The masters
were usually householders. The journeymen, yeomanry, bachelors
were simple freemen. Most of these companies had almshouses
attached to their halls for the impoverished, disabled, and
elderly members and their widows and children. For instance, many
members of the Goldsmiths had been blinded by the fire and smoke
of quicksilver and some members had been rendered crazed and
infirm by working in that trade. The freedom and rights of
citizenship of the city could only be obtained through membership
in a livery company.
A lesser guild, the Leathersellers, absorbed the Glovers, Pursers,
and Pouchmakers. These craftsmen then became wage earners of the
Leathersellers, but others of these craftsmen remained
independent. Before, the Whittawyers, who treated horse, deer, and
sheep hides with alum and oil, had become wage earners for the
Skinners.
Londoners went to the fields outside the city for recreation and
games. When farmers enclosed some suburban common fields in 1514,
a crowd of young men marched out to them and, crying "shovels and
spades", uprooted the hedges and filled in the ditches, thus
reclaiming the land for their traditional games. The last major
riot in London was aroused by a speaker on May Day in 1517 when a
thousand disorderly young men, mostly apprentices, defied the
curfew and looted shops and houses of aliens. A duke with two
thousand soldiers put it down in mid-afternoon, after which the
king executed fifteen of the rioters.
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