Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh

[1] The incorporations are not "guilds", that term being properly reserved in Scotland for the merchant bodies in the various burghs.

The Convenery consists, in the narrow sense of the word, of the Deacons of each of the Incorporations, plus the two Trades Councillors.

Once an applicant had submitted his essay and been accepted as a Freeman, he was expected to set up his own business and to employ journeymen and train apprentices.

There are fifteen incorporations in Edinburgh, fourteen of which had Deacons who were permanent members of the Convenery of Trades from its beginning.

The cited reason for this was that many of the trades "no longer possessed their original seals of cause and did not know the year in which they had been founded".

Local government reform in 1973 removed the Incorporated Trades' formal role within the City of Edinburgh council.

The grant of burgesship was historically the gift of the Lord Dean of Guild, an office in the Council of the City of Edinburgh, after an incorporation or the Merchant Company proposed someone.

However, local government reform in 1973 changed this precedent and the office of Lord Dean of Guild was transferred instead to the Merchant Company of Edinburgh.

The privilege of the deacons sitting on the town council was rescinded following the passage of the Royal Burghs (Scotland) Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will.

This meant some degree of ensuring conformity to things like common regulations they established for their industry locally.

[8] Over time the function of the Incorporated Trades became more important, and eventually they held positions within the structure of the town council itself – at various times finding representation in the Common Council of the Burgh, and having the Deacon Convener sit as one of the magistrates of the city.

However, over time, even some members of higher social classes sought out membership, usually as amateur tradesmen.

For example, on 21 March 1657, the lawyer Mr Charles Smith Advocate (son of Sir John Smith of Grattle, former Lord Provost of Edinburgh), was admitted as a blacksmith to the Hammermen, for submitting as his essay "the portrait of a horse's leg, shoed with a silver shoe, fixed with three nails, with a silver stable at the other end thereof; which was found to be a qualified and well-wrought essay".

Another example includes Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who was entered into the Hammermen in 1697, at a meeting attended by Sir James Dalrymple of Stair Lord President of the Court of Session, Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston, and other "persons of quality".

[11] This shows the use of their meeting place was permitted for more than just training new stonemasons and undertaking governance and administration.

The Incorporation held the unusual privilege of being the only body with a monopoly on the distilling of alcohol ("aquavite") in the burgh.

It retains the statutory role of assaying and hallmarking gold, silver, platinum and palladium wares before they can be sold.

[16] The order of precedence among the incorporations is determined not by their age, but by the Act of Sett of the Burgh of Edinburgh, agreed by King James VI in a decreet arbitral in 1583.

For whatever reason these crafts never obtained a seal of cause and were eventually subsumed into one of the incorporated trades.