17. The fraternity shall sing a Mass on the Purification at one of the churches, at which each shall offer ¼d. for dead members.

18. The Alderman shall find a part of the high days in the Guild hall, that is, “all manner naperie to the sayde deyce or table longing; and also all manner stuffe to the firste messe except bread and ale. And the Dye, the charges in the kechen and the holders all the necessaries longing to the buttery, pantry and to the said tables in the guylde hall except bread and ale.”

19. All who hold any “Guylde Cattle” shall come to the Hall on the Sunday after the Assumption, and the Alderman, Dye and auditors shall have the roll of stock and the increase entered.

20. The Alderman and Dye “shall receive of two houses in Wellis street of the gift of Jeffery Glemes for the 2s. yerely, keeping the reparation of four alms-houses joining to them.”

21. Upon any alienation of the lands, etc., that John Smith gave to the town of Bury, the same shall be done with those which Margaret Odham gave to the Candlemas Guild, also those belonging to St. Mary’s aulter, to St. Thomas’ aulter and to the almshouses.

22. According to John Smith’s will, four of the feofees of the property to be chosen at Candlemas are to give account to the other feofees. They shall provide for the Dirge on St. Peter’s even at Midsummer and the Mass next day for J. S. and his wife Anne.

23. Those who have keys of the hutch or of the porch door of Guild are to bring them in at Candlemas, and they are to be given to those “who are considered best to keep them.”

In the foregoing chapters I have endeavoured to gather together from the scattered and frequently minute material which exists some illustrations of parochial life in mediæval times. The result must speak for itself; it is, I feel sure, as far as it goes, correct as to the outline of the picture. Had I not been anxious not to weary the reader by the very multiplicity and minuteness of the details, the result might have been perhaps more definite, and the lights and shades been more effective. As it is, however, my purpose has been accomplished if I have succeeded in interesting them in this description of the life led by our ancestors in a mediæval parish—a life so strangely and entirely different to that which now exists in the towns and villages of modern England. For “in the Middle Ages,” says a writer in a late number of The National Review, in a passage already referred to, “the conscious sharing in a world-wide tradition bound the local to the universal life, and through art and ritual the minds of the poor were familiarized with facts of the Christian faith. By our own poor I fear these facts are very dimly realized.”

INDEX