Corporation and Society each several Art and Science therein not much unlike our several Companies and inferior Schools which fit Youth for those places but as Shops wherein young men are initiated Apprentices and afterwards commence Masters There might be much more said in the defence of Trade and Commerce but the Book consisting of particulars in relation to the City and its policy an Enlargement here would but anticipate the Kind and Courteous Reader who will I hope pardon the length of this Preface and supply the rest with his own Candor and Ingenuity To the READER READER I Have been lately put to the Question which heretofore some years since I have discoursed very briefly Whether Apprentiship extinguisheth Gentry And being now called to an Account I have not only perused my former Opinion but with some addition do confirm my then Assertion that it doth not with a clear Refutation of the pretended Reasons or rather pernicious Errors against it swallowed by Erasmus Roterdam Sir Thomas Smith in his Common-weal Sir John Ferne in his Blazon Ralph Brook York-Herald and others And I shall cleer the Refutation of that pestilent Opinion which hath some Authority for it and many Injurious Partakers intending to lodge upon the hopeful and honest estate of Apprentiship the odious Note of Bondage and the barbarous penalty of loss of Gentry to the reproach of our Kingdom 's policy and to the manifold dammage of the Publick For though the Schools and Camps are most proper for Honour and Arms yet the Ancient Wisdom and the like frequent Bounty of our Sages did ever leave the Gates of Honour open to City-Arts and to the mystery of honest Gain as fundamental in Common-weals and the suscepture of external Splendor according to the most laudable Example of rising Rome under her first Dictators and Consuls By which their Moderation and Judgment they happily avoided two opposite Rocks viz. Tyrannical Appropriation of Gentry to some certain old Families as in Germany and the Confusion of not allowing Hereditary Nobleness or Gentry to any at all as under the Sultan in Turky I shall not crave any Patronage or other Acknowledgment nor repeat here how the Noble People of Eldest Rome accepted the Book which Guecus Flavius dedicated to their Name and Use de origine Juris in the Caesarian Laws but leave the Issue to those that may receive the Honour and Profit thereof with this Caution First that it belongs only to such Masters or Citizens as are generously disposed and worthily qualified Men who say with Publius Syrus Damnum appellandum est cum mala fama lucrum and then to such among Apprentices as resemble Potifer's chast Servant or St. Paul's converted Onesimus young men who say with Statius Caecilius in his Plotius Liberè servimus salva Urbe atque Arce meaning by the City and the Citadel the Body and the Head of Man And there is no doubt that the worthy Citizen shall find his honest Servant not the less serviceable for this Discourse but rather the more obsequious For in good Bloods and in good Natures Praise and Honour prevail more than Rigor and Blows And because your selves for the most part were Apprentices ye may remember herein with Comfort the honesty of your Condition when ye were such and the Splendor of what ye are now in that Right The principal Objection against the Publishing of this or the like Discourse of this Argument is That the Insolency of the Youth and the Irregular Frie of the City may hereby take increase But it hath been elsewhere answered That those Apprentices are of the Dregs and Bran of the Vulgar the ordinary Balls played by the hands of Justice into the Prisons and Places of Correction nay perhaps not Apprentices at all but forlorn Companions Masterless Men and the like as lately hath been made to appear In a word the City of London which before Rome it self was built was rocked in a Trojan Cradle by the Founder and Father thereof Heroick Brute or Brytus as the most ancient Monuments setting aside all late fancies bear witness and under Claudius Caesar It was the Metropolis of the Trynovants under other Caesars afterwards it was Augusta the Majesterial City which at this time for Hugeness increase of beautious Buildings Concourse Navigation Popularity and Trade notwithstanding the hand of God's Correction by late Sickness and Fire very hardly giving place to any one City in Europe or at lest doth match and equal them This very London so venerable for Antiquity so honourable for her Customs so profitable for life noble in Renown even beyond the Names both of our Country it self and of our Nation the Birth-place of Constantine the Great and the famous Recess or Chamber of our Kings this very CityLondon whether it be your local Parent or loving Foster Mother shall not grace or honour you more than you shall grace or honour Her and England also To Conclude In this Discourse I designe nothing but rest only upon the Defence and Affirmation against the Assailers and Deniers of my Arguments and Reason with due submission for the Judicial part to the proper Court of Honour heretofore the Illustrious High Marshal of England by Commission or to the Approbation of the Learned Heralds Kings of Arms and my self to the favour of the Ingenious Reader W. S. The Cities great Concern In a Question of HONOUR and ARMS Whether APPRENTISHIP extinguisheth Gentry THE CONTENTS OF THE FIRST PART 1. THE present Question very important for many great Causes Two Crowned Queens of England some of the Nobility parties to it Bullen and Calthrope Lord Mayors of London had their Interests in Royal Bloud what Questio status and what the least Capitis diminutio is only the Base neglect it Honour a fair star Disparagement odious Prevention of Mischief by determining this Question Proud City-races unworthy of the City 2. The Cities Honours in Arms is proved out of Ancient Monuments The Lord Fitz-Water Standard-Bearer of London Clauric and Bialle two Terms in old Blazon 3. The transcendent power of Opinion To derogate from the Splendor of Birth deputed an Injury whence comes the present Question of Apprentiship 4. The main reason why some do hold that APPRENTISHIP extinguisheth Gentry Apprentiship no Bondage either in truth or at all the case truly propounded The skill of honest Gettings a precious Mystery what kind of Contract that seems to be which is between Master and Apprentice 5. An Objection that an Apprentiship is a kind of Bondage The folly of Erasmus in his Etymologie of an Apprentice The comparison between Servus among the Civilians and Apprentices among Englishmen holds not what the word APPRENTICE means Sr. Thomas Smith's error in confounding Servitude and Discipline 6. 7. 8. Particular points touching Servus his Sanctuary at the Princes Image Manumission and Recaptivity by Law None of these points concern Apprentices more than Soldiers Scholars or Religious Novices 9. 10. The very final cause
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
Dials Watches and the like fine works of Smith-craft as had also a late Baron of England which they practised and other persons also of Royal progeny are at this day excellent in several Artifices 4. If then such honour be done by God himself as aforesaid not onely to those that are necessary Handy-crafts but to those also which are but the Handmaids of Magnificence and outward Splendor as Engravers Founders and the like he shall be very hardy who shall imbase honest Industry with disgraceful censures and too unjust who shall not cherish or encourage it with praise and worship as the ancient Policy of England did and doth in constituting Corporations and adorning Companies with Banners of Arms and some special men with notes of Nobleness 5. And as of all commendable Arts all worthy Commonweals have their use so in London they have as it were their Palace But into the body of the City none generally are incorporated but such only as through the straight gates of Apprentiship aspire to the dignity and state of Citizens That the Hebrew Bondmen were not in Moses's Law among themselves like to our Apprentices howsoever the seventh year agrees in time with the ordinary time of our Apprentices Obligations is evident both in the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy For first their title to their Bondmen grew to their Lords by a Contract of Bargain and Sale which was indeed a kind of Servitude For when the seventh year in which the Bondage was to determine and expire if then he resolved not to continue a Bondman for ever he was compelled to leave his wife if married in his Lord's house during bondage together with his children born in that marriage behind him though himself departed free but withall rewarded also So that voluntary Bondage is not only de jure gentium as the Roman Laws import by which a man might sell himself ad participandum pretium but also de jure divino positivo By which notwithstanding it doth not appear that such a Bondage was any disparagement or dis-enoblement in Jewish blood among the Jews because in Exodus we read of a provision made for the Hebrew Bondwoman whom her Lord might take in marriage to himself or bestow her upon his Son if he so thought good but might not to violate her Chastity as if he had jus in corpus But the Condition of an Apprentice of London resembleth the Condition of no person's Estate in either of the Laws Divine or Imperial for he directly contracteth with his Master to learn his Mystery or Art of honest living neither hath his Master who therefore is but a Master not a Lord Despoticum Imperium over his Apprentice that is such a power as a Lord hath over a Slave but quasi curaturam or a Guardianship and is in very truth a meer Discipliner or Teacher with authority of using moderate Correction as a Father not as a Tyrant or otherwise Immoderate Correction whosoever doth use is by a Gracious Statute of the fifth of Queen Elizabeth subject to be punished with the loss of the Apprentice by absolutely taking him away 6. Which things so often as I deeply ponder I cannot but hold it as loose and as wandring a conceit and as uncivil a Proposition in civil matters as any that Apprentiship should be imagin'd either to extinguish or to extenuate the Right of Native Gentry or to disable any worthy or fit person to acquisitive Armories for how can it in God's name work that effect unless it be criminal to be an Apprentice Because no man loseth his right to bear Arms or to write Gentleman unless he be attainted in Law for such a cause the Conviction whereof doth immediately procure corruption in Blood which as in this case no man yet hath dreamed of Again when by the old Common Law of England there are but onely two sorts of Bondmen Villains in gross and Villains regardant to a Mannour and it is most certain that our Apprentice or Scholar in City Mysteries is neither one nor other of them what ignorance then or offence was Mother at first of this not Paradox but palpable Absurdity that Apprentiship extinguisheth Gentry or that Apprentices are a kind of Bondmen when as the greatest and most famous Cities of Germany which were or have been composed of Apprentices or such as from them have become Masters as Norimbergh Lubeck Magdenburg c. are as Imperial and free Cities not thought unworthy to be matriculated into the Empire or to have places in their Dyets as some of the Estates thereof THE CONTENTS OF THE THIRD PART 1 2. FOR clearer understanding the Question the Service of an APPRENTICE described 3. The four main Points of the Indenture discussed the Service the Time the Contract the Condition 4. The Case of Laban and Jacob weighed 5. Of the mutual Bond between Master and Apprentice 6. An Apprentice proved to be in no respect a Bondman Of the right of blood in Gentry and of the right of wearing Gold rings among the Romans 7. The Master's power over the Apprentice's body objected and solved Aristotle's error about Bondmen Of young Gentlemen Wards in England Of University Students and of Soldiers in respect of their Bodies 8. Apprentiship a degree in Common-weal 9. Of the Tokens or Ensigns of that degree the flat round Cap and other 10. Unwisely discontinued 11. Resumption of Apprentiships Marks or Habits rather wished than hoped 12. The injurious great absurdity of the Adversaries Opinion and the Excellency of London Whether APPRENTISHIP extinguisheth GENTRY THE THIRD PART 1. THough in the premises we conceive to have said enough for the establishing our Negation in this Important Question that Apprentiship is not a kind of Bondage consequently that it cannot work any such effect as is before supposed yet to leave no tolerable Curiosity unsatisfied we will set before us as in a Table the whole Condition of an Apprentice meaning chiefly such an Apprentice as being the Son of a Gentleman is bound to a Master who exerciseth the worthier Arts of Citizens as Merchants by Sea Whole-Sale-men and some few others which may more specially stand in the first Class of the most generous Histories as those in which the Wit or Mind of man hath a far greater part than Bodily labour 2. Such an Apprentice therefore when first he comes to his Master is commonly but of those years which are every where subject to Correction His ordinary Services these he goes bare-headed stands bare-headed waits bare-headed before his Master and Mistress and while as yet he is the youngest Apprentice he doth perhaps for Discipline sake wipe over night his Master's shooes for the morning brusheth a Garment runs of Errands keeps silence 'till he have leave to speak followeth his Master or ushereth his Mistress and sometime their young Daughters among whom some one or other of them doth not rarely prove the Apprentice's Wife walks not far out but with his permission and