Morris, William: Architecture and history: [a paper read before the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, on July 1, 1884] (London, 1900)

scarcely known; at least, it was easy to win the
fame of a confessor, if not a martyr, of that noble
creed*
Now, as to the manner of work, there was little
or no division of labour in each craft; that I think
is some mitigation of the evil, for I look upon it
as such, of a man being bound down to one craft
for his life long (as he is now also), some mitiga-
tion, because, after all, there was plenty of variety
in the work of a man who made the whole of a
piece of goods himself, instead of making always
one little piece of a piece* Also you must note that
the freemen of the guilds had their share in the
pasture lands of the country, as every free man
had* Port Meadow, at Oxford, for instance, was
the communal pasture of the freemen of that city*
These were the conditions of life and work of the
English craftsmen of the fourteenth century* I
suppose most of us have declined to accept the
picture of him which we have had presented to us
by the half ignorant & wholly misleading pedants
of whom I have spoken before* We who have
studied the remains of his handicraft have been,
without any further research, long instinctively
sure that he was no priest-ridden, down-trodden
savage, but a thoughtful and vigorous man, and
in some sense, at least, free* That instinct has been
abundantly confirmed by painstaking collectors
of facts, like Mr* Thorold Rogers, and we now
know that the guild craftsman led the sort of life
*5

Lecture IV*
Architecture
and History*