THE CRAFT GUILDS OF FRANCE.
192
Certain fees
alone that the work was executed, and they alone were judges of its merits.
and it has been insinuated that their integrity was not
for these duties
were due to them
;
the fellow crafts or compagnoTis had no
always above suspicion. In all this it would appear
In the register
voice nevertheless one instance to the contrary has been handed down to us.
;
year 1460, appears amongst the consuls of the
stonemasons one Johan Valopelier, compaignon} This is probably the exception which proves
the weneral rule. Amongst the police regulations of the crafts, considerable importance was
of consuls of the city of
attached to
"
says,
their
tlie
for the
MoutpeUier
mark which almost every
was required
artisan
to place
on his work.
Levasseur
and nearly every class of artisan, possessed
goldsmiths, cloth- workers, potters, coopers,
mark. The assessors were also the depositaries of the common seal of
or
stamp
private
the craft, and they placed
it
on
all articles
inspected by them."
'^
In cases of overt opposition or persistent contumacy to the rulers of the
empowered
workman's
(at least in Paris), to seize the
tools,
and
if
force
craft,
these were
became necessary,
to
We
thus see that the rattening of recalcitrant
the provost of Paris.^
ordered by the secret committees of the trade unions of to-day, was in France an
acknowledged institution of the thirteenth century. Organised strikes can be traced back
almost as far, but this subject will be more conveniently treated in the next chapter.
call in the assistance of
workmen
Amongst
upon the trade guilds was that of the night watch.
other duties which devolved
For this purpose the different crafts were divided into classes. The principal posts in Paris
were those of the two Chalets or prisons and the Sainte Chapelle.* Even the large ecclesiastical
corporations were olDliged to take part in this duty, though when their watchmen sallied out
on patrol they carried their weapons in a sack.^
were divided was usually seven, corresponding
watch duty were
rare,
The number
is
which the trades
Exemptions from
whose wife was in childbed. In all
days of the week.
to the
except in the case of a craftsman
the Paris crafts of Boileau's time this excuse
of classes into
admitted.
The peculiar cause
for
the
exempti