COURTYARD, ST MARY'S HALL, COVENTRY
There are certain officials whose elections or appointments are not entered in the regular municipal records, but who, nevertheless, had great weight in the councils of the city. Such were the aldermen, who first appear in 1477.[140] These officials discharged certain police duties in their respective wards and were of the inner council of the mayor. Under the charter of James I. they became permanent justices of the peace, and members of the corporation. While as justice of the peace, key-keeper, head of the electoral jury and jury of the leet, the master of the Trinity guild was one of the foremost figures among the municipal rulers. His connection, and that of his fellow, the master of the Corpus Christi guild, with the mayoralty was very close. Two years before entering office each mayor was master of the Corpus Christi, and two years after quitting it, master of the Trinity guild. The control they exercised over the revenues of the guilds, which were often put to municipal uses, gave these masters much power and authority with the magnates of the city. The guilds joined their funds with those of the wardens to pension deserving townsfolk[141] and pay the salary of the recorder.[142] Before 1384 the Trinity guild discharged the ferm of £10 due to the prior, receiving a share of common land to be held in severalty[143]—that is separate from the lands of the community—as compensation. Indeed, the guild officers were so clearly considered as officers of the corporation that when they, together with the city wardens and chamberlains, neglected to present their accounts at the annual audit[144] they were one and all brought to book by the leet, and ordered to remedy their neglect under pain of punishment.
The origin of societies known as guilds is involved in controversy, but they were common throughout all Europe in the Middle Ages, bearing eloquent testimony to the fortifying power of combination. They afforded mutual protection to their members, frequently making good any loss sustained from an insurance fund to which all were contributory, and devoting other portions of their revenues to feasts, almsgiving, and public works. Guilds are best remembered, however, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as monopolist organisations, and a third of all the towns in England, with the possible exception of London, had their merchant guild, or body of traders and handicraftsmen, engrossing the local commerce to the exclusion of all men without their ranks. The craft guild was a century behind the merchant guild in its rise and development. Its members met together to make rules, by which all who practised a particular calling in the locality were to be directed in all affairs connected with their trade or handicraft. They devoted some of their revenue to religious uses, the members frequently supporting some church or chapel, or providing candles for altar or processional lights. Other local guilds not definitely commercial, but rather social, in character, often called after some saint, were active in the performance of all good works; they clad the poor in their livery, supported churches, colleges of priests and grammar schools, and pensioned decayed and deserving members. At Coventry, in the later fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries, guilds rose rapidly, and as rapidly coalesced, or, in the case of those "yeomen" or journeymen fraternities, which served to focus the prevailing industrial discontent, failed to maintain themselves in face of the hostility of other powerful previously existing associations. Two fraternities survived to play a great part in the city's mediæval history, the Corpus Christi guild, founded in 1348, and the better-known society of the Holy Trinity, S. Mary, S. John the Baptist, and S. Catherine, properly a fusion of four different fraternities, founded between 1340 and 1364, and known for brevity's sake as the Trinity guild.
MINSTREL GALLERY ST MARY'S HALL
It is possible that it was to the foundation of the merchant guild of S. Mary[145] in 1340, the kindred associations which sprang up around it, and to the gifts of their members in lands and money that the townsfolk owed the purchase of the incorporation charter.[146] It is frequently found that the same man serves in different years as mayor and master of the merchant fraternity.[147]
The town hall of S. Mary, in which not only the guild feasts were held, but municipal business[148] was transacted, and the town chest, as well as the guild plate,[149] stored, tells by its name of its connection with S. Mary's brotherhood. The vaulting of the entrance porch of this building still bears on its central boss a carving which represents the coronation of the Virgin; another of the porch carvings—now weather-worn—recalled the Annunciation, and a scene on the famous tapestry within the hall, the Assumption,[150] so that the guild brethren, could be everywhere reminded of the scenes in the life of their chief patroness. No church, however, recalls the Virgin's name, though materials from an unfinished building, which should have borne that dedication, were transported from Cheylesmore to Bablake, where the stately, early Perpendicular church of S. John the Baptist was rising on ground granted by Queen Isabel in 1342 to the fraternity called after that saint.[151] Both S. John the Baptist's guild and S. Catherine's—the latter connected with S. Catherine's chapel in S. John's Hospital,[152] coalesced between 1364-5 with the guild merchant, to be absorbed later by the all-embracing Trinity fraternity. This fusion of the guilds, which had certainly taken place informally before 1384,[153] was ratified by patent in 1392,[154] when the united revenues were increased to the amount of £86, 13s. 4d. a year. The completion of S. John's church became the especial care of the Trinity guild, and the dues taken at the Drapery, where cloth was sold, were devoted to that purpose, while a college of priests, whose number was in 1393 increased to nine, officiated at this church, and lived on the bounty of the brotherhood.[155]
