denominates the Action and proves Apprentiship not to be base The contrary Opinion pernicious to Manners and good Common-wealth among us chiefly now The different face of both Opinions in daily Experience Whether APPRENTISHIP extinguisheth GENTRY THE FIRST PART THE present Question whether Apprentiship extinguisheth Gentry being now not so much a Paradox as grown in secret to be of late a common Opinion I am bold to call it a weighty and important Question unjustly grounded upon the learned folly of Erasmus of Roterdam and the incircumspection of Sr. Thomas Smith Knight in his Book de Republica Anglorum and out of certain wandring conceits hatcht among Trees and Tillage as shall appear hereafter Weighty and Important I call it and it is so because in looking out upon the concernings of the Case I find that prospect so specious that within the compass thereof as well the greater as the lesser Nobility of England are very notably and very inexplicably enwrapped what do I say of the subalternate Nobility when the Royal Name it self was deeply interessed in the Proposition For Queen Elizabeth though a free Monarch and chief of the English in her turn was a Party to the Cause which she ingenuously and openly acknowledged calling Sir Martin Calthrope Kinsman as indeed he was being at that time Knight and Lord Mayor of London as also Sir Godfrey Bullen Knight and Lord Mayor of London was lineal Ancestor to Queen Anne Mother to Queen Elizabeth no longer before than in the Reign of Henry the sixth King of England Both which Knights being also Gentlemen born and of right worthy Families ascended by due degrees from the condition of Apprentices to the greatest Annual Honour in this Kingdom It is Weighty and Important because without much impropriety of speech it may be called Quaestio status which in the ancient phrase of the Emperor Justinian is as much as to say a Tryal whether one is to be adjudged bond or free servile or ingenuous and implieth that odious and unnatural sequel which by Textuists is named Capitis diminutio whereof though the Roman Laws make a threefold division yet in this our question is but only whether the third and lowest degree were incurred which happeneth cum qui sui juris fuerunt coeperunt alieno juri subjecti It is weighty and important and can appear none other because it directly tends to darken and as it were to intercloud the luminous body of that beautious Planet Honour with foul and lasting Spots For what can lightly be a more disparagement than for the Free-born to become a kind of Bond-men or to come of such nay there is nothing without it which can be of so great disparagement Finally it is weighty and important for very many other reasons and particularly because it is not only fit that states of Opinions should be rectified in this kind as breeding bad affections among people of this Nation from whence great mischiefs often arise even to hatred quarrels and homicides but that such also as through vanity or other distempers of the wit or judgment disdain to seem either City-born or bred or to own any thing of their Worship or Estate either to the City or Citizens may understand their own place and true condition lest they be convinced to be among them who are unworthy of so honest either Original or Accession as the City yeildeth 2. But let us first behold the Cities Honour in Arms as it stands displayed in Ancient Heraldry and as it is commented upon out of Authentick Monuments in that commendable Survey of London comprised by its Chronologer and Citizen Stowe The present figure with the same words as here they stand is a copy of that which an old imperfect Legier volumn at the Office of Arms containeth There needeth no greater demonstration of the Cities ancient Honour and of her peoples free quality than this that a principal Baron of the Realm of England was by Tenure her Standard-bearer being the Lord Fitz-Water from whence the now Lord Fitz-Water is descended The figure of St. Paul advanced it self in the Standard and upon the Shield those famous well known Armouries of the Cross and Weapon The like Picture of which Apostle was also embroidered in the Caparisons of that Horse of War which for the purpose of the Cities Service he received of Gift at the hands of the Lord Mayor Upon the Standard-bearers Coat Armour are painted the Hereditary Ensigns of his own Illustrious Family viz. Or a Fesse between two Cheverons Gules Which kind of Field the Ancients called Clauric perhaps à claritate because such Fields as were all of one colour made their Charges more cleerly seen and perspicuous And as they gave to that species of Blazon a peculiar Name for the Dignity so did they also assign to this manner of bearing two Cheverons the term Bialle or a Coat Bialle à numero binario In which brave times had that noble Gentleman but slightly and far off suspected that he displayed that Banner for a kind of Bondmen or as for their Service his great Heroick spirit would rather have troden such an offer under foot In good Assurance therefore of this common Causes justice we proceed 3. Sound Opinion meaning Doctrine is the Anchor of the World and Opinion meaning a worthy conceit of this or that person is the principal Ingredient which makes words or actions rellish well and all the Graces without it are little worth To take the fame from any man that is a Gentleman born is a kind of disablement and prejudioe at least wise among the weak who consider no farther than Seemings that is among almost all consequently a wrong and if a wrong then due to be redressed To find the Injury we must first enquire Whether Apprentiship extinguisheth Gentry 4. The main reason certainly the most generally used to prove it doth is That Apprentiship is a kind of Bondage and Bondage specially voluntary in which case the Imperial Law-rule Non officit natalibus in servitute fuisse may be perhaps defective doth not extinguish Native-Gentry But I deny that Apprentiship is either vera servitus Or omnino servitus For explanation of this difficulty I will set before your eyes the Case as it is A Gentleman hath a Son whom he means to breed up in an Art of thrift not rising meerly out of a stock of Wit or Learning but out of a stock of Money and Credit managed according to that Art and for this cause he brings his Child at fifteen or sixteen years of age more or less to the City of London provides him a Master and the Youth by his Father's counsel willingly becomes an Apprentice that is he interchangeably seals a written Instrument that he for his certain years of true and faithful Service shall learn that precious Mystery of how to gain honestly and to raise himself Let the legal and ordinary form of that Instrument extant in Wells's Presidents and familiar every
now and then as Offences happen he may chance to be terribly chidden or menaced or which must sometime be deservedly corrected though all this onely in ordine and in the way to Mastership or to the estate of a Citizen which last worst state of this Apprentice's Condition continues peradventure for a Year or two and while he is commonly but at the age of a Boy or at the most but of a Lad or Stripling and take things at the very worst he doth nothing as an Apprentice under his Master which when himself comes to be a Master his Apprentices shall not do or suffer under him Such or the like is the bitterest part of an Apprentice's happy estate in this world being honestly provided at his Master's charge of all things necessary and decent The Master in the mean while serving his Apprentice's turn with Instruction and universal Conformation or Moulding of him to his Art as the Apprentice serves his Master's turn with Obedience Faith and Industry 3. Here have we a Representation of an Apprentice's being or rather the well-being of a Child under his Father who hath right of Correction Upon view whereof we demand why it should be supposed that Apprentiship extinguisheth Gentry For if an Apprentice in London since to have Apprentices is a power not derived to Corporations out of Prerogative Royal Priviledge but out of Common Law be in their conceits a kind of Bondmen it must either be ratione generis obsequii or ratione temporis adjecti or contractûs or conditionis or for all together a fifth Cause being hard to be either assigned or imagined For the first point ratione generis which is in regard of the Kind of Service that is but an effect of the Contract or Bargain and consequently depends thereon or participates in nature with it which not importing any kind of Bondage neither can the Service it self due by that Agreement be the Service of a Bondman so that as on the one side we grant that Apprentices as Apprentices do some things which Gentlemen would not do that lived sui juris specially upon a necessity to obey yet on the other side we constantly deny that they do any of them either as servile or as servilely but propter finem nobilem that is to learn an honest Mystery to enable them for the Service of God and their Country in the station place or calling of a Citizen For the second ratione adjuncti which is in respect of a certain time as of seven years at least added and limited in the Contract that is meerly but a Circumstance of the Question For if Apprentices are not a kind of Bondmen abstracting from the time which they are bound to serve the addition of Time addeth nothing to the quality of the Contract to make it servile For the third the Contract which is in regard of the Contract as it raiseth a relation or the titles between two of Master and Servant if the very Art of binding to performance be a sufficient reason to make Apprentices a kind of Bondmen and so to disenable them to Gentry either derivative or acquisitive the Masters themselves are also a kind of Bondmen because suo genere they as well were and are bound as the Apprentices one to the other For the fourth conditionis which is in respect of the Conditions either literally or vocally expressed or virtually implied in the Contract there is in it no proof of Bondage but the contrary for in that the Obligation is mutual it proves the Apprentice free as from Bondage though for the Apprentice's own good not free from Subjection to his Master or Discipline because only Freemen can make Contracts and challenge the benefit of them The Verb is not servire but the Verb deservire which is of far less weight comprised in the Instrument or Indenture and containing the whole force of the Obligation hath only in that place the sense of obsequi facere to obey and do as an Apprentice and not according to the ancient sense which it had among the Romans This ought not to seem a Paradox for the word Dominus to which Service is a relative and the word Servus have in tract of time been so softned and familiarized as they are grown to be words of singular humanity And what so common among the Noble as to profess to serve one another But the relation constituted in this Case is peculiar and proper The word Dominus is not there at all nor Servus no nor famulus the relation constituted is directly named between Master and Apprentice a clear case that all Injuries to Blood and Nature are of purpose avoided in the Interchangeable sealed Instrument it self so clear a case that in the Oath which all Freemen make in the Chamber of London at their first Admission this Clause among many others is sworn unto by them That they shall take none Apprentices unless they are free born that is to say no Bondman's son which are the very words of the Oath And by an Act of Parliament made in the fifth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth it is expresly provided That no Merchant Mercer Draper Goldsmith Ironmonger or Clothier shall take any Apprentice except it be his Son whose Father or Mother shall at the time of taking such Apprentice have in Lands Tenements and Hereditaments of Inheritance of the cleer yearly value of Forty Shillings the Children of Labourers and of persons not being Freemen or occupying Husbandry Thus carefully open was the Eye of Institution in this Noble point of the Cities Policy to prevent that no stain no blemish nor indignity should wrong the Splendor thereof a thing which could not but follow inevitably if when it was provided that no Bondmen's Issue into the estate of Apprentiship should themselves by making Apprentices make Bondmen or should in any sort embase their Blood whose Masters they were to be as to the purpose of coming to be Citizens in time They never meant to make any man Bond who would have none but the Sons of free-born persons bound Apprentices and therefore it shall be wilful ignorance or malice from henceforth to maintain the contrary 4. A most memorable example in Scripture to the purpose of the present Question is that of Jacob and Laban Genesis 29. where the time seven years yea and the very word servire are plain in that Contract which was made between the Uncle and the Nephew yet who did ever say that Jacob was for this a kind of Bondman The reason why he was not ariseth from consideration of the final Cause or intention of the Contract which is recorded to have been worthy and unblameable the obtaining of a virtuous Wife and of an Estate to maintain her with Neither when he was no longer defrauded of Rachel than seven days after his first seven years and when for the fruition of Rachel he served also other seven years was he a Bondman by as it were a
Epistles he saith Nunc panno facient nunc pannum amant Again such of the Gentry who live not in the City and do most of all elevate themselves with contempt of others in respect of the Arts and ways of maintenance were they but incorporated under the true Titles of their Means in which we will not speak of their prodigious eating up of whole Houses Towns People by a thousand wicked Devices proper to the mystery of depopulation against whose consuming works so many Statutes of this Land have long time warred in vain the Names of those City Brotherhoods or Companies would easily sound in a most curious ear full out as fair and well as Corn Cattle Butter Cheese Hay Wood Wool Coals and the like materials of their Maintenance all of them inseparable to Country-Common-weals and without which they can no more subsist than the Drapers as Drapers without Cloth Gold-smiths as Goldsmiths without Jewels or Plate Neither doth it create any great odds in this point touching Honour between parties in this dispute that Gentlemen by their Officers as Bayliffs Reeves or the like do order their Affairs for their more ease and dignities for besides that the wisest among them exercise that superintendency in their own Persons so herein the worthy Citizen is no way behind dispatching his business by Factors Journeymen or expert Apprentices reserving only to himself the Over-view and Controll of all their doings City-Nobleness so apparent that the Knights or Gentlemen of Rome professing Merchandise and other among them that way bent had their Hall or seat of their Colledge or Company upon Mount Capitoline it self dedicated to their Patron Deity or Tutelary Godhead Mercury Other incorporated Societies there also were as Goldsmiths and the rest who lived so far from being excluded out of the power of Common-weal or from Honours and signs of Nobleness that they forced a right in some Cases to chuse out of their own Body one of the Consuls before their Emperors times Yea so mighty were they grown in respect of Election and negative Authority that Clodius to be revenged on Cicero left his own rank of Patricians and Lords and turned Commoner 6. To conclude such Gentlemen are much deceived which no sooner they hear a man named to be of this or that Society or Colledge of Trade in London as of Grocers Haberdashers Fishmongers or any other of the twelve principal Monopolies the Zodiack of the City in whose Ecliptick-line their Lord Mayor must ever run his years Course but they forthwith entertain a low conceit of the parties quality as too much beneath their own Rank and Order without farther examination when it often happens that he who is titularly of this fraternity never was bred up in it nor understands more in it than the remotest Gentleman their Masters themselves having been Merchants or of other Profession of life divers from their title under which they are marshalled the law of the City imposing an absolute necessity that all who are free of the City should carry the Name of some one or other of their Brotherhoods Again what do the Constellations of Heaven shine the worse or the less because they carry the names of a Ram of a water-bearer of Fishes and so forth or how many the fewer are their several lights for that Answerable to which I say that if the Partie's mind be adorned with the Star-lights of Honour and Virtue what baseness is it for him to be marshall'd under any of the Names comprehending one or other of the honest Arts of worldly life no more than the Name of the Great Fabii at Rome for their usual feeding upon Beans or Cicero of Pulse 7. In disputing thus let me not be thought to set up an envious Comparison between these two degrees or qualifications of men that is very far from me for it must ever be granted to the Authority of general Opinion founded upon custom among us that the true Country Esquire caeteris paribus is in his proper place before the City Esquire which with the perpetual clause beforesaid of caeteris paribus holds also throughout the other degrees of the inferior Nobleness in England I reason here as Reason bids not against the right or dignity of persons either as in parallel or as in disparagement but against the vanity and offences rising out of causeless Elation and Arrogancy and against their Errors who not understanding the things of their own Country are indeed meer Meteoroscopes and hover in the Cloudy Region of Admiration upon rude and unlearned phantasies for which cause as minds needing to be healed so would I sincerely wish that they were healed Such are theirs who would perhaps think the Companies or Monopolies of the City more worthy of their acknowledgment if where now they are denominated of some particular Ware or Craft they were named of Eagles Vultures Lyons Bears Panthers Tigers or so forth as the several Orders of Nobility in Mexico which Josephus Acosta writes under their Emperour Yet much better because more truly these Fellowships of London carry the Names of Men and their Trades as they have Vocations in Professions which onely Men can execute better or more Noble if those Societies were denominated of Eyes Ears Hands Feet or of other Members as Philostratus in the life of that Impostor Apollonius Tyaneus saith the Officers and Instrument of a Philosophical King his Eyes Ears and so forth so have these Mysteries some one or other Professor in each of them from a higher Trade to the lowest eminently dignified with the Honour of being the King's Servant as the King's Mercer the King's Draper and so forth Again how much more worthy is the whole than the parts because the parts are in the whole so by that Argument it is more honourable to be marshalled as a man among Societies of Civil men than to be distinguished by Allusions to particular Members at least wise those Singular Gentlemen might certainly in their most contempt of the City remember that rare and real worth may be in the Persons of Citizens themselves seeing Terrentius Consul of Old Rome with the Noble Paulus Aemilius was free of the Butchers Company and our Walworth Lord Mayor of Old London was free of the Fishmongers And the others were not onely the Lords Knights and Gentlemen of Rome who had voice in Election of their Principal yearly Magistrates but even Handicrafts-men and Artificers as is most manifest by that place of Salust in his Jugurthine War where Marius was chosen Consul by the special Affection of that sort of Roman Citizens who saith he sua necessaria post illius honorem ducebant preferred his Election by their Voices before the Trades by which they earned their Livings Finally they may remember that in the Posterity of Citizens many Right Noble and worthy Gentlemen are often found and that besides the universal mixture with City-races through the Kingdom it may not be denied that true Nobleness or Gentry