[803] Vol. I. p. 221.
[804] Dr. Gross, taking the Trinity guild of Lynn as “a continuation of the old guild merchant,” speaks of its “line of developement” into a “simple, social-religious fraternity” (i. 161); and notes that “though the ancient function of the guild had disappeared, its social-religious successor was a quasi-official part of the civic polity” (p. 162). He does not, however, enable us to trace any such “developement,” or to distinguish “ancient functions” from later ones. From our first glimpse of the guild in the charters of John and Henry the Third to the patent of Henry the Fifth it seems to be singularly free from change, nor is any evidence produced during these centuries for its “transformation into a simple social-religious guild.” In the case of Southampton Dr. Gross sees a developement of an exactly opposite kind (ii. 231).
[805] For a most interesting account of the Lynn cattle and sheep trade, and the Kipton Ash market, set up in 1306, for drafting off the sheep flocks, see Dr. Jessopp’s paper in the Nineteenth Century, June, 1892, on “A Fourteenth Century Parson.”
[806] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, 183.
[807] The guild did not include all the town traders (Gross, ii. 166-7), and probably tended to become an exclusive body since it could keep out all save the sons of its members by charging whatever entrance fees it liked (p. 164).
[808] Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 210-11.
[809] Blomefield, viii. 515. Gross, ii. 159-170. The guild of Corpus Christi paid in 1400 103s. 2d. for meat and drinks and spices for its feast, and 169s. for making wax torches; and the beginning of the century was marked by the foundation of at least three other guilds, with right to hold land and buildings.
[810] Gross, ii. 166-7.
[811] Gross, ii. 166.
[812] A charter of 1305 secured its possession of certain property. The charter of 1393 was probably connected with the extension of the statute of mortmain to towns. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 186, 191.)