Did Masters or Journeymen who couldn’t get a licensed spot for a shop in a town or city ever set up outside of the city for production? I remember you said once that Masters often took more apprentices than there ever would be positions for, because of the cheap labor. That sounds like it would lead to a glut of journeymen.

Good question!

Yes, they did. To quote Friedrichs’ Early Modern City:

“…This was especially the case in the rapidly expanding metropolitan centers with their sprawling outer districts – the suburbs and faubourgs outside the walls where work and residence patterns were particularly hard to control. Unlicensed artisans and unskilled workers abounded in these outer neighbourhoods, where overlarge parishes and underdeveloped institutions made it difficult to keep track of exactly who lived there.”

This was, however, a somewhat risky strategy, because (for the most part) you still had to get your goods into the city, which meant coming under the legal jurisdiction of the city once again. Not only would imported goods usually be taxed, but trading in unlicensed goods could lead to legal penalties.

How common was it for a master blacksmith (like Tobho Mott) to move to another city and practice his skill. Were there guild restrictions on moving to safeguard their monopolies? Would he be restricted from teaching certain things to foreign apprentices? And more importantly how would they enforce this?

It’s more that guilds managed the distribution of workers, so that there weren’t too many workers in a given area relative to how much work there was for them. Now, masters tended to have much more freedom than journeymen in terms of where they could go, because that’s part of what it meant to be a master, but there were still internal pressures to not overcrowd the market.

So it would depend on the local economy. If there is a scarcity of local blacksmiths, a foreign master would be readily welcomed, as masters were required to train apprentices and employ journeymen, so a new master would (over time) create new jobs in that industry. If there were a lot of local blacksmiths, there might be resistance, b/c the argument would be that additional masters would split the work too much.

In terms of enforcement, this is where guild charters came in: guild regulations had the force of law within that industry, so if you tried to move to a city after being refused permission (and thus weren’t licensed), you could be sued in court and the local gendarmes could expel you from the city.

What was wage labor like in feudalism? I know it wasn’t hourly before clocks were around and stuff like that, but how was it thought of? Did they have the concept of employer and employee of a company (or the concept of a company outside of whatever the mercenaries count as). Did taking wages for work affect your class, maybe making you more than a serf but less than a skilled craftsman?

In terms of when you got paid, it depended. Most wage laborers were paid daily, but in some cases you could be paid weekly, monthly, or even yearly.

Companies were very rare, and required special licenses and legislation to set up (think things like the East India Trading Company or the Muscovy Company) because they were monopolies. So in most cases, wage labor took place between an owner-operator and their worker.

In terms of how it was thought of in class terms, it’s a bit complicated.

On the one hand, you had a significant body of journeymen who were paid wages, and they were significantly above serfs although below master craftsmen. Journeymen were legally free and no longer bound as apprentices were, they had property in their tools, they had certain rights (and responsibilities) as guild members, etc. And below the journeymen, you had a population of (unskilled) free laborers who worked for wages as well.

On the other hand, a significant percent of the population (about 4-5% in rural areas and 11-17% in urban areas) were servants. And servants had a different status than other wage workers. To quote Steinfeld:

“Servants were different from other wage workers – laborers and artificers – who occupied separate social and legal niches. Servants ordinarily were single and had not yet established households of their own. Hence, they lived with their masters and served them full time for a term. Laborers generally were married and maintained their own households. In most instances, they did not serve for a term, but worked on a casual basis by the day, week, or task…

Servants were “in the service of another.” But laborers and artificers [i.e, artisans], who did not live with their employers, might be employed by one person today and someone else tomorrow or next week, or they might…simultaneously undertake a number of different tasks for different persons.”

This distinction had important legal consequences: because they were part of someone’s household, servants were under the legal control of the master of the household; servants weren’t free to leave their employer until their term of service was up; etc.

What do charters for guilds consist of? If all the alchemist guild has is wildfire, how to they sustain themselves? What does the Royal charter for the faith or citadel consist of?

Well, much like city charters, guild charters gave guilds legal recognition, rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits.

So what kinds of “rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits” did these charters include?

First, guild charters gave guilds a legal monopoly over a given trade or industry. If you wanted to work in a given industry in a given location, you had to be a member in good standing who had been given permission to work in that town or city. On the other side, employers and merchants who wanted to hire a smith or buy their goods also had to do so with a guild member, lest they be legally liable.
Next, guild charters gave guilds control of training, licensing, and locating of workers in their field. In order to become a member of the guild, you had to go through a guild apprenticeship where you would live with a master craftsman and labor for them for anywhere between seven and fourteen years. Apprentices were not paid save for food and lodging, but their masters were required to train them in the skills and trade secrets of their industry. When you had completed your education, you would be licensed as a journeyman, be given a set of tools that were now your property, and could now work for wages in your field. Journeymen were usually sent away from their home city for a period of at least three years (although that’s not where the name came from), for reasons that I’ll explain later. When you had completed that process and could afford to pay the application fee, you could apply to become a master craftsman, by submitting a masterpiece (that’s where the name comes from) to the guild masters for their approval – if your work was up to snuff and the guild masters let you in, you’d now be a full member of your field with the right to open your own business, hire journeymen, and train apprentices (indeed, you were required to train apprentices).
Third, guild charters gave guilds wide powers of regulation and self-regulation. In addition to the right to charge membership dues, guilds also had the right to fine members or even expel them for violating the regulations of the guild, and guilds established extensive regulations on prices, wages, working conditions, product quality, even standards of personal behavior. (Guild members could be fined or even expelled for drunkenness, for example, because it threatened the guild’s reputation for quality labor). At the same time, guilds also used their control over their members to essentially bargain collectively with governments, suppliers, merchants and employers, wielding the authority to blackball them from doing any business with guild members to get their way.

So how did the guilds use these powers?

First, they used them to control labor supply, labor demand, prices and wages – guilds carefully manipulated the intake of apprentices, the licensing of journeymen, and the qualification of masters, and used their powers to permit working or operating a shop in a given town/city/region, to ensure that there would be enough work/consumer demand for their members at the wages/prices necessary to support the living standards of guild members. If there wasn’t enough work to go around in a given location, journeymen would be refused entry to a given town and sent on their way, and masters would be refused the right to open a shop.

Second, they used them to control the quality of goods and services – if you sold shoddy goods or did shoddy work, the guild would fine or expel you, and if you tried to work in their industry without going through their training process, you’d be prosecuted.

And third, they used them to create mini-welfare states – financed by the various dues and fees they charged their members, guilds operated pensions for the elderly, the disabled, widows and orphans, a system of unemployment benefits for journeymen who couldn’t find work, and funeral benefits.

As for Westeros, the guilds we know about are the Alchemist Guild in King’s Landing, the Guild of Smiths in King’s Landing, and a series of unnamed guilds in Oldtown. The Faith isn’t a chartered institution – it’s a religious institution – but the Citadel might have a charter from King Urrigon Hightower, but we don’t have direct confirmation.