and they succeeded in fixing prices because they could prevent
competition within the walls. Presently complaints became rife of guild
oppression, and the courts had to entertain these complaints from the
outset, to keep some semblance of order; but at length the turmoil
passed beyond the reach of the courts, and Parliament intervened.
Parliament not only enacted a series of statutes regulating prices in
towns, but supervised guild membership, requiring trading companies to
receive new members upon what Parliament considered to be reasonable
terms. Nevertheless, friction continued.

With advances in science, artillery improved, and, as artillery
improved, the police strengthened until the king could arrest whom he
pleased. Then the country grew safe and manufactures migrated from the
walled and heavily taxed towns to the cheap, open villages, and from
thence undersold the guilds. As the area of competition broadened, so
the guilds weakened, until, under Edward VI, being no longer able to
defend themselves, they were ruthlessly and savagely plundered; and
fifty years later the Court of King's Bench gravely held that a royal
grant of a monopoly had always been bad at common law.[4]

Though the Court's law proved to be good, since it has stood, its
history was fantastic; for the trade-guild was the offspring of trade
monopoly, and a trade monopoly had for centuries been granted habitually
by the feudal landlord to his tenants, and indeed was the only means by
which an urban population could finance its military expenditure. Then,
in due course, the Crown tried to establish its exclusive right to
grant monopolies, and finally Parliament--or King, Lords, and Commons
combined, being the whole nation in its corporate capacity,
--appropriated this monopoly of monopolies as its supreme
prerogative. And with Parliament this monopoly has ever since remained.