From Zeller’s La France Anglaise et Charles VII.
Some of the Guilds were very popular, and had an immense roll of members. That of the Corpus Christi, York, is said to have numbered more than 14,000 members. Its popularity, however, is accounted for on the ground of the important part it took in the pageants of the City. The members took an oath of obedience on entrance. There was an entrance fee and an annual subscription of “housefee,” the amount varying from place to place, and from time to time. There were also calls upon the members for burials or for help in case of a member falling into poverty, and there were legacies. There were special days appointed for meeting together; the members were summoned by the Dean or by the common bellman. On the day of meeting they appointed officers, made agreements, and did other necessary things. On one day in the year, their Saint’s day, they all put on red hoods and livery, assembled together, marched to Church, bearing wax tapers, heard mass, made offerings, and going to the Guild house, or to the house of a brother, they feasted together in love and good fellowship.
THE SEAL OF THE VINTNERS’ COMPANY, 1437
From Nichol’s Vintners’ Company.
On this day the richer Guilds got up processions, shows, ridings, pageants, and miracle plays. The internal administration of the Guilds was by a Master—“Gruuman” or Alderman, stewards or warders, Dean, and Clerk, the two latter being paid officers. Every Guild had its own livery. Those Guilds which were purely religious were, like the Corpus Christi of York, whose purpose was the conduct of a great and solemn procession, to celebrate one of the most important of Church doctrines. There were also Guilds for the performance of religious plays, as the Guilds of St. Elene, of St. Mary, and Corpus Christi at Beverley. There were Guilds for the repair of bridges and the building of chapels. There were Guilds of priests, especially the wide-spread Guild of Kalenders, so called because they, the members, met on the Kalend or first of every month. This Guild in some places, as at Bristol, maintained a school. Other Guilds, as that of St. Nicholas in Worcester, and that of Ludlow, maintained schools. All these Guilds were eventually swept away with the Dissolution of the Religious Houses.
II. The second kind of Guild was the old Saxon Frith Guild. There remains the complete code of a Frith Guild of the reign of Athelstan. In this
“May be recognised a distinct attempt on the part of the public authorities to supplement the defective execution of the law by measures for mutual defence ... if it be indeed the act of a voluntary association, it forms a serious precedent for the action of the Germanic leagues and the Castilian hermandad of later ages.” (Stubbs.)
After the ordinary rules of the Religious Guild there follow others connected with the distinct objects of the Society. Every member pays fourpence, which constitutes an insurance against theft; the Guild provides one shilling toward the pursuit of the thief. The members are arranged in bodies of ten, one of whom is the head man; these again are classed in tens under a common leader, who, with the other head man, acts as treasurer and adviser of the hundred members. The objects of the Society are the pursuit and capture of criminals and the exacting of compensation. As regards the body called the Cnihten Guild, it is dealt with elsewhere.