ness of selling, whether
commodities of their own manufacture or those they had previously
purchased. Membership in the gild was not exactly coincident with
burgess-ship; persons who lived outside of the town were sometimes
admitted into that organization, and, on the other hand, some
inhabitants of the town were not included among its members.
Nevertheless, since practically all of the townsmen made their living
by trade in some form or another, the group of burgesses and the group
of gild members could not have been very different. The authority of
the gild merchant within its field of trade regulation seems to have
been as complete as that of the town community as a whole in its field
of judicial, financial, and administrative jurisdiction. The gild
might therefore be defined as that form of organization of the
inhabitants of the town which controlled its trade and industry. The
principal reason for the existence of the gild was to preserve to its
own members the monopoly of trade. No one not in the gild merchant of
the town could buy or sell there except under conditions imposed by
the gild. Foreigners coming from other countries or traders from other
English towns were prohibited from buying or selling in any way that
might interfere with the interests of the gildsmen. They must buy and
sell at such times and in such places and only such articles as were
provided for by the gild regulations. They must in all cases pay the
town tolls, from which members of the gild were exempt. At
Southampton, for instance, we find the following provisions: "And no
one in the city of Southampton shall buy anything to sell again in the
same city unless he is of the gild merchant or of the franchise."
Similarly at Leicester, in 1260, it was ordained that no gildsman
should form a partnership with a stranger, allowing him to join in the
profits of the sale of wool or other merchandise.

[Illustration: Hall of Merchants' Company of York. (Lambert: _Two
Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown & Sons, Hull.)]

[Illustration: Interior of Hall of Merchants' Company of York.
(Lambert: _Two Thousand Years of Gild Life_. Published by A. Brown &
Sons, Hull.)]

As against outsiders the gild merchant was a protective body, as
regards its own members it was looked upon and constantly spoken of as
a fraternity. Its members must all share in the common expenditures,
they are called brethren of the society, their competition with one