Mediaeval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Mediaeval England by Heather Swanson (Hardcover, 1989) for sale online

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Examining the victualling, textile, clothing, leather, metal work and building, trades, this work sets out to show how the artisans of medieval England fared in urban society, under the mercantile oligarchy. The first part of the book looks at specific trades. It attempts to show how diverse the different trades were and the crucial and previously undervalued role women played in every form of manufacture. The second part focuses on the place of the artisans in urban society, especially their relationship to the merchant class. The author describes how typically a mercantile oligarchy manipulated by means of a closed elite, the crafts guilds and gained control of the town's administrative and judicial processes. Yet, as she demonstrates, the urban decline of the late middle ages paradoxically offered artisans the greatest prospect to encroach on the merchants' formidable political power.