GILDS.
The voluntary societies or fraternities called “gilds,” which were
numerous all over Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, were established
for mutual help and comfort in the various exigencies of life--in
sickness, old age, poverty (if not the result of misconduct), in wrongful
imprisonment, in losses by fire, water, or shipwreck.[560] So far it was
a benefit club. But the gild had always a religious basis. It usually put
itself under the name and protection of the Holy Trinity or of some saint.
Once a year, at least, it took measures to have a special service held on
its behalf in church, which all the members attended, habited in the
livery of the gild; thence it proceeded to its hall or meeting-place for
the annual business meeting; and afterwards held its annual feast. The
mutual help and comfort embraced the spiritual side of life, and included
mutual prayers for the living and the dead. Especially, the gild made much
of the burial of its members, which was conducted with great solemnity;
all the members were bound to attend the funeral; and provision was made
for the continual offering of masses for the welfare of the living, and
the repose of their departed brothers and sisters.[561]
The trade gilds had for their chief aim the regulation and protection of
their particular trade; their laws included the regulation of freemen,
apprentices, etc.; the quality, etc., of their goods; and constituted a
trade monopoly. But the trade gild always embraced the usual social and
religious features above mentioned.
The great trade gilds were often powerful and wealthy corporations; their
members made bequests to them of lands and tenements; they used their
commercial talent and ready money in making purchases of other property
which added to their corporate wealth. They built handsome gild halls as
the visible manifestation of their importance; all the members wore gowns
of the same material, colour, and fashion; their officers, masters, and
wardens were distinguished by great silver-gilt maces borne before them,
and by chains and badges round their shoulders; they took pride in the
splendour of their pageantry in the public processions and functions. They
prided themselves also on the value of their plate, mostly gifts from
their own members, or gifts from great persons; on the sumptuousness of
their hospitality; and also on the useful institutions which they
maintained--hospitals, schools, almshouses; on their gifts to the poor;
and on their liberal contributions on great occasions of public need.
Some of them had their own chapel, or at least constant special services
in church, conducted by their own chaplain or chaplains.
Some of the gilds were organizations not so much for mutual benefit or
the regulation of trade as for the foundation and conduct of
enterprises for the benefit of the whole community; for promoting the
glory of God, and increasing the number of services and the means of
grace, for the population of the town; for founding a hospital or
grammar school; for building and repairing bridges and highways, and
the like.
The Gild at Ludlow had seven chaplains, and maintained also two
deacons and four choristers to sing divine service in the parish
church. It supported a grammar school, an almshouse for thirty-two
poor people, and bestowed liberal gifts on the poor.
The Kalendar Gild of Bristol dated from before the Norman Conquest. In
answer to inquiries made in 1387, the gild stated that in the twelfth
century it had founded a school for Jews and others, to be brought up
in Christianity, under the care of the said fraternity, which school
it still maintained.[562]
At York there was a Gild of the Lord’s Prayer. It arose in this way:
at some date unknown, but before the year 1387, a Miracle Play of the
Lord’s Prayer had been performed in York, in which all manner of vices
and sins were held up to scorn, and the virtues held up to praise. The
play met with so great favour that a gild was founded for the purpose
of keeping up the annual performance of the play. The gild had the
usual charitable and religious features; but, besides, the members
were bound to illustrate in their lives the scorn of vice and the
praise of virtue, which were the objects of the play, and to shun
company and business which were unworthy. The gild maintained a
candelabrum of seven lights to hang in York Minster, to be lighted on
all Sundays and feast days, in token of the seven supplications of the
Lord’s Prayer, to the honour and glory of Almighty God, the Maker of
that Prayer. And they maintained a tablet, showing the whole meaning
and use of the Lord’s Prayer, hanging against a pillar of the minster,
near the aforesaid candelabrum. Whenever the play was performed in
York, the gild were to ride with the players through the principal
streets, clad in one suit, and to keep order during the play.
The Corpus Christi Gild at York seems to have been founded by some of
the clergy specially for the purpose of organizing a great annual
function in honour of the Eucharist. On the day from which the gild
took its name, a great procession was made through the streets of the
city, headed by priests in surplices, and the six masters of the gild
bearing white wands; the craft gilds of the city followed, exhibiting
pageants. In 1415, ninety-six crafts took part in the procession, of
which fifty-four exhibited pageants of subjects from the Bible, and
ten carried torches. A great folio volume, now in the British Museum,
contains the roll of its brethren and sisters, of all ranks, about
14,850 in number. The two gilds of St. Christopher and St. George,
York, had a “Guylde Hall,” and maintained and repaired certain stone
bridges and highways, and gave relief to certain poor people, but “had
no spiritual promotion whereby the King should have firstfruits and
tenths.”[563] The Earl and Countess of Northumberland were brother
and sister of this gild, and their annual payment to it was 6_s._
8_d._ each, and 6_s._ 8_d._ more for their livery.[564]
St. George’s Gild at Norwich, founded in 1385, in close connection
with the corporation of the city, was another famous gild, numbering
thousands of brethren and sisters, among them some of the East Anglian
nobility. They had a stately equestrian procession, with pageants, on
St. George’s Day.
Chaucer has not overlooked this feature of the social life of his period.
Among the “Canterbury Pilgrims”--
An Haberdasher and a Carpenter,
A Webber, a Dyer, and a Tapeser,
Were all yclothed in o liverie
Of a solempne, and grete fraternity.
In 1404 the Gild of the Holy Trinity was established in Worcester by
Henry IV. The chantry which had been founded in the reign of Edward
III. was slightly altered from its original purpose; a perpetual
chantry of three monks was appointed to sing masses for the soul of
Henry, while the priest of the original foundation was required to
assist the parson and curator of the parish church, “because it doth
abound in houseling people,” as well as to sing mass at his own
altar.[565]
The bailiffs and commonalty of Birmingham in 1392, on the basis of a
chantry originally founded in the time of Henry II., founded the Gild
of the Holy Cross, with chaplains to celebrate Divine service in the
Church of St. Martin, for the town contained two thousand houseling
people; to keep in repair two great stone bridges and divers foul and
dangerous ways; to maintain almshouses for twelve poor persons, and
other charities. It built a great public hall, which was called
indifferently the Town Hall or the Gild Hall.[566]
We find in the “Calendar of Chantries,” etc., and also in the “Valor
Ecclesiasticus,” a number of endowed “services,” under the same kind of
saintly designation as the chantries, _e.g._ our Lady’s Service, St.
Anne’s, St. Catherine’s, St. John’s, the Rood, Trinity, etc.; sometimes,
also, like some of the chantries, they are recorded under a surname, which
it seems probable was that of the founder, as _e.g._ at Bristol, William’s
Service, Foster’s, Pollard’s, Jones’s, Henry’s, Forthey’s.
The payment for these services seems usually to have come through the
hands of a warden or of feoffees, and we suppose that they were usually
maintained by a gild or fraternity.
At Our Lady’s altar in Rotherham Church, “divers well-disposed
persons” founded a chaplaincy to sing “mass of Our Lady every Saturday
at eight o’clock.” The Rood Chantry in Skipton Church was founded for
a priest to say mass “every day when he is disposed” (does not that
mean when he is not, as we say, indisposed, _i.e._ when he is not
hindered by sickness?), “at six in summer and seven in winter, for the
purpose that as well the inhabitants of the town as Kendal men and
strangers should hear the same.”
The mayor and his brethren at Pontefract provided a chaplain to survey
the amending of the highways, and to say the “morrow mass,” which was
over by 5 a.m. Also a chaplain of Our Lady to say mass at 8 a.m., and
another in the chantry of Our Lady in St. Giles’s Chapel-of-ease
there, to sing mass daily “for the ease of the inhabitants.” There was
also a “Rushworth chaplain” at St. Thomas’s Chantry, in the parish
church.
In Wakefield Church the parishioners ordained a “morrow mass” at 5
a.m. for all servants and labourers in the parish.
There was a strong likeness between chantries and services; but while the
chief object of a chantry was to obtain prayers for the departed, and it
was only incidentally that it supplied additional opportunities of Divine
worship, the service seems to have been intended specially to maintain an
additional and probably a grander public service for the glory of God and
the help of the spiritual life of the inhabitants of a parish or town,
while prayers for the founders and benefactors were only a minor incident
of the foundation. Here are a few notes on the stipends of the chaplains,
the hire of chapels for the services, etc.
In the “Calendar of Chantries,” etc., there are recorded 107 services, of
which 64 are in Gloucestershire, 12 in Herefordshire, 7 in Chester, 5 in
Yorkshire, 4 in Shropshire, 3 in Derbyshire, 2 in Staffordshire, and 2 in
Somerset, 1 each in Dorset, Durham, Essex, and Wilts, and 4 in Wales.
There are a few entries of “Stipendiaries of our Lady,” who were probably
priests serving “Services of our Lady.”
There was a service in the parish church of St. Ellen, Worcester; the
chaplain “_exercens_” the “_servicium_” of the Blessed Virgin there
received by the hands of the wardens of the said “_servicium_,” 45_s._,
and he received 75_s._ more from the benevolence and charity of the
parishioners there. In the same church was a Service of St. Katharine, for
“_exercens_” which the chaplain received from the wardens a clear stipend
of £5 1_s._ 11½_d._[567]
The Vicar of Cirencester received payments from the Feoffees of the
service of the Name of Jesus for the use of a chapel, £6; from the wardens
of the service of St. Christopher, for the use of a chapel, £6 0_s._
5_d._; from the Feoffees of the Fraternity of St. Katharine, 9_s._ 9_d._;
and from the Feoffees of the Fraternity of St. John Baptist, 17_s._ We
have already seen in the chapter on Chantries,[568] that in villages the
people sometimes provided services for themselves, which might be classed
with these.
In the fifteenth century every market town had one or more gilds,[569] not
necessarily with the costly adjuncts of a hall for their meetings, and a
chaplain and services of their own in church, but each with its charities,
and social customs, and always with its annual service and festival. Even
in many villages and rural parishes a gild helped to draw neighbours
together into friendly association, organized their charities, and
stimulated their village festivities. Even the humblest of them had its
little fund, formed by the annual subscriptions of the members, and
perhaps a little “stock”[570] of a few cows or sheep fed on the common
pasture, the profit of which swelled the common fund of the gild, out of
which they helped a member in a strait, and gave alms to their poor. They
made much of the funerals of their departed members, following them in a
long procession. The humblest had a few cooking utensils, and pots, and
pans, and pewter dishes and plates[571] for their convivial meetings, and
perhaps a mazer with a silver rim as the loving cup, out of which they
drank to one another’s health and prosperity; and on their annual feast
day the vicar said a special mass for them, and preached them a sermon.
The suppression of all these gilds on the pretext of their prayers for
their deceased members, and the confiscation of their property (except in
London, whose great Trading Gilds were too powerful to be meddled with),
was the very meanest and most inexcusable of the plunderings which threw
discredit upon the Reformation.
* * * * *
We have some general reflections to make on these three chapters on
Domestic Chaplains, Chantries, and Gilds.
The appropriation of so many parochial benefices to the religious houses
in the twelfth century had greatly reduced the provision for the parochial
clergy on whom the burden of the parochial care of the people rested. The
institution during the thirteenth century of vicars in the appropriated
parishes, with perpetuity of tenure, fixed endowment, and responsibility
to the bishop, had done something to alleviate the evil. The institution
of the orders of friars in the same thirteenth century had effected a
great revival of religion; and when the work of the new order had settled
down to its normal level it still supplied a valuable auxiliary of
religion among the lower classes of the population. By the end of the
thirteenth century things had settled down. Very few new monasteries were
founded after the twelfth century; very few friaries after the thirteenth
century.
Of the rural benefices many were in the hands of rectors in minor orders
who employed chaplains at such stipends as they could agree with them to
accept. Many in the hands of absentee and pluralist rectors were similarly
served by parish chaplains. The remainder were served by vicars whose
endowments we have seen were small. The natural result of such a state of
things must have been that a great proportion of the rural parishes were
taught and tended by vicars and parish chaplains who might be good men,
doing their duty to the best of their ability, but not always men of the
breeding and learning which would make them very suitable pastors for the
country gentry and their families. It seems probable that, in the fashion
which sprung up among the country gentry at the close of the thirteenth
century, and continued through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of
founding chantries, and entertaining domestic chaplains, the gentry were
seeking to provide for themselves and their families additional and
sometimes more acceptable spiritual teachers and guides. A wealthy lord
sometimes met the difficulty by converting the parish church into a
collegiate church, with a considerable clerical staff adequately endowed.
In the ancient towns, we have seen the parishes were small and their
endowments miserable. In the more modern towns, which had grown into great
towns, with the general increase of the population and its tendency then,
as now, to gravitate into the towns, the one vicar of the one parish
church was often quite unable to cope with the spiritual needs of a large
and difficult flock; and the townspeople themselves sometimes made better
provision for their own spiritual needs. The gilds, which provided two or
three or half a dozen chaplains with singing boys to conduct service in
the parish church, were clearly providing for a more dignified service for
the honour of God than the vicar and his clerk could offer; the _Servicia_
called by the name of this and that saint, seem to have been intended to
multiply the number of services for the greater convenience of the people.
The gild chaplains would certainly be expected to undertake special
personal ministrations--without infringing on the legal rights of the
vicar--to the brothers and sisters of their gild. It is very interesting
to see that the people thus set themselves to supplement the deficiencies
of the ecclesiastical organization, by providing for their own spiritual
needs. It reminds us of the way in which, in more modern times, earnest
people supplied the deficiencies in the supply of their spiritual cravings
by holding “prophecyings” in the time of Elizabeth, and by the foundation
of lectureships in the parish churches in the time of the Georges.