The chief duty of a merchant guild was to preserve to its
own members the monopoly of trade within a town. Strangers and non-guildsmen
could not buy or sell there except under the conditions imposed by the guild.
They must pay the town tolls, confine their dealings to guildsmen, and as a
rule sell only at wholesale. They were forbidden to purchase wares which the
townspeople wanted for themselves or to set up shops for retail trade. They
enjoyed more freedom at fairs, which were intended to attract outsiders.
CRAFT GUILDS
After a time the traders and artisans engaged in a
particular occupation began to form an association of their own. Thus arose the
craft guilds, composed of weavers, shoemakers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, and
so on, until almost every form of industry had its separate organization. The
names of the various occupations came to be used as the surnames of those
engaged in them, so that to-day we have such common family names as Smith,
Cooper, Fuller, Potter, Chandler, and many others. The number of craft guilds
in an important city might be very large. London and Paris at one time each had
more than one hundred, and Cologne in Germany had as many as eighty. The
members of a particular guild usually lived in the same street or quarter of
the city, not only for companionship but also for better supervision of their
labor. [12]
[12] A map of London still shows such names as Shoe Lane,
Distaff Lane, Cornhill, and many other similar designations of streets.
