Caste and Race in India c10.102

c10.102

During mediaeval times all over Europe trades and crafts were highly organized. There was a certain lack of freedom, therefore, about the choice of a trade or a craft. Thus in England, where smithcraft was held in special esteem, no villain was allowed to carry on that craft without his lord's permission.² When the important crafts came to be organized into guilds, anyone who desired to practise a particular craft had to join the guild as a journeyman to take his training in that craft. At first, it seems, admission was unrestricted and the conditions fairly light, thus making the guilds more or less free associations of persons, engaged in crafts and pledged to instructing the new generation in the means of getting their livelihood. But in later times, about the thirteenth century, they degenerated into family coteries. The widow of a guildsman might carry on the trade of her husband or could confer the freedom of the guild on her second husband if he was following the same trade. But if she married a man not belonging to the same craft, not only could she not confer the freedom of the guild on her new husband but she herself was excluded from the guild. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the restrictions on admission to craft-guilds became more and more rigorous, and the handicrafts became practically the monopolies of a few families.