Indentures for medieval village apprenticeships: medieval urban apprenticeships cut short

May 11, 2015 19:47


A vaguely European, vaguely 14th-15th-century AU setting

Two questions:

1.       How did rural craftsmen such as millers, village blacksmiths, potters etc. take on apprentices in the late Middle Ages? An apprenticeship was a major legal commitment on both sides, I can’t see late-medieval people being satisfied just with a verbal agreement. (And even ( Read more... )

1400-1499, ~jobs (misc), europe: history, ~middle ages, 1300-1399

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Comments 21

alextiefling May 11 2015, 23:44:50 UTC
I think in many cases the agreements were indeed just verbal. But I've seen, from slightly later - 1500-1650 - apprenticeship agreements between masters and prentices in the shires administered by the guilds in London.

As to continuing practice: yes, women who were the heirs of masters would carry on their 'craft or mystery', and would take new apprentices, too. I've not seen direct evidence of what happened when a business packed up totally, but I believe apprentices could be transferred to new masters, for an appropriate consideration, to serve out their indentures.

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anonymous May 12 2015, 00:37:32 UTC
Obviously, it would vary from region to region and even village to village--'medieval Europe' is pretty diverse ( ... )

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marycatelli May 12 2015, 02:01:50 UTC
If it was a big deal, they could have a formal ceremony with witnesses to make sure the verbal agreement was remembered -- possibly even a feast to make it more memorable.

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syntinen_laulu May 12 2015, 12:45:01 UTC
"Literacy in this period was limited to the church, basically. It would be weird for anyone who wasn't a monk or priest to be able to read."

That's true of the 11th-12th centuries, and no doubt of much of Eastern Europe throughout the medieval period, but certainly not true of late-14th/15th century England. The better-off peasants of the period kept themselves busy writing wills, leases, marriage settlements, legal accusations against each other - all sorts of stuff. They were seriously keen on documentation ( ... )

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marycatelli May 12 2015, 15:10:14 UTC
I must note that the mere fact that a peasant has a written wills, leases, marriage settlements, legal accusations against each other does not show the peasant could write. You can hire people for that. Indeed, in the 19th century, you had professional scribes who would set up booths in markets or fairs; you wanted it written, you went to them.

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inamac May 12 2015, 05:48:20 UTC
Verbal agreements were (and still are, in England) legally binding and regarded as a very serious matter. If it is queried then there does need to be strong evidence (witnesses ideally but not necessarily - there are cases where the apprentice would be asked to demonstrate what he had learned as proof that the contract was being honoured) that it took place, but in a village almost everyone would know a Master had taken a new apprentice, and would keep an eye on his progress - this is not quite as true in cities - hence the need for more formal written or witnessed contracts.

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bopeepsheep May 12 2015, 08:21:50 UTC
Agreed that a verbal contract in a village is pretty much as good as it gets. Villages are small and tight and if you break a verbal contract, oops, there goes your arrangement with the local miller, or your share of the next pig slaughtering, or your daughter's marriage prospects suddenly dive ... social justice was swift and fairly harsh ( ... )

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syntinen_laulu May 12 2015, 12:53:14 UTC
But in the several generations after the Black Death, social and geographical mobility was huge. Hundreds of villages simply disappeared and in fact never revived; thousands of people had fled the place they and all their ancestors had grown up in and where they were known; thousands more who had stayed put found that almost everyone they had known was dead; patterns of landholding were revolutionised. Before the Death, just calling on the village elders to verify that they remembered two people clapping hands on an an agreement was a viable system; after it, just not.

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bopeepsheep May 12 2015, 14:54:15 UTC
OP's timeframe is big enough for that to be potentially irrelevant, plus AU. ;-) I know about the disappearing villages, having lived very near one for 15 years, but in my part of the world the survivors just moved into the nearest bigger villages. They didn't scatter. It's not a universal pattern, because the plague wasn't evenly distributed.

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naath May 12 2015, 13:49:34 UTC
People, especially Crafts/Trades people moved around a lot more than anyone gives credit for. They just did it *really slowly*.

A *journey*man would literally *journey*. Having finished his apprenticeship if he wasn't set up to inherit a particular business (from, say, his father) he would go around, working for different Masters, seeing who he could impress, saving up to start his own business (if he ever can).

Oh, and randomly - the Silk Women in London were IIRC the only guild to be exclusively female, and the only guild to take female apprentices (there were women trading as master craftsmen, having inherited a husband's or father's business, but they didn't serve a formal apprenticeship). They were concerned with making silk narrow-wares - ribbons and laces and such.

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jayb111 May 12 2015, 15:21:13 UTC
With point two, in cases I've come across where the business wasn't continuing, the next of kin/executor was responsible for finding the apprentice a new master to complete his apprenticeship. The original master would have received a premium to pay for the boy's keep and his training, and the balance of the premium would be paid over to the new master.

I'm not entirely sure a rural craftsman could formally take on an apprentice, as opposed to just taking on a boy as a servant and teaching him the trade. If he could, I'd assume either the manorial court or the Justice of the Peace would be the legal authority before whom you'd swear oaths and to whom you'd appeal if something went wrong.

I've seen court cases as late as the 19th century where there was no more than a verbal contract; or indeed no contract at all but just an assumption that local custom would apply.

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