Merchants Guild older than Stirling Burgh
Do you ever pay attention to the floral displays round Stirling?
This is the one at Lower Bridge Street entrance to Gowan Hill, right in front of the 500-year-old boundary of what was the Royal Park.
In case you can’t tell what it’s meant to show from my terrible photo, it’s a backwards 4, which is of course the symbol of the Merchant Guild of Stirling or Guildry for short.
The symbol is connected to trade with the Baltic and became particularly associated with Stirling’s Guildry.
Merchants guilds were ways business owners could control quality and ensure contracts were enforced, the cynical amongst you might even call them cartels. They were established by Royal Warrant and the crown extracted a fee for the privileges: ie the start of central taxation.
The Stirling Guild was established in 1119 by King Alexander I and of course this year it’s 900 years old (hence the floral display) and now concerns itself with charity work.
Now this date is interesting. It means Stirling’s Guildry is older than the Burgh of Stirling, founded by Alexander’s younger brother David I, in around 1124.
I have searched and can find no other active institution in Scotland older than the Guildry except the Crown and the Church. Within living memory of the Guildry being founded, Stirling was not part of Scotland, it was probably part of either Strathclyde or Northumbria (the records are vague); the King of Scotland had been MacBeth, and Edward the Conqueror had marched through Stirling to demand submission from David’s dad, Malcolm III.
Moving forward, within a generation of the Guildry being established Stirling High School and Cambuskenneth Abbey had been founded and Scotland stretched as far as Durham and Chester. I hope you agree that that is all incredibly cool.