[155] Account given of the building of Corpus by Archbishop Parker’s Latin secretary, John Jocelyn, fellow of Queens’. It is supposed that the hall of the guild of Corpus Christi was near the old court; S. Mary’s guild met at the hostel of that name near the present Senate House. See also p. 83.
[156] Ibid.
[157] The brethren and sisters of the two guilds presumably thus taxed all house property bequeathed by them to their college, to defray the expenses of the wax lights so freely used in funeral and other liturgical rites. It has been pointed out that the riots occurred two days after the feast of Corpus Christi, with its recent procession in England, the contribution of wax tapers for which may have greatly aggravated the grievance. The feast is of xiii c. origin, the outdoor procession dates from the late xivth.
[158] She was heiress to her sister Eleanor who had been betrothed to Edward IV. They were the daughters of John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, and Elizabeth’s only child Ann was wife to Richard of York murdered in the Tower.
[159] The dearth of clerks or clergy and the failure of learning: the former engaged the attention of the founders of Gonville, Trinity Hall, and Corpus, the latter of the founder of Clare who writes: “to promote ... the extension of these sciences, which by reason of the pestilence having swept away a multitude of men, are now beginning to fail rapidly.”
[160] The fact that we have a guild college built in Cambridge is especially interesting, for, as Dr. Stubbs has shown, Cambridge ranks highest among English towns for its guild history. Even the Exeter statutes do not rival those of one of its ancient guilds which united the craft or religious guild with the frith-guild—the guild instituted for the religious interests of its members or to protect craftsmen and their craft, and the guild which was an attempt “on the part of the public authorities to supplement the defective execution of the law by measures for mutual defence.” The Cambridge statutes, in fact, show us the guild as an element in the development of the township or burgh, one of those communities within a community which was the earliest expedient of civilisation, the earliest essay in organisation, everywhere. The guild which combined these two institutions was a thanes guild. It made and enforced legal enactments; it paid the blood-money if a member slew a man with righteous cause, and exacted eight pounds from any one who robbed a member. “It is improbable” writes Dr. Stubbs “that any institution on so large a scale existed in any other town than London.” In Athelstan’s reign we have a complete code of such a London frith-guild. (Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 414.)
It is against this historic background that we find the guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin uniting to add a common scholastic interest to interests civil and religious, by founding a college. The guilds were lay institutions; in two of the best known Cambridge guilds priests were either excluded, or, if admitted, denied a share in the government; and a chaplain for the guild of the Blessed Virgin was only to be maintained if the necessary assistance to the poorer members permitted of it.
“Thus of Cambridge the name gan first shyne
As chieffe schoole and vniuersitie
Vnto this tyme fro the daye it began”
[162] The “good duke of Lancaster” was Alderman of the Guild of Corpus Christi. John of Gaunt greatly befriended the college. It was anno 1356 that the “translation of the college of Corpus Christi out of lay hand to the patronage of the duke of Lancaster,” took place; a document so entitled once formed part of the Registry MSS.