Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/254

 246 THE BRIDGNORTH COMPANY OF SMITHS April members were expected to attend on Corpus Christi Day ; the names of absentees are sometimes noted, and once a fine of 65. 8d. was imposed for departure without licence. No indication appears of the place of meeting. The fee for admission (called upset, upshod, or occasionally freedom-money) varied in amount ; the son of a freeman who had served an apprenticeship paid 65. Sd. ; an apprentice who was not a freeman's son paid 135. 4rf. ; otherwise the fee was £3 65. 8d. In addition there was a fee of a shilling for brotherhood (sometimes abbreviated as 'browood'). There is one instance of a freewoman of the company, one Grissell Haslewood, who received one of her sons as apprentice in 1699 and another in 1702. In one or two late seventeenth-century cases it is noted that the persons admitted were sons of gentlemen ; also that the wardens and man in trust were gentlemen. From 1659 onwards entries of apprenticeship are frequent ; there are usually one or two every year, often more. The usual term is of course seven years, once it is eight, and occasionally it is to last tUl the apprentice is twenty-one years of age. In 1666 an order was made that the clerk should receive 4d. for enrolling the name of an apprentice in the company's books, the fine for non-payment being 12d. At the end of the volume is a single record of apprenticeship dated 1 February 1629/30. Possibly a separate book for such entries was kept between 1630 and 1659. Even in the brief and formal entries which are all that the volume usually contains we can see indications of the restrictive character of the company. A pewterer and brazier * is ' taken by the consent of y^ company though he were a farriner ' (1662). A tobacco-pipe-maker declares (1664) that he ' will on no meanes infringe the libertys of the sayd fellowship but the same to his power defend '. In 1681 a horn-comb -maker is admitted as an assistant and is to follow no other profession ; in 1684 a mathe- matical instrument-maker, goldsmith, and clock-maker is admitted to be a freeman of the company, * he following and doeinge noe other thing whereby to prejudice the aforesayd trades '. Traces occur of legal proceedings to enforce the com- pany's privileges. The charges for a capias against two persons are entered under 1648, and the company incurred various legal expenses in the years 1649, 1651, and 1657. There are occasional hints of the relations between the com- pany and the Bridgnorth corporation. In 1626 the choice of officers is said to be * by the order of Mr. Bayliffes '. Persons are occasionally admitted on condition of making themselves burgesses. In June 1691 it was agreed that a composition should ^ See Stella Kramer, The Atnalgamation of English Mercantile Crafts, ante, sxiiL 15 and 236.