THE GILDS AND THE PEASANT 301
restricted: it gave no right of entry to the gilds or of protection
without the city. Freedom, indeed, was an essential condition of
membership of a gild, and the gilds were autocratic institutions,
and exercised a rigorous scrutiny over candidates for admission.
By the fourteenth century this had gone so far that villein origin
was regarded as tainting the blood. In an ordinance of 1387 it is
laid down that no "foreigner" should be enrolled as an appren-
tice unless he first swore that he was a free man and not a serf,
and later on a serf is defined as the son of a man who was a serf
at the time of the boy's birth. From this it would seem that if a
villein became free by residence in the city, his sons born after
this would be eligible for membership of a gild, but those born
earlier were of servile origin and were excluded. We may under-
stand the reason for this decision by recalling the well-known
case of Simon de Paris, mercer, alderman and sheriff of London.
Simon had been a freeman of the City since 1288; but, in 1306,
while visiting his home at Necton in Norfolk, he was seized by
the lord's bailiff who ordered him to serve as reeve, arrested
him on his refusal, and kept him in prison from tierce to vespers.
Simon brought an action against his lord, pleading that he was
a free citizen of London. His lord pleaded that he was a villein,
taken in his "villein nest", and therefore liable for service.
Justice Bereford here interposed: "I have heard tell that a man
was taken in a brothel and hanged, and if he had stayed at home
no ill would have befallen him. So here. If he was a free citizen
why did he not stay in the City?" The jury, however, refused to
entertain the view of Simon's opponent; and, no doubt, jealous
for the liberties of the City, found for him, and declared that he
was a free man, and had suffered damage by his few hours' im-
prisonment to the sum of ^loo.1 No wonder the gilds were
chary of accepting any one whose blood was not completely free,
when a few days spent without the walls might lose them the
services of apprentice or journeyman.
Much the same conditions prevailed elsewhere: at York, at
Andover, at Lynn, for example, no one of servile birth could gain
entrance to the gild—their birth was an absolute bar,2 At
1 Y.B. i Ed. II (Selden Soc.), nff.
2 Hist. MSS. Report, i, 109*2; Gross, op. tit. u, 164, 317; T. Jones, Hist.
Brecknock, n, 786.