In these days of tempered enthusiasm and lukewarm local interest we can hardly realise what a source of joy and pride these churches were to the townsfolk. Self-denial had enabled them to raise these goodly buildings, which they gave of their best to beautify. The painters, masons, carpenters, and carvers of the city did the work; the red sandstone, which, alas! so soon crumbles and decays, came from the local quarries; and though the grand outline of S. Michael's may be due to some bishop of the thirteenth century,[600] the design of the building, with which we are now familiar, came from the brain of a local architect—some parish priest, perhaps, or master mason of the city. For the churches of Trinity and S. Michael's were practically built anew from their foundations, neither perhaps by one family of merchants, but by the whole body of parishioners in the hey-day of the city's wealth,[601] while the small collegiate church of S. John the Baptist was raised by the Trinity guild. All these show the influence of the new "Perpendicular" style; but S. Michael's more than the rest is a triumph of the amazing lightness and technical skill so characteristic of the architecture of the fifteenth century—a style which, though lacking the strength and mystery of the earlier Gothic of the thirteenth century, has yet a certain majesty of its own.
Having once built the churches, the townsfolk made provision for continual prayer and supplication to be held therein. With a touching belief in the efficacy of prayer, even vicarious, and a business-like intention of making the best of both worlds, these worthy men devoted large sums to the support of chantry priests, who, while their patrons were engaged in secular business, prayed for the souls of the faithful departed and for living members of the town guilds and brotherhoods.[602] In the lady chapels of S. Michael's the priests of the Trinity guild chanted daily the "Antiphones of the Virgin" and the psalm De Profundis on behalf of the founders of the fraternity.[603] Similarly a priest said mass at the altar of Our Blessed Lady in Trinity church "for the good estate of King Richard and Anne his Queen, the whole realm of England, and all those by whom this altar is sustained ... and for their souls after death," remembering especially his patrons, the brethren of the Corpus Christi guild.[604] The dyers' and drapers' priests had their appointed task, so had the chaplains of S. John the Baptist's and S. Nicholas' churches, while the bedesmen, as their name implies, in the almshouse offered daily prayers for the welfare of the members of the Trinity guild.
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
But the good folk were not content with offering their supplications by proxy. Although much of the spiritual fervour of the thirteenth century died away in the later Middle Ages, the townsfolk were methodical and regular in their religious observance and attended church with due decorum on Sunday and holy-days. In the pews sat the city officers and their wives each in their degree, the various craftsmen occupying no doubt the special chapels called after their names, and the apprentices and servants sitting or standing "in the alleys."[605] The walls of the churches were bright with fresco, where even the most ignorant could learn the stories taken from the lives of the saints or from Holy Writ; it is only within living memory that the smoke has blackened a rediscovered representation of the Last Judgment above the chancel arch of Trinity church. And when the worshippers lifted their eyes to the window-glow they beheld amid the company of the saints scenes taken from local legend, the old compact for the freedom of the market between Leofric and Godiva, the blazoning of the arms of founders and benefactors, and the insignia of trade and craft.[606] For the mediæval artist saw no firm line sundering the things of religion from the affairs of daily life, and the people did not care to keep their civic patriotism and inspirations solely for the guild-hall. In the aisles and chapels lay the most honoured of the city dead; Bond and Haddon were laid among their fellow drapers, and the tomb of Ralph Swyllington, recorder, may yet be seen on the mercers' side in S. Michael's church.
SWILLINGTON'S TOMB, S. MICHAEL'S CHURCH
The craft companies paid an annual rent for the chapels within their keeping, whither they repaired at least once a year to keep the festival of their patron saint and present their offerings. Thus each of the cappers subscribed twelve pence a year towards the maintenance of the furniture in S. Thomas's chapel in S. Michael's, and presented a penny as an offering on the feast of the translation of the saint.[607] In these chapels, where the glory of goldsmiths' and artist's work testified to the munificence of the craftsfolk, dead members of the brotherhood were occasionally buried, and their obits or anniversaries kept.