ABSTRACT
The one feature which the town life of the seventeenth century had in common with that of the thirteenth was the weakness of the crafts. In the earlier period few of them had as yet attained a separate organized existence ; in the later period many of them had fallen into decay1. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had been marked by an exuberant growth of handicraft organizations. A great number of new trades had sprung into existence for the supply of wants which, if they had previously been felt, had been met by the labours of each household on its own account. The production of food, dress, ornament, domestic utensils, was increasingly subdivided and speci¬
71 DECAY O F T H E C R A F T S
alized, and as every district continued to supply the greater part of its own needs the whole of this extended range of industry was represented in the crafts of every considerable town1 .
