taken charge of, and livelihood and employment found for him. In England 87 the attempt at founding journeymen-guilds had little success, probably because it came too late.
After this the guildsmen began to be privileged workmen; and with them began the foundation of the present middle-class, whose development from this source went on to meet its other development on the side of trade which was now becoming noticeable. In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and as a consequence Greek manuscripts were being discovered and read; a thirst for new or revived learning outside the superstitions of the medieval church, and the quaint, curiously perverted, and half-understood remains of popular traditions, was arising. The new art of printing began to spread with marvellous rapidity from about the year 1470; and all was getting ready for the transformation of medieval into modern or commercial society.
Before the beginning of the sixteenth century the craft-guilds had gradually reduced the others to insignificance, but the spirit in which they were founded was dying out in the meantime. They 88 were originally societies of equal craftsmen governed by officers of their own choice, and their rules were obviously directed against the growth of capitalism, as e.g. those of the clothiers of Flanders, which limited the number of looms in any master’s shop to four. Inferiority in the guild was only temporary; every apprentice, or bachelor, was bound to become a master in time. But now this had been changing for some while, and the journeyman made his appearance in the workshops under the name of servant. The entrance-fee increased so much that it is clear that it denotes more than the mere fall in the value of gold, and meant the buying of a share in a monopolist company rather than the necessary contribution to a craftsman’s society. In short, by the middle of the sixteenth century the guilds were organisations including somewhat more than the germs of capital served by labour; nothing more was needed than external circumstances for the development from this of complete capitalistic privilege.