or CD. The lists may include only name and parish, but often also the occupation, address and qualification to vote. Lawton presents a case study on the use of burgess rolls and poll books. The later Electoral Rolls are less useful for establishing the identity of freemen as they are based on property qualifications.

Clark (Freemen of England and Wales. Family Tree Magazine Vol 9 #3, page 41-42, 1993) states that freemen are still being admitted in 58 towns in England and Wales and there are perhaps 80,000 living freemen. Trusts to preserve freemen rights have been established in places where a borough has ceased to exist as part of local government reform, for example the Llantrisant Town Trust of South Wales. This trend will increase with the replacement of county, borough and district councils by unitary authorities in the 1990s (Clark). There is an association of current guilds and individual freemen called the Freemen of England and Wales (see Clark).

The technological and organizational changes in the later half of the 19th century moved industry towards a state where there was less demand for highly skilled artisans but a greater demand for a new type of adaptable semi-skilled worker. This was a threat to the power of the old trade guilds, which depended on their ability to limit the availability of necessary skills. A new type of industrial group meeting the needs of semi-skilled and unskilled labourers, the trade union, took root in the 19th century and evolved into a solid working class movement in the Edwardian era (Childs). At the other end of the scale some of the old trade guilds evolved into associations of highly skilled and relatively wealthy professionals. Each separate association and trade union has its unique history but some general comments can be made.

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