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Masters and Servants in Tudor England

The History Press

Goldsmiths, Fullers and Dyers

Learning your Trade in Tudor England

Tudor apprentices occupied a position somewhere between servant and family member. They lived in their master's house during their training in his craft and their master was, in effect, their parent for the duration of their apprenticeship. On the other hand, apprentices were expected to show a great deal of deference to their masters, even more than a child was expected to show to its parents at the time.

Apprentices varied considerably. At the top end were the children of the wealthy, apprenticed to prestigious trades such as that of goldsmith or mercer. At the bottom end were orphaned paupers or those taken from poor families 'over burthened with children', whose apprenticeships were organised by the parish and who were likely to be apprenticed to husbandry or housework. Their lot in life was generally to end up as farm labourers or menial domestic servants. It is unlikely that the parish children could expect to be treated like their masters' own.

The problem today is that many of the records of these apprentices no longer exist. Large numbers of records do survive, from indentures of individual apprentices to the rules of assorted guilds, but no complete record exists for any one area. For this reason we have a good idea of the lives of apprentices in general terms, but many specific details are lost. Part of the problem is that the same rules did not always apply across the whole country. Certain rules that were relevant to apprentices living in Carlisle or York cannot be assumed to have also applied to apprentices in London or Bristol. The Statute of Artificers (1562) went some way towards creating a national system but local customs still continued in most areas.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the English apprenticeship system was not something that had been carefully planned from the beginning. It had grown up gradually, in accordance with the needs of the craft guilds.

A sixteenth-century guild was not just a trade organisation; it provided an important social club, a friendly society (members' widows and orphans could often expect help from the guild if necessary) and a bridge into politics, since the guilds often played a large part in running the town in which they worked. The social network provided by the guild offered you a busy social life and could also significantly improve your chances of success in business. Before the Reformation, guild members, or the guild priest if there was one, could even be relied on to pray for your soul after you died. Even after the religious upheavals the guild brethren would attend your funeral in force. There were often items such as a guild pall to add further magnificence to the event, at a time when a good funeral set a seal upon the achievements of your life. The guild, in short, was the centre of a businessman's life and it was no wonder that so many guild members left bequests of one kind or another to their guilds when they died, ranging from money to pay for feasts to embroidered cushions to beautify the guild's hall.

Guild membership was such an asset that people who didn't even follow the trade represented, or indeed any trade at all, were still keen to join, particularly the most important London guilds. The Masters of the guilds were smart businessmen who exploited this to the full, making a tidy profit from allowing wealthy men who did not follow the craft to join the guild all the same. The London Goldsmiths are a good example of this. In 1513 a Salisbury merchant who was not a goldsmith applied for membership, and the Wardens of the Goldsmiths' Company cheerfully stated in the minutes of their meeting that as he was not a goldsmith, they would 'take him for all they can get, and then admit him'. He ended up paying 40s entrance fee. The Goldsmiths' Company also admitted a number of gentlemen members during the Tudor period. Contacts in the city, with their ability to raise money, were always useful to the gentlemen. Equally, contacts at court were necessary to the Goldsmiths in the days when the royal signature was vital for getting things done. Sir John Daunce (Thomas More's son-in-law) and Sir Francis Bryan (courtier and personal friend of Henry VIII) are just two examples of the Goldsmiths' gentlemen members.

Guild membership of some kind was also a necessity for a businessman. You had to be a guild member – or be 'free of' the guild as the expression was – if you wanted to set up business in a particular town. The guilds had a long history of trying to limit competition. The difficult economic circumstances of the sixteenth century made them even more anxious to control trade in their area. Many of the guilds forbade 'foreigners', but their definition of the word was very narrow and might even include people from neighbouring districts. The Newcastle Adventurers' rules of 1575 refused to allow anyone from 'Tyndale, Riddesdale and Eskdale, or Levyn', all of which are in England and, by modern terms at least, not all that far from Newcastle, to become an apprentice. Under such circumstances guild membership was vital if your career was to get off the ground at all, let alone thrive.

The guilds were keen on the apprenticeship system for a number of reasons. At first it was simply an effective way of allowing for the training of young people, and merely one way of several of becoming a member of a guild. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries you could join a guild whether or not you had served a formal apprenticeship, if you could prove yourself sufficiently skilled in your craft before competent judges. The London Fullers decreed in 1363 that they would allow any skilful workman to work at fulling, but if he were declared incompetent by the masters of the mystery, then he had either to become an apprentice and learn his business anew, or leave the trade. The Bristol Dyers and the Glovers of Hull were still doing this even at the end of the fifteenth century. The only difference was that the entrance fee to the guild was higher than that paid by those who served their apprenticeship. In 1444 the Northampton Tailors charged 'strangers' an entry fee of 3s 4d, while those who had served their apprenticeships paid just 20d.

Gradually the guilds realised that by restricting entry they could do a great deal to control competition. Various barriers began to be put in the way of those who wanted to join the guilds by methods other than apprenticeship. In the 1460s the Exeter Merchant Tailors followed the general trend by raising the entrance fee for 'strangers' from 8 to a massive 20s. They could also be placed under other disadvantages. In the 1520s the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers forbade such guild members from taking apprentices, which, as we shall see, was a huge disadvantage.

The guilds also became far more restrictive as to who could become an apprentice and the rules surrounding the whole matter became very complicated. Apprenticeship had started as an informal affair. Fathers and master craftsmen made their own arrangements as to how the details of the agreement between them should work. But by the sixteenth century it was a public affair involving the whole guild and it became standard for the official enrolment of the boy's indentures to take place before the full court of the guild, where he could be presented to the masters and wardens. In the same way, when he finished his time, his formal acceptance into the guild also took place in public.

By the sixteenth century organising an apprenticeship for your child must have been every bit as fraught as finding the right school today. The first thing you had to consider was whether or not your child was eligible, as there were a number of qualifications to be met. Again, the information that has survived comes from different areas of the country and not all of the rules may have been applicable everywhere. Still, the extant information gives a good idea of the kind of regulations that had to be met. Some of the higher-status guilds required educational qualifications. The Goldsmiths refused apprenticeship to those who couldn't read or write, and in 1483 one master was fined for taking an illiterate apprentice. In 1487 there was a strange case, when a goldsmith took on an apprentice who had already learnt the craft at Banbury. The boy was skilled in engraving all kinds of letters so the master, not unreasonably, assumed that he could read and write. It was only later that he realised that the apprentice was illiterate.

Many of the guilds refused to take foreigners and this does seem to have been a common restriction. Certainly in Henry VIII's reign an act was passed stating that strangers born outside England were only permitted to take English apprentices, thus excluding their own countrymen who might by this means set up trade in England. Age was another restriction. The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers wouldn't take boys under sixteen and the Norwich Weavers forbade apprentices under the age of fourteen. The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers refused to take illegitimate children, their rules of 1513 stating that 'No bastard shall be free of this Feloship, though he have served and bene vii yer apprentyce'. Several companies also refused to take any apprentices who were deformed in any way. The London Skinners and Mercers both refused entry to such boys, while the Leathersellers' rules of 1467 insisted that boys were to be presented to the company before being accepted to see if they were 'of clenly feture and not deformed in his visage nor in noe other parts of limbs of his body'. Marriage was also a bar to apprenticeship – at Norwich this stipulation was frequently made by the guilds long before the Statute of Artificers made it law for the whole country in 1562.

Having discovered that your son was eligible to be apprenticed, you then had to check that the master you had chosen for him was officially entitled to take apprentices. If a boy was bound apprentice to a man who was not qualified to be a master of his craft, then the guilds might not sanction the agreement and the boy would have to search for a new master. The worst situation of all arose when a boy only discovered that his master was not qualified at the end of his indentures, in which case the apprentice might find himself refused entry to the guild.

The most obvious qualification was that the master had to be a freeman of the guild and of the town or city in which he lived. In many cases he also had to own property worth a certain amount of money. The Mercers, for example, stated in 1504 that a master must own £100 worth of stock or other goods. This must have been a practical rule to some extent, ensuring that the boy was being bound to a secure business that would last out his time. The Skinners too stated that men who wished to take apprentices must prove themselves able to teach, employ and maintain them. At Coventry a master had to be quit of any money owing to the guild before taking on an apprentice, while in Carlisle he had to be married.

The right to take apprentices was vital to most masters as they provided a cheap workforce. The master was usually expected to feed, clothe and house his apprentices, but he didn't have to pay them. It was usual to give them some kind of lump sum at the end of their apprenticeship to help set them up in business and sometimes apprentices were given small amounts of what was, in practical terms, pocket money but that was all. The idea was that the apprentice gave his labour in return for the time invested in him by his master in teaching him his trade.

Apprentices were so useful to their masters that the right to their services was a saleable commodity. Some masters sold their apprentices on to other masters (known as 'custom of sale' or 'turnover') or even sold a portion of their term back to the apprentice himself. The latter practice in particular was not encouraged, as it could lead to apprentices finishing their training before they were fully qualified. As early as 1368 the London Goldsmiths had rules on the matter: 'If any apprentice buys his term or part thereof or if his master pardons him his term or releases him, he shall not hold shop during his term nor be enfranchised, nor do work in private places but be bound freeman of the mystrey unless by assent of the Wardens and with a voluntary contribution.'

Turnover was a different matter. The guilds were very strict in limiting the number of apprentices that a master was allowed to take, partly because a master with too many apprentices would not be able to teach any of them satisfactorily, and partly because the guilds were keen to limit their membership and therefore reduce competition. Thus they kept a close eye on the number of apprentices in training generally. For this reason men who had the right to take apprentices but chose not to do so could take on their allocated number of boys and then 'turn them over' to another master who wanted more apprentices than he was officially allowed. The whole matter was carefully regulated. The Goldsmiths' rules of 1384 state that: 'No one shall sell an apprentice the remainder of his term or to any other person of any other trade, but only to a freeman of the same trade and of the same city, and that the seller shall pay half of what he receives to the alms.'

It certainly could be a profitable business. The London Merchant Tailors' accounts show a fine levied in 1547 on Harry Whytehorne, a master who sold his apprentice without leave. The fine was for 8s 10d, which is stated as being a third part of the profit he gained from the deal, thus making a fine profit of 17s 8d. When you consider that the Johnson family (see below) were paying their cook 21s a year in 1550, this was no small sum.

There were obviously occasions when masters were forced to give up their apprentices whether they liked it or not. If they went bankrupt, or if they became unable to employ the apprentice because of illness or death, then the apprentice would either serve out his time with the master's widow or heir, or be transferred to some other suitable master. This again was supervised by the guild and a small sum was charged for the process.

To make matters more confusing, the number of apprentices a master was allowed to take varied from city to city and from trade to trade. The Exeter Tailors did not grant more than one apprentice per master without special permission. The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers were also allowed only one, although they were permitted to take a new apprentice a year or two before the old one came to the end of his term, to ensure continuity of support in their work. The Skinners permitted an old master to have four apprentices over seven years, a warden could have three and an ordinary master two over the same period.

Assuming that both the boy and his master were qualified, indentures would be drawn up and signed by both parties. The exact wording of the indentures varied, but the terms were fairly general. The boy had to promise to keep his master's secrets, to neither intend nor do any harm to his master or his business, to look after his master's goods and neither sell them nor lend them to anyone without permission. Other promises the boy made went far beyond the bounds of most employment agreements today: he would not get involved in gambling, he would not go to ale houses 'or any suspect places' without his master's permission, and also would not 'use or occupye lecher or fornycacion', especially in his master's house. He also promised not to marry during his apprenticeship without his master's permission. In return for the apprentice's labour, the master usually promised to provide clothes (often described as both woollen and linen clothing, meaning both top and underclothes), bedding, food, drink and often washing. The agreement would be written out twice, then the parchment on which it was written would be cut in two by a jagged line, the 'indenture'. The master would have one half and the apprentice the other. The exact shape of the cut would be unique to each document, to prevent fraud.

Apprentices were frequently sent far from home. This was particularly the case in London, which offered the best career opportunities and so drew apprentices from all over the country, but even smaller towns drew apprentices from a surprisingly wide area. The sixteenth-century records for Kingston upon Thames show that some apprentices came from Southampton, Hever (in Kent), Shropshire, Exeter, Westmorland, Anglesey, Nottingham and Ripon, to name just a few of the more distant places. This meant that there was an intensely personal aspect to apprenticeship, as the master and his wife took the place of the apprentice's parents. Under these circumstances, you can understand why in Carlisle (and perhaps in other places too) a master had to be married before he was allowed to take apprentices. He had to provide not just a business environment but a home for them, and was expected not only to teach the boy his trade, but also to ensure that he learnt good manners and behaved well.

Rigid discipline was imposed and a great deal of corporal punishment was used. The apprentice was, of course, less important than his master and was given every opportunity to learn this. A boy who felt that this was being taken too far had to prove that his treatment was more severe than was reasonable. How severe punishment could be is demonstrated by the case of a goldsmith's apprentice who felt that having his mistress run a needle through his thumb was 'ayens all reison and laweful demeanyng'.

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Excerpted from Masters and Servants in Tudor England by Alison Sim. Copyright © 2013 Alison Sim. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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