THE GUILD CHAPEL AND GRAMMAR SCHOOL, STRATFORD
Members of both sexes were admitted to the Stratford Guild, as to others of its class, on payment of a small annual fee. "This primarily secured for them the performance of certain religious rites, which were more valued than life itself. While the members lived, but more especially after their death, lighted tapers were duly distributed in their behalf, before the altars of the Virgin and of their patron saints in the parish church. A poor man in the Middle Ages found it very difficult, without the intervention of the guilds, to keep this road to salvation always open. Gifts were frequently awarded to members anxious to make pilgrimages to Canterbury, and at times the spinster members received dowries from the association. The regulation which compelled the members to attend the funeral of any of their fellows united them among themselves in close bonds of intimacy."
The social spirit was fostered yet more by a great annual meeting, at which all members were expected to be present in special uniform. They marched with banners flying in procession to church, and afterwards sat down together to a generous feast.
Though of religious origin the guilds were strictly lay associations. In many towns priests were excluded from membership; if admitted, they had no more authority or influence than laymen. Priests were employed to perform the religious services of the guild, for which they were duly paid; but the fraternities were governed by their own elected officers—wardens, aldermen, beadles, and clerks—and a council of their representatives controlled their property and looked after their rights.
When the Stratford Guild was founded it is impossible to determine. "Its beginning," as its chief officers wrote in 1389, "was from time whereunto the memory of man reacheth not." Records preserved in the town prove that it was in existence early in the 13th century, and that bequests were then made to it. The Bishops of Worcester encouraged such gifts, and apparently managed that some of the revenues of the Guild should be devoted to ecclesiastical purposes outside its own regular uses. Before the time of Edward I. the society was rich in houses and lands; and in 1353, as its records show, it owned a house in almost every street in Stratford.
In 1296 the elder Robert of Stratford, father of John and Robert (p. 31), laid the foundation of a special chapel for the Guild, and also of adjacent almshouses. These doubtless stood where the present chapel, Guildhall, and other fraternity buildings now are.
In 1332 Edward III. gave the Guild a charter confirming its right to all its property and to the full control of its own affairs. In 1389 Richard II. sent out commissioners to report upon the ordinances of the guilds throughout England, and the report for Stratford is still extant. It shows what a good work the society was doing for the relief of the poor and for the promotion of fraternal relations among its members. Regulations for the government of the Guild by two wardens or aldermen and six others indicate the progress of the town in the direction of self-government. An association which had come to include all the substantial householders naturally acquired much jurisdiction in civil affairs. Its members referred their disputes with one another to its council; and the aldermen gradually became the administrators of the municipal police. The College priests were very jealous of the Guild's increasing influence, and when the society resisted the payment of tithes they brought a lawsuit to compel the fulfilment of this ancient obligation; but in all other respects the Guild appears to have been independent of external control.
A curious feature of the conditions of membership in the 15th century was that the souls of the dead could be admitted to its spiritual privileges on payment of the regular fees by the living. Early in the century six dead children of John Whittington of Stratford were allowed this benefit for the sum of ten shillings.
The fame of the institution in its palmy days spread far beyond the limits of Stratford, and attracted not a few men of the highest rank and reputation. George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., and his wife, were enrolled among its members, with Edward Lord Warwick and Margaret, two of their children; and the distinguished judge, Sir Thomas Lyttleton, received the same honor. Few towns or villages of Warwickshire were without representation in it, and merchants joined it from places as far away as Bristol and Peterborough.