28a SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY
there were evident signs that industry was gradually becoming
more important. By this time most of the elements necessary
for an industrial society were present. If the four main stages
in the evolution of modern industry are labelled the household,
the handicraft, the domestic or commission1 or putting-out,2
and the factory, the third stage had already been reached by
1603. There were, certainly, some survivals of the first and
many examples of the second. Then, as now, but to a much
greater extent then, a family often depended upon the labours
of its members for its clothing. A well-to-do gentleman like
Oliver Cromwell might appear in the house of commons clad
in homespun. Even in medieval times, however, some of the
needs of the family could not be satisfied within the household
and it had been necessary to have recourse to the craftsman.
He dealt directly with his customers and tried to fulfil their
wants by the labours of his own hands. He still survives to-day
in the local butcher or baker, cobbler or carpenter. The crafts-
man's organization was the gild, and so long as the medieval
town remained relatively self-sufficing this system worked well
enough. But as soon as the economic unit became enlarged so
as to include wider areas, which gradually grew until they
became coextensive with the nation and, as the seventeenth
century advanced, its possessions beyond seas as well, the de-
ficiencies of the gild system were revealed. Although there was
an unwillingness openly to admit it, the gilds had outlived their
usefulness and were being pushed into the background. They
did not give up the ghost without a struggle. It is a true saying
that during 1550-1750 the old and the new systems of industry
were at grips—and the new was capitalism.3 The Elizabethan
statutes were intended to restore the gilds to their former pre-
eminence, and the gilds themselves in many boroughs amalga-
mated in order to 'strengthen the ramparts of town privileges
against the assaults of unrestricted competition'.4 The move-
ment was generally sponsored by the local authorities, who
hoped thus to retain or regain the virtual monopolies their
gildsmen had enjoyed in the late middle ages. But the attempt
to maintain the old industrial order did not succeed: the new
1 The late George Unwin's term.
2 The most expressive term, preferred by Professor E. F. Gay.
3 T. H. Marshall, 'Capitalism and the Decline of the English Gilds', in Cam-
bridge Historical Journal, iii. 23. 4 Ibid., p. 25.