[Illustration:  Fig. 224.—­Wire-worker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 225.—­Dice-maker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 226.—­Sword-maker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 227.—­Armourer.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 228.—­Spur-maker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 229.—­Shoemaker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 230.—­Basin-maker.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 231.—­Tinman.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 232.—­Coppersmith.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 233.—­Bell and Cannon Caster.]

Apart from the privilege which these six bodies of merchants exclusively enjoyed of being called upon to appear, though at their own expense, in the civic processions and at the public ceremonials, and to carry the canopy over the heads of kings, queens, or princes on their state entry into the capital (Fig. 234), it would be difficult to specify the nature of the privileges which were granted to them, and of which they were so jealous.  It is clear, however, that these six bodies were imbued with a kind of aristocratic spirit which made them place trading much above handicraft in their own class, and set a high value on their calling as merchants.  Thus contemporary historians tell us that any merchant who compromised the dignity of the company “fell into the class of the lower orders;” that mercers boasted of excluding from their body the upholsterers, “who were but artisans;” that hatters, who were admitted into the Six Corps to replace one of the other trades, became in consequence “merchants instead of artisans, which they had been up to that time.”

Notwithstanding the statutes so carefully compiled and revised by Etienne Boileau and his successors, and in spite of the numerous arbitrary rules which the sovereigns, the magistrates, and the corporations themselves strenuously endeavoured to frame, order and unity were far from governing the commerce and industry of Paris during the Middle Ages, and what took place in Paris generally repeated itself elsewhere.  Serious disputes continually arose between the authorities and those amenable to their jurisdiction, and between the various crafts themselves, notwithstanding the relation which they bore to each other from the similarity of their employments.

In fact in this, as in many other matters, social disorder often emanated from the powers whose duty it was in the first instance to have repressed it.  Thus, at the time when Philip Augustus extended the boundaries of his capital so as to include the boroughs in it, which until then had been separated from the city, the lay and clerical lords, under whose feudal dominion those districts had hitherto been placed, naturally insisted upon preserving all their rights.  So forcibly did they do this that the King was obliged to recognise their claims; and in several boroughs, including the Bourg l’Abbe, the Beau Bourg, the Bourg St. Germain, and the Bourg Auxerrois, &c., there were trade associations completely distinct from