BARNARD INN and London corporate institutions

The well-endowed and nodal position of London had helped it to become the premier port of England by the mid-fourteenth century, supplanting Boston in wool exports by 1306, ousting foreign interests in the wine trade by 1330, and taking over merchant banking after the ruination of the Italians by Edward III's early campaigns against France. Nor is there much evidence of the decay or retrenchment in trade that affected most other English towns during the fifteenth century. Also, the royal palace at Westminster had become the centre of government and law administration by the mid-fourteenth century. At the same time that specialist craftsmen and trading merchants were beginning to establish trade and craft guilds to protect their interests and control their communities, lawyers and law students were similarly organising themselves into associations. In neither case did they initially build special meeting places; they simply took leases or purchased substantial houses or inns where they could meet, administer their rules, and dine in common.

Initially the craft guilds used the houses of prominent members or hostelries for their meetings, but they soon preferred to acquire their own properties. Only four craft guilds – the Goldsmiths, Cordwainers, Merchant Taylors, and Saddlers – had their own premises by 1400, but this had risen to twenty-eight companies by 1485 and thirty-eight companies by 1520. The process was nearly always the same. A prominent member would bequeath his house to the guild, or it would purchase suitable premises, nearly always a courtyard house, which could be adapted and expanded for their purposes.