London’s Guild System

Overview

Para1The guild system was a large part of the economic system in medieval and early modern Europe, so it also dominated the business world of London. Guilds are professional organizations, usually of specialized trades. Guilds were a powerful economic influence in Europe from the years 1000–1800. At the peak of the guild system, large cities could have over a hundred different guilds.
Para2Guilds were made up of craftsmen (and some women) in specific trades. Guilds mainly existed for those trades which were involved in the manufacturing of goods or the service industry. Guilds existed for painters, wine merchants, goldsmiths, drapers, weavers, musicians, physicians, wine-growers, miners, fishermen, blacksmiths, carpenters, stone masons, bakers, and a variety of other trades and industries.
Para3Guild members had status and respect among the common people, although perhaps less among the aristocracy if Shakespeare’s Richard II is any indication, as the titular character complains about his cousin gaining favor with the common people:
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As ’twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friendsʼ;
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.
(Richard II 1.4.25–35)

Power of Guilds

Para4Guilds fulfilled many different purposes. They defended the interests of the craftsmen within the guild, regulated the quality of products and services, trained new guild members, and provided support or welfare to their members when needed. Guilds also helped give craftsmen a political voice in their communities. Once a craftsman reached a certain level of skill, they were given the status of a freeman by the guild, which gave the craftsman the opportunity to vote for candidates for different city councils.
Para5Though guilds were extremely helpful to guild members, the power which guilds held both economically and politically often meant that they would create monopolies within their cities. Guilds often set the standard of what was acceptable regarding tools and techniques used, wages, hours of labor, and working conditions. They were also major influences on the prices of the final product or service.

Membership and Training

Para6Apprentices had the lowest skill set within a guild. They often joined between the ages of ten to fifteen-years-old, and their apprenticeship could last between three to seven years depending on the craft. Apprenticeships were the best system for young men to gain a vocational education and helped secure their financial future. Apprentices came from all backgrounds of life, but primarily from the working classes rather than the gentry. Would-be apprentices could join the guild in which their father was a member or pay a fee to the guild they wanted to join. Apprenticeships were culturally important because they marked a child’s entrance into adulthood and independence from their parents. Apprentices would work side-by-side with the masters they were assigned to.
Para7Journeyman was the next skill level within the guild system. Journeymen were men who had completed their apprenticeships and who had gained the needed skills to begin working on their own. They still worked under the supervision of their masters but were no longer required to stay strictly by masters’ side. They could take on their own clients and even travel to other areas for work. Journeymen still had several more years of training and work until they could become master craftsmen.
Para8Master Craftsman was the title journeymen earned when they reached the highest level of skill. This last level required the craftsman to create a masterpiece which demonstrated their skill. They would present the masterpiece to their guild masters for approval. Once approved, they gained all the benefits of full admission into the guild. Those benefits included financial help if the craftsman fell on hard times, support for their widows and families if they died, and the opportunity to own their own business. A new business would hire other apprentices and journeymen, continuing the cycle.
Para9The term mastercomes from the Latin root of magister, which means teacher, captain, or director. It is from the title of master that the modern abbreviation of Mr. arises. The female equivalent is mistress, now abbreviated as Ms., Mrs., or Miss. To become a master craftsman within the guild system was a high honor that came after more than a decade of work, and it came with the privilege, opportunity, and duty to train apprentices. A master had the duty to train both the hands and the minds of young craftsmen.

Charity

Para10Guilds took care of their members if they experienced financial difficulties. They would also help provide for the widows and families of their members in the event of the member’s death. The funds needed to help support the guild members and their families came from either legacies (donations) of other members or distributions of company funds raised by fees. Guilds were also well known for donating generously to the poorhouses.

Women and Guilds

Para11Not all guilds accepted women, and those that did often limited the activities that women could participate in. Examples of guilds which did include women were the butchers, ironmongers, shoemakers, bookbinders, and goldsmiths. Some guilds were exclusively female, such as brewing, spinning, and silk making. If a guild was not exclusively female-run, a woman often became a member of a guild if her husband died. She would take on his trade and would become a master in his stead. She would have to give up this title, though, if she married another man who belonged to a different guild.

Decline of the Guilds

Para12Starting in the late 17th century with the beginning of industrial technologies, guilds began to lose their economic power as they lost their influence on the labor market, although they still played large political roles in their communities for some time. In London, the decline of the guilds accelerated in 1666, when the carpentry guild (or carpentry company) relaxed their regulation on admittance into the guild as they helped rebuild the city after the Great London Fire.

Key Print Sources

Bosshardt, William, and Jane S. Lopus. Business in the Middle Ages: What Was the Role of Guilds? Social Education vol. 77, no. 2, 2013, pp. 64–67.
Epstein, S. R. Craft Guilds in the Pre-Modern Economy: A Discussion. The Economic History Review vol. 61, no. 1, 2008, pp. 155–174.
Moll-Murata, Christine. Merchant and Craft Guilds. State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Amsterdam University Press, 2018. 321–348.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. The Economics of Guilds. Journal of Economic Perspectives vol. 28, no. 4, Fall 2014, pp. 169–192.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Guilds in Shakespeare’s Day. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/city%20life/guilds.html. Accessed 13 Sep. 2018.
Broomhall, Susan. The Fragility of Women’s Rights: How Female Guilds Wielded Power Long Ago. The Conversation. Academic Journalism Society, 7 Mar. 2017. https://theconversation.com/the-fragility-of-womens-rights-how-female-guilds-wielded-power-long-ago-73265.
Guilds. London Lives: 1690 to 1800. London Lives, https://www.londonlives.org/about/guilds. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.
Kranzberg, Melvin, and Michael T. Hannan. History of the Organization of Work: Craft Guilds. Encyclopedia Britannica. 11 May 2023. https://www.britannica.com/money/history-of-the-organization-of-work.

Prosopography

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Kimberly Wallace

Kimberly Wallace was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title London’s Guild System
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kimberly Wallace, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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