tants with the wardens were given the right to
elect their successors.

Thus before the close of the sixteenth century the craft and trading
organizations had gone through a very considerable internal change. In
the fourteenth century they had been bodies of masters of
approximately equal position, in which the journeymen participated in
some of the elements of membership, and would for the most part in due
time become masters and full members. Now the journeymen had become
for the most part a separate class, without prospect of mastership.
Among the masters themselves a distinct division between the more and
the less wealthy had taken place, and an aristocratic form of
government had grown up which put the practical control of each of the
companies in the hands of a comparatively small, self-perpetuating
ruling body. These developments were all more marked, possibly some of
them were only true, in the case of the London companies. London,
also, so far as known, is the only English town in which the companies
were divided into two classes, the twelve "Greater Companies," and the
fifty or more "Lesser Companies"; the former having practical control
of the government of the city, the latter having no such influence.

*39. Change of Location of Industries.*--The changes described above
were, as has been said, the result of development from within the
craft and trading organizations themselves, resulting probably in the
main from increasing wealth. There were other contemporary changes in
these companies which were rather the result of external influences.
One of these external factors was the old difficulty which arose from
artisans and traders who were not members of the organized companies.
There had always been men who had carried on work surreptitiously
outside of the limits of the authorized organizations of their
respective industries. They had done this from inability or
unwillingness to conform to the requirements of gild membership, or
from a desire to obtain more employment by underbidding in price, or
additional profit by using unapproved materials or methods. Most of
the bodies of ordinances mention such workmen and traders, men who
have not gone through a regular apprenticeship, "foreigners" who have
come in from some other locality and are not freemen of the city where
they wish to work, irresponsible men who will not conform to the
established rules of the trade. This class of persons was becoming
more n