Craft and Burgh: Conflict or Partnership?

The fourth chapter considers relations between the Incorporation and the wider burgh, looking at council control and customer interference. Sixteenth-century craft-council relations are usually portrayed as a merchant-craft conflict, though recent historiography has begun to question how pervasive this conflict was. Building on this debate, should we see relations between the Incorporation and the magistrates as a process of gradual integration, as the new burgh constitution of 1583 gave the crafts a firm role in burgh politics? The situation was complicated by demographic growth, suburban competition, and the interference of powerful burgh customers, such as the nobility, the church and the crown, all of which encouraged the unfree craftsman and woman. Some institutions of council control, such as parliamentary laws over the setting of prices, or restrictions to foreign trade in crucial raw materials complicated relations further, though questions arise over the effectiveness of such prescriptive legislation, as shown by Incorporation minutes which suggest that they set their own prices by the eighteenth century. Using burgesship and guildry rolls, the relationship between the trades of Mary’s Chapel and the merchant guild are explored. To what extent were the Incorporation partners with the merchant dominated council, and what impact did the 1583 ‘decreet arbitral’ have on the relationship between House and burgh?

Craft and Kirk: Security, Status and Shelter

This chapter looks at relations with the church, exploring themes of eternal security, earthly status and the material provision of shelter for meetings, before and after the Reformation. In 1475 the Incorporation received not only their seal of cause, granting them trade-regulatory privileges, but also a separate grant of an altar to Sts John the Baptist and Evangelist. This distinction between craft guild and confraternity is crucial to our understanding of the House. The Incorporation made important contributions to public worship, though participation in processions and feast days, and to the provision of masses at their altar in the town’s collegiate church. Beyond this, they also imagined, built and decorated the fabric of these important buildings. In return they were given security and assurance, first through an altar, and later through a pulpit. They received standing through their particularly-prestigious altar dedication and their position in processions nearest to the sacrament, and they took shelter for their corporate meetings in the town’s kirk. With the Reformation, however, the loss of their altar and meeting space had a direct and lasting impact on the corporate identity of the craftsmen.

Headship and Inclusion

The Incorporation chose to describe themselves as ‘the House’, laying claim to their place as one of the building blocks of a godly society, and emphasising their desire for unity and a common purpose for their brethren. Chapter one will look at the internal relationships within this House, both between craft and craft in a composite incorporation, and between freemen and ‘stallangers’, exploring how certain trades became established while others remained tolerated and licensed unfreemen. The internal craft aristocracy and the oligarchic tendency to be selective in allowing access to corporate privileges led to a particular crisis in the 1690s, when the deacon convener of Edinburgh’s fourteen incorporated trades ordered the doors of Mary’s Chapel shut until arbitration could mend the relationship between the two senior trades of Mary’s Chapel, the masons and the wrights. Still, this divided House managed to survive, despite encroachments of unfree craftspeople and internal disputes.

Introduction

The introduction explores the context in which the Incorporation of Mary’s Chapel developed. The phenomenon of the craft guild is an important part of the Europe’s urban social structure, from the largest capital city, to many of the smaller aspiring towns. Whether composite, with numerous trades, or granted to a single occupation, the feudalistic structures of urban work often favoured this protectionist institution, though corporate privileges and exclusivity were far from uniform, and always contested. In this chapter, a brief narrative of the Incorporation’s history sets the scene for the later chapters, followed by an account of how historians have viewed the process of incorporating Edinburgh’s building trades, from the eighteenth century to present day, demonstrating the need for a full study of such an important urban institution.

Conclusion

The conclusion explores the long context of decline and the abolition of corporate privileges. With the transition to more liberal ideas and economic thought, we see both continuity and change for the wider building trades. Technology, professionalization, the rise of liberalism and capitalism all had an impact on both the industry and the privileged body which sought to control building work, but these changes were not felt uniformly across either the industry or the Incorporation. This brings us back to the central question about unity. As deregulation allowed the rise of the unfree, the Incorporation managed to weather the loss of privileges without the loss of property, allowing their survival and adaptation in a very different industry context. Throughout, it is the concepts of family and household which give both structure and justification to the Incorporation, whether in shoring up contested privileges, or in stewarding their corporate inheritance.

Family, Household and Obligation

The second chapter looks beyond the free ‘master’ craftsmen of the ‘House’ to their wider households, looking to both craft families and their lodgers. The metaphor of ‘the House’ as a chosen identifier used by the Incorporation has particular significance, as the family and the household were the basic units of post-Reformation Scottish society. Patterns of marriage will be used to look at the often-invisible ‘sisters of the craft’. Endogamy will also be considered, demonstrating how disconnected the ten arts were in terms of forming marriage alliances across craft lines. Education of children and dependents – a crucial foundation for those aspiring to enter the building trades – will be explored both in terms of the support of schoolmasters at Mary’s Chapel and of the specialist craft training involved in apprenticeships. Finally, access to work in a crowded labour market will be discussed, both for the co-resident journeymen and feed servants, as well as for the widows, wives and daughters of the privileged masters. The craft economy was broader than just the free master craftsmen, as was the House, which relied on the women, children and unfree labourers which helped make up the individual craft households.