ABSTRACT
The high artistic quality of the medieval manuscript book was the result of centuries of development of fine manual skills. The most important secular institutions of the medieval city were the Craft Gilds. In the days when the State authority was weak or uncertain, when feudalism was crumbling, when the town was gradually assuming important economic and political functions, the tightly organized Craft Gild gave cohesion and stability to the social structure. The Masters of the Textwriters and Limners had authority ‘to call together all the men of the said trades honourably and peaceably when need shall be, as well for the good rule and governance of the said City as of the Trades aforesaid’. In the autumn of 1476 a wealthy merchant, member of the Mercers’ Company, rented the almonry at Westminster Abbey, and some weeks later the room resounded to blows of workmen labouring to erect a gaunt wooden structure of a kind never before seen in England.
