44 A MEDIAEVAL CITY

granted them. The weavers were the largest and
wealthiest body of traders.

Guilds had developed from societies of masters
and men engaged in the same trade, to the trade-
guilds, which in the fourteenth century were
trade corporations, the lower ranks of members
being the workers, the higher ranks, including the
office-holders, the richer merchants, the capitalist
employers. The ruling committees of the trade-
guilds made regulations and generally governed
their particular trades. Despite the power of the
guilds the municipal authority maintained its
supremacy in civic government because it enforced
the ordinances of the trades. Moreover, disputes
between the guilds themselves gave the city
authority opportunities of increasing its power, of
which it availed itself.

The system of serfdom, by which serfs were
bound to a particular domain and owned by their
overlord, had not yet ceased. Nearly all the workmen
of York, however, were freemen, i.e. they had full
and complete citizenship. The members of the
councils of aldermen and councillors, the mayors
and city officials, the members of the trade-guilds,
were all freemen.

In the fifteenth century the wealthy and im-
portant employers and traders governed, the guilds.
They were in the position and had the power to
regulate the conduct in every way of their own
trades. Thus, rules were laid down as to the terms
of admission of men to the practice of a trade ; the
government of the guild and the meetings of the
members and ruling committees; the moral
standard of the members in their work and traf-
ficking ; the payments of masters to workers; the
prices of goods to be sold to the public or other