Stranica 159 [159]
OCR
COMMERCE : [37 as would clothe all Europe. The weavers were very powerful—too powerful indeed—and measures for repressing and dividing them were taken as early as the reign of King Henry II. They had formed themselves into a guild and were rich as well as powerful. But the governing body was richer, and John was very susceptible to the influence of wealth. In the reign of Henry III the weavers guild had resolved itself into its component parts, and we have tailors, fullers, shearmen, cloth workers, and other guilds, VINTNERS HALL—ENTRANCE of whom the tailors seem to have been the most powerful. For some reason with which we are not acquainted, they quarrelled with professors of the great rival art of the goldsmiths, and in 1226 a pitched battle took place between 500 men of either side fully armed. The tailors, it would seem, occupied the eastern part of the city, while the goldsmiths flourished in the
