Headship and Inclusion

The Incorporation chose to describe themselves as ‘the House’, laying claim to their place as one of the building blocks of a godly society, and emphasising their desire for unity and a common purpose for their brethren. Chapter one will look at the internal relationships within this House, both between craft and craft in a composite incorporation, and between freemen and ‘stallangers’, exploring how certain trades became established while others remained tolerated and licensed unfreemen. The internal craft aristocracy and the oligarchic tendency to be selective in allowing access to corporate privileges led to a particular crisis in the 1690s, when the deacon convener of Edinburgh’s fourteen incorporated trades ordered the doors of Mary’s Chapel shut until arbitration could mend the relationship between the two senior trades of Mary’s Chapel, the masons and the wrights. Still, this divided House managed to survive, despite encroachments of unfree craftspeople and internal disputes.