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A28613
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The cities great concern in this case of question of honour and arms whether apprentiship extinguisheth gentry discoursed : with a clear refutation of the pernicious error that it doth.
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Bolton, Edmund, 1575?-1633?; Philipot, John, 1589?-1645.
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1674
(1674)
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Wing B3505; ESTC R37123
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30,025
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126
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the more fervent in this case because this one false Conceit at all times hurtful but chiefly in these latter times in which the means of easle maintenance are infinitely straitned that for a Gentleman-born or one that would aspire to be a Gentleman for him to be an Apprentice to a Citizen or Burgensis is a thing unbeseeming him hath filled our England with more vices and sacrificed more serviceable bodies to odious ends and more souls to sinful life than perhaps any other uncivil Opinion whatsoever For they who hold it better to rob by Sea or Land than to beg or labour do daily see and feel that out of Apprentices rise such as sit upon them standing out and pleading for their lives as Malefactors when they a shame and sorrow to their Kindred undergo a fortune too unworthy even of the basest of honest Bond-men THE CONTENTS OF THE SECOND PART 1. APPRENTISHIP is a laudable Policy of Discipline not a bondage The contrary Opinion overthrows one main pillar of a Common-wealth Severity of Discipline more needful to be recalled than relaxed 2. The Adversaries conceits do brand our Founders Mechanical qualities are God's special Gift 3. Of Tubal-Cain and the dignity and necessity of Crafts Hiram the Brass-founder S. Paul's handy Art and the cause shewed out of the Rabbins Of the Enoblements touching them 4. The wisdom of instituting Apprentiship defended by the Argument à minori ad majus 5. LONDON the Palace of thriving Arts Concerning Hebrew Bondmen The quality of Masters power over Apprentices Masters are not to be cruel or over severe 6. The folly of such as object a corruption in Bloud extinction and disinablement to Gentry of Bond-men or Villains in England Whether APPRENTISHIP extinguisheth GENTRY THE SECOND PART 1. THese things considered how should it fall into the mind of any good or wise Discourser that Apprentices are a kind of Bondmen and consequently that Apprentiship extinguisheth Native Gentry and disinableth to Acquisitive For if that Opinion be not guilty of impiety to our Mother-Countrey where that laudable policie of Apprentiship necessary for our Nation is exercised as a point of severe Discipline warrantable in Christianity certainly it hath in it a great deal of injurious temerity and inconsiderance and why not impiety also if they wilfully wrong the wisdom of England their natural common Parent whose Children are free-born Surely notorious inconsiderance is apparent because there are but two main Pillars of Common-wealths PRAEMIUM POENA Reward and Punishment and of the first Rewards Honour is the highest according to that most eloquent Tully in his perished Works de republica as S. Augustin stileth them as that thing with which he would his Prince should be fed and nourished and in his Philosophy hath uttered that famous sentence concerning the same Honos alit artes omnesque accenduntur ad studia gloriae Among us therefore Coats of Arms and Titles of Gentlemen which point the Knight aforesaid howsoever erring in Apprentices estate hath truly noted to be commodious for the Prince being the most familiar part of Honour But they rip up and overturn the principal of those two Pillars of Common-weal from the very Basis a strange oversight specially of Professors of skill in the Art of publick Government unless perhaps they speak it because they would have things reformed or changed in this particular of Apprentiship But we do not remember that either Sir Thomas Eliot in his Governour or Sir Thomas Chaloner Leigier Embassadour for Queen Elizabeth in Spain in his Books of Latin Hexameters de rep Anglorum instaurandâ published with the Verses of the Lord Treasurer Burghleys before it or any other Author rightly understanding our England and her generous People did ever once tax our Countries Policy in this point Yea some make it a Quaere whether the Cities discipline had not more need to be reduced nearer to the ancient severity thereof considering with what vices London flows and overflows than that it should be altered or removed though but a little from it 2. Now then let any one but rightly weigh with what conscience or common sense the first Institutors or Propagators of the English form of Government could lay upon Industry and civil Virtue whose subject are the lawful things of this life and whose nearest object is Honour and honest Wealth so foul a note as the brand of Bondage or any the least disparagement at all Whereas to quicken and inflame affections in that kind all wise Masters in the most noble civil Art of Government and all Founders of Empires and States have bent their counsels and courses to cherish such as are virtuously industrious yea God himself the only best Pattern of Governors hath made it known that even Mechanical Qualities are his special Gifts and his infused as it were charismata 3. For Moses having put into eternal Monuments that Jabal was pater pastorum the most ancient Art of increase and that Jabal was pater canentium the first of which inventions was for necessary provisions of food and rayment and the second to glorifie God and Honesty to solace men towards sweetning the bitter Curse which Adam drew upon humane life it is thirdly underadded in the accomplishment of the three main Heads to which mortals use to refer all their worldly endeavours Necessity Profit and Pleasure that Tubal-Cain was malleator and faber ferrarius an Hammer-smith or worker in Iron that being one of those arch Mysteries sine quibus non aedificatur civitas as the words are in Ecclesidsticus Nay there belonged in God's own judgment so great praise to the particular excellency of some Artificers as that in building of Solomon's Temple they are register'd to all Posterities in Scripture and their skill is not onely made immortally famous but a more curious mention is put down of their Parentage and Birth-place than of many great Princes as in Hiram's case not the King but the Brass-founder And in the New Testament S. Paul being a Gentleman born of a noble Family as the Ancients write and a Lawyer bred up at the feet of Gamaliel learned as an addition to that perfection for the relieving of his necessities the manual Art of Scaenopaea commonly Englished Tent-making upon which place of S. Paul's Trade whereof in his Epistles he doth often glory it is declared to us out of the Rabbins that S. Paul who himself tells King Agrippa that he had lived a Pharisee according to the most certain way of Jewism was brought up so by a Traditional precept which did bind such as would study Sacred letters to learn some one or other Mystery in the Mechanicks And at this present among other things which the Turks retain of the Jewish Rites this seems one when even the Sultan himself or grand Seignior as all his Progenitors is said to exercise a manual Trade little or much commonly once a day And in fresh memory Rodulphus the Emperour of Germany had singular skill in making
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