TRADE COMPANIES SINCE 1612
One of the first acts of the corporation under the
charter of 1612 was to order all trades and crafts to
form themselves into companies and submit their
constitutions to be officially confirmed and sealed by
the mayor. The weavers, with their royal charter,
kept their independent organization; but in the
course of 1612, 1613, and 1614 all the other crafts
complied with the orders, except the brewers, whose
draft constitution was not submitted until 1615. (fn. 1)
A number of general rules, forbidding the practice of
crafts or trades in the city by those who were not
freemen of the appropriate company, regulating
apprenticeship and the employment of journeymen,
forbidding trade on Sunday, and providing penalties
for breaking these rules or for the neglect of their
duties by officials, were common to all the new
constitutions; and provision was made for the
nomination by each company of searchers, viewers,
and sealers, to be appointed by and sworn before
the city's Justices of the Peace. (fn. 2)
The first company to have its new constitution
confirmed was that of the smiths, which included
smiths, armourers, cutlers, pewterers, braziers, bellfounders, ironmongers, watchmakers, wire drawers,
saddlers, cardmakers and pinmakers. (fn. 3) The smiths
were shortly followed by the clothworkers, the shoemakers, the glovers, whose company also included
the parchment-makers and collar-makers, (fn. 4) and the
joiners, whose company included wheelers, worstedmakers, bookbinders, carpenters, millwrights,
coopers, freemasons, rough masons, painters,
instrument-makers, ropemakers, turners, sawyers
and bellows-makers. Frequent disputes between the
various trades included in the joiners' company
occurred in the 17th century, and in 1622 the
corporation ordered their division into two companies — joiners, painters, ropemakers, and bookbinders in one, the rest of the trades in the other. In
1675, however, they were once more all in one
company, and bricklayers and plumbers were
added. (fn. 5) The cooks and bakers formed one company
in 1613, but a dispute arose in 1620, and the new
constitution was revoked and the cooks made into a
separate company, with the sole right to make cakes
and sweet bread. The bakers' company was reconstituted in 1622; they were forbidden to make
any but plain bread, except for Good Friday,
Christmas, and funerals, to sell bread in the market,
or to lend money to any innkeeper in order to get
his custom. (fn. 6) The constitution of the butchers'
company included stringent regulations about the
disposal of offal, which was not to be thrown into
the Town Ditch, nor over Fisherton Bridge 'except
it be in the current of the river' or down the stairs
appointed for the purpose, apparently by the
Pudding Bridge. (fn. 7) The regulations of the barbersurgeons forbade the unskilful surgical activities of
'divers women … who do oftentimes takes cures on
them, to the great danger of the patient'. This
company had the privilege of receiving the bodies
of executed criminals for the study of anatomy. (fn. 8)
Several of these constitutions were altered, revoked, and re-issued during the 17th century. That
of the joiners was cancelled in 1616 and re-issued
in 1617; that of the brewers was revoked in 1623 in
the midst of the dispute between the company and
the corporation over the city brewhouse. (fn. 9) In 1632
the corporation dissolved the company of shoemakers because the wardens had accepted a bribe
from William Baker, a plumber, to admit him to
the company. The company presented a petition
admitting their fault and asking to be restored, and
they were once more constituted as the company of
shoemakers, curriers, and last-makers. (fn. 10) The tanners and bridle-makers were established as a
separate company in 1664. (fn. 11) Under the city's new
charter in 1675 all the constitutions of the trade
companies were declared void and new ones were
issued, and a similar order, which seems to have
been largely ignored by the trade companies, was
made under the charter of 1685. (fn. 12) The company of
merchants, which included all trades selling goods
produced by others, was re-constituted as a company
in 1690, having been discontinued some time after
1675. (fn. 13)
The trade companies appear to have been very
active throughout the 17th century, particularly the
tailors, the shoemakers, and the joiners. (fn. 14) The
corporation also appears to have taken an active
interest in the companies and to have supported
them in excluding strangers from trading in the
city. In 1626 the council passed a resolution forbidding strangers to set up shop or sell wares in the
city, except at the regular fairs, and restraining the
setting-up of trades prejudicial to the city in
Fisherton, Milford, Harnham, and the Close; in
1636 a similar resolution forbade the letting of
houses or shops to strangers on pain of £10, and
also forbade the putting out of work outside the city
if it could be done inside; and a resolution of 1639
ordered all tradesmen to 'cast themselves into
companies'. In the same year Henry Ellmer, surgeon, was ordered to get himself admitted a free
brother of the company of barber-surgeons, for
otherwise the company might start a suit against
him. In 1650 committees of aldermen and assistants
for each ward were set up to inquire, among other
things, the names of those who entertained
strangers, the names of those strangers, and how
long they had stayed. (fn. 15) Eight years later a further
order was made requiring all tradesmen within the
city, who were not freemen of one of the companies,
to become so before a certain date. (fn. 16) This seems to
have been the last order of this kind for some time;
but in 1706 a by-law to the same effect was passed; (fn. 17)
and at about the same time the tailors' company was
petitioning Parliament for an Act to suppress those
unlawfully practising the trade in the city. (fn. 18)
Henceforth attempts to exclude strangers seem to
have ceased, and the power and activity of the trade
companies also declined. The weavers' company
exercised control only sporadically in the 17th
century; and in the 18th century it struggled, with
decreasing success, to keep up the old rules and
customs in bad economic conditions, constantly
petitioning the corporation about the export of wool
and the employment of strangers by the masters. (fn. 19)
It greatly declined in numbers from about 1784
onwards. Three craft companies connected with
cloth-making took part in the procession during the
peace celebrations in 1814, but the weavers' company took no part in the Reform celebrations in
1832, and had probably ceased to exist a few years
previously. (fn. 20) The company continued to use its hall
in Endless Street (fn. 21) until 1784 when it was provided
with a new building in Rollestone Street by Joseph
Everett, master weaver and clothier. This is thought
to have been the house at the south-west corner of
Rollestone Street and Salt Lane, having one very
large room, which in 1912 was called Cambridge
House School, and was run by a Miss Harrison. (fn. 22)
Only seven members of the tailors' company
remained in 1810 and the last admission was made
in 1835. (fn. 23) The company's hall at the corner of
Milford and Pennyfarthing Streets (fn. 24) was shared by
the clothworkers from 1613 until 1784, using the
lower room for their meetings, and the upper room
for their feasts. (fn. 25) In the middle of the next century
the glovers and parchment-makers also used this
hall once a month. (fn. 26) The hall was disposed of with
other property by the last two surviving members
of the guild in 1880. (fn. 27) It is known to have contained
a lower hall, kitchen, pantry, cellar, and coalhouse,
and the upper floor consisted entirely of one large
hall panelled in oak to a height of 6 ft. (fn. 28) It was
apparently a stone building but all that remains of
it is part of the undercroft and the western bay
window, all of 16th-century date. Some stained
glass from one of its windows is in the Salisbury
Museum together with fifteen of the wardens'
shields from its walls. Goblets belonging to the
company dated 1631 and 1646 were purchased by
the Merchant Tailors of London in 1905 and 1937. (fn. 29)
The shoemakers' company took part in the processions in 1750, 1784, and 1814, but from 1784
onwards their numbers declined and it appears that
before this date they had abandoned any attempt to
control an expanding industry on medieval guild
principles. (fn. 30) In 1638 Philip Crew, a schoolmaster,
and the son of a shoemaker, left his house at the
corner of Rollestone Street and Salt Lane to the
shoemakers' company. (fn. 31) The house, now the
Pheasant Inn, (fn. 32) was then extended at the back to
provide a first-floor hall, with buttery beneath,
known as Crew Hall, which still (1960) exists as an
irregular timber-framed room. Subsequent purchases increased the company's property in this
vicinity to five tenements. (fn. 33) Crew Hall was also used
by the clothworkers' company for their assemblies
c. 1780–90. The connexion with the shoemakers was
severed when the last portion of their property was
sold in 1828. (fn. 34)
The joiners' company took part in the peace
celebrations of 1814, but in 1828 the few remaining
members agreed to sell their hall and garden, and
the company took no part in the celebrations of
1832. Its last official died in 1837. An attempt to
revive the company around the personality of an old
man named Rhoades, who possessed an indenture
of apprenticeship dated 1774, apparently failed
largely because he was not willing to co-operate. (fn. 35)
Since about the middle of the 15th century the
joiners' hall stood in St. Ann Street and the Jacobean
façade of this survives. (fn. 36) When Hatcher described
it in 1843 it still contained an assembly room
29 × 27 ft. panelled in richly carved oak wainscot,
thought to be the work of the brothers Humphrey
and John Beckham, both wardens of the company
in the early 17th century. (fn. 37) In 1898 the hall was
conveyed to the National Trust. (fn. 38)
Towards the end of the 18th century the place of
the trade companies was being taken by the new
social clubs and Friendly Societies. The Woolcombers Society and the Rainbow Club, a branch
of the Friendly Society of the Cordwainers of
England, to which the Salisbury shoemakers became
affiliated in 1784, were among the first of these new
societies to be formed in Salisbury. (fn. 39) The mer
chants' company, which had been moribund since
the early 18th century, was in 1786 replaced by the
Salisbury Commercial Society, founded 'to protect
and promote the general trading interests of the
city' and to correspond with other towns on trade
questions. All Salisbury tradesmen were invited to
join.