Merchant and Craft Guilds : a History of the Aberdeen
Incorporated Trades, by Ebenezer Bain (J. and J. P. Edmond and Spark, Aberdeen), is a very interesting contribution to the municipal history of Scotland. Its author was for a time Master of the Trades' Hospital of Aberdeen, which is under the control of the Seven Incorporated Trades, and so had an opportunity of perusing their records and other official documents, which are in an excellent state of preservation. The results of his investigation he has embodied in a historical account of these ancient societies, which undoubtedly gives a very pleasant and faithful picture of early burgher life. Perhaps Mr. Bain would have done well to have condensed the first or introductory part of his book, dealing with Ancient, Continental, London, and Scotch Guilds. There is nothing superfluous, however, in the second and third parts of the book, dealing with the rise of the Aberdeen crafts and the history of each of them in turn,—the hammermen, the bakers, the wrights and coopers, the tailors, the shoemakers, the weavers, and the fleshers. Mr. Bain has found among the early hammer- men of Aberdeen a George Gladstaines, a pewterer, who joined this particular trade in 1656, and had substance enough to endow the Trades' Hospital in 1698 with 300 merks. The late Prime Minister does not seem to be the only member of the present Opposition that is associated by the ties of blood with this in- dustry ; according to a book which was published recently, Lord Rosebery is descended from Duncan Prymrois, a member of the smith trade of the small Scotch burgh of Culross. This volume gives us a few glimpses into the history, ecclesiastical and political, of Scotland. The Aberdeen craftsmen were citizen soldiers, and took part at a very early period in the history of their city in the great historical battle of Harlaw, which probably prevented Anglo-Saxon Scotland from being placed at the mercy of the clans. The descendants of these men took opposing sides in the struggle of the Covenanters against Charles I., and in the different struggles between the Jacobites and the House of Hanover.
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