Guilds had developed from societies of masters and men engaged in the same trade, to the trade-guilds, which in the fourteenth century were trade corporations, the lower ranks of members being the workers, the higher ranks, including the office-holders, the richer merchants, the capitalist employers.  The ruling committees of the trade-guilds made regulations and generally governed their particular trades.  Despite the power of the guilds the municipal authority maintained its supremacy in civic government because it enforced the ordinances of the trades.  Moreover, disputes between the guilds themselves gave the city authority opportunities of increasing its power, of which it availed itself.

The system of serfdom, by which serfs were bound to a particular domain and owned by their overlord, had not yet ceased.  Nearly all the workmen of York, however, were freemen, i.e. they had full and complete citizenship.  The members of the councils of aldermen and councillors, the mayors and city officials, the members of the trade-guilds, were all freemen.

In the fifteenth century the wealthy and important employers and traders governed the guilds.  They were in the position and had the power to regulate the conduct in every way of their own trades.  Thus, rules were laid down as to the terms of admission of men to the practice of a trade; the government of the guild and the meetings of the members and ruling committees; the moral standard of the members in their work and trafficking; the payments of masters to workers; the prices of goods to be sold to the public or other traders; the rates of fines and the amount of confiscations inflicted on those who broke the rules of their guild; the terms on which strangers, English and foreign, were to be allowed to pursue their trade in the city; whether Sunday trading was to be permitted or not; the duties of the searchers; everything incident to the share of the guild in the city’s production of pageant plays.

The question of the terms of the residence and trading of strangers received constant consideration.  The city had, in many respects, complete local autonomy and rules were made with regard to strangers who came to carry on their trades in the city.  From 1459 aliens had, by municipal law, to live in one place only, at the sign of the Bull in Coney Street, unless they received special permission from the Mayor to reside elsewhere.  The guilds were ruled by masters and wardens.  They had their various officials.  The searchers were officers appointed to observe that the rules of the trade were being carried out properly.  They took care that only authorised members pursued the trade of the guild of which they were the officers.  They vigilantly watched the conduct of the members, and it was their duty to take action in case of infringement of the rules and to bring offenders before the Mayor in his court.