benefits from the organized crafts, for they began to
form among themselves what are generally described as "yeomen gilds"
or "journeymen gilds." At first the masters opposed such bodies and
the city officials supported the old companies by prohibiting the
journeymen from holding assemblies, wearing a special livery, or
otherwise acting as separate bodies. Ultimately, however, they seem to
have made good their position, and existed in a number of different
crafts in more or less subordination to the organizations of the
masters. The first mention of such bodies is soon after the Peasants'
Rebellion, but in most cases the earliest rise of a journeyman gild in
any industry was in the latter part of the fifteenth or in the
sixteenth century. They were organizations quite similar to the older
bodies from which they were a split, except that they had of course no
general control over the industry. They had, however, meetings,
officers, feasts, and charitable funds. In addition to these functions
there is reason to believe that they made use of their organization to
influence the rate of wages and to coerce other journeymen. Their
relations to the masters' companies were frequently defined by regular
written agreements between the two parties. Journeymen gilds existed
among the saddlers, cordwainers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters,
drapers, ironmongers, founders, fishmongers, cloth-workers, and
armorers in London, among the weavers in Coventry, the tailors in
Exeter and in Bristol, the shoemakers in Oxford, and no doubt in some
other trades in these and other towns.

Among the masters also changes were taking place in the same
direction. Instead of all master artisans or tradesmen in any one
industry holding an equal position and taking an equal part in the
administration of affairs of the craft, there came, at least in some
of the larger companies, to be quite distinct groups usually described
as those "of the livery" and those "not of the livery." The expression
no doubt arose from the former class being the more well-to-do and
active masters who had sufficient means to purchase the suits of
livery worn on state occasions, and who in other ways were the leading
and controlling members of the organization. This came, before the
close of the fifteenth century, in many crafts to be a recognized
distinction of class or station in the company. A statement of the
members in one of the London fraternities made in 1493 gives a g