tain them. Three wax lights are kept burning every Sunday and feastday, in honour of St. Elene; and at the morning mass of Christmas day, thirteen wax lights are burnt. There are services for the dead, and offerings. Any money in hand at the end of the year is spent in repairing the chapel of the guild, and in gifts to the poor."

The Guild of St. Mary at Beverley were to present a pageant on the Feast of the Purification, when one of the guild shall be clad in comely fashion as a queen, like to the glorious Virgin Mary, having what may seem a son in her arms; and two others shall be clad like to Joseph and Simeon; and ' two shall go as angels, carrying a candle-bearer, on which shall be twenty-four thick wax-lights.' And so they went in procession, each brother and sister also carrying a waxlight, two and two slowly pacing to the church, where the pageant Virgin offered her son to Simeon at the altar, and the sisters and brethren offered their wax-lights, together with a penny each, after which they were to go home with gladness, and then re-assemble to eat bread and cheese and drink ale, and choose officers for the ensuing year.

In the Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Hull, pilgrims to the Holy Land were exempt from their annual payment; just as members of a modern Pall Mall club, absent abroad, are excused their subscriptions.

Very few returns remain in the Record Office of those made by guilds of crafts under the separate writ addressed to them; and the existing returns do not disclose any ordinances, only giving copies of their charters. But examples of ordinances of craft-guilds have been discovered among the archives of the city of Exeter, and printed by the Early English Text Society, to which attention will presently be directed.

The Guild of St. Benedict, and others also, at Lincoln, had a kindly thought for the poor while the brotherhood was feasting. There were to be, on each day of the feast, three flagons, with prayers, and six tankards; and the tankards filled with ale were to be given to the poor who most needed it.

In the Guild of the Resurrection of our Lord, also at Lincoln, the description of the funeral rites to be observed is very full. A hearse was to be put about the body, with thirteen square wax-lights burning in four stands, at placebo, dirige, and mass; with four angels, and four banners of the Passion with a white border and scutcheons of the same powdered with gold. This return is on vellum, and possesses the peculiar interest that it appears not to have been written, but to have been impressed with letter stamps. If the suggestion to this effect, made by Mr. Toulmin Smith, could be verified, this

document would be of infinite value as a contribution towards the history of the art of printing. The Brotherhood of St. Michael on the Hill at Lincoln would seem to have been exceedingly anxious to maintain their independence as a society of common and middling folks;' and to have been very jealous of any interference by the local magnates. One of their ordinances is given to the effect that—

'Whereas this guild was founded by folks of common and middling rank, it is ordained that no one of the rank of mayor or bailiff shall become a brother of the guild, unless he is found to be of humble, good, and honest conversation, and is admitted by the choice and common assent of the bretheren and sisteren of the guild. And none such shall meddle in any matter, unless especially summoned; nor shall such a one take on himself any office in the guild. He shall, on his admission, be sworn before the bretheren and sisteren, to maintain and to keep the ordinances of the guild. And no one shall have any claim to office in this guild on account of the honour and dignity of his personal rank.'

The Fullers of Lincoln are given as an example of a mixed guild, partly a craft-guild, and partly social. There are prohibitory rules, like those of the modern trade-unions, tending to secure a higher standard of work for members of the guild, as well as exclusive employment and holidays :

'None of the craft shall work (i.e. full cloth by treading it with the feet) in the trough; and none shall work at the wooden bar with a woman, unless with the wife of a master or her handmaid.

None of them shall work after dinner on Saturdays, nor on any days which they ought to keep as festivals according to the law of the Church. If a stranger to the city comes in, he may, on giving a penny to the wax, work among the bretheren and sisteren, and his name shall be written in their roll.

'If any one wishes to learn the craft, no one shall teach it to him until he has given two-pence to the wax.'

Among the tailors, there was an ordinance well calculated to keep both masters and journeymen in obedience to the club, as well as to promote the proper termination of engagements:

'If any master of the craft keeps any lad or sewer of another master for one day after he has well known that the lad wrongly left his master, and that they had not parted in a friendly and reasonable manner, he shall pay a stone of wax.'

The value of a pound of wax is elsewhere stated at 7d., so that a fine of a stone of wax would have been a heavy one, amounting to 8s. 2d. of the money of that time. Another regulation that if any master employs a lad as a sewer, the sewer shall pay 6d., or his master for him, is obviously intended for the protection of adult labour, and to prevent the lowering of wages.

A very good-natured spirit is seen in the ordinances of the Lincoln guilds, both of the city and country; and in one of the more rustic societies, where the provisions for help from the guild meet the cases of the loss of a beast, or of damage by fire or theft, there is the following privilege of membership:

'If any brother or any sister has a friend at his house, for love of whom he does not wish to go to the guild; and if there is no retail tavern in the soke where he dwells; he may send for a gallon of the best ale to the bailiff of the guild; and the bailiff shall give it to him.'

But if the absent member was found to have had in fact no guest, but to have stayed at home for idleness, he was most deservedly fined in half a bushel of barley. In other places members might bring their friends as guests to the feasts of the guilds; a custom in which we may perceive the rudiment of the modern hospitable invitation to the excellent dinners of our London city companies. The price of a guild dinner in 1494 was 2d. per head-for priest, man, or woman- -as appears from the ordinances of the guild of St. Katherine at Stamford, preserved in the library of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge, with the additional fact that absence was punished by a fine of a pound of wax (equal to 7d.), and paying besides for the uneaten dinner. These Stamford ordinances are furthermore peculiar in giving a sort of oath of fealty to be taken by new comers; and in ordering the ringing of peals of bells on the feast-day after the prayers for the souls of the dead, for which the ringers were to be regaled with bread, cheese, and drink. The bull-running' at Stamford on St. Martin's day (11th November), now abolished, was anciently and from time immemorial conducted by the guild of St. Martin, who by custom kept a bull to be hunted through the streets by dogs, and then sold. A custom, which, although ancient, was scarcely laudable, and the abolition of which can hardly be regretted by even the most ardent admirer of guilds, and of the times to which they belonged.

At Ludlow there was an old guild of the Palmers, founded in 1284, whose ordinances contain curious provisions for regulating funeral rites:

'If any man wishes, as is common, to keep night-watches with the dead, this will be allowed, on the condition that he neither calls up ghosts, nor makes any mockeries of the body, or its good name, nor does any other scandal of the kind; lest, by such scandals, the discipline of the church may be brought into contempt, and the Great Judge may be provoked to heavier vengeance, who ought rather, by reason of the sins of the people, to be asked for love and mercy. And never shall any woman, unless of the household of the dead, keep such a night-watch.'

Upon this very remarkable ordinance Mr. Toulmin Smith has observed in a note that it implies two things; first, that ghosts can be called up after death; and, secondly, that this may be hindered by the strength of human law. There can be no question that in and long before the fourteenth century, and for long after, it was a fixed and general belief, that the spirits of the dead could be evoked against their own will by the use of appropriate rites and ceremonies; and it is not surprising that this universal faith should be found influencing the rules of a guild. But it is equally clear that those who held this opinion would also be entitled to suppose that by forbidding the use of the necessary arts for raising the dead, they might be able to prevent the dead from being raised.

This guild of the Palmers at Ludlow was an old and important society, dating from the time of Edward I., and when reported upon by the Commissioners of Henry VIII., as set forth in the documents preserved in the Public Record Office, its wealth was considerable. Its yearly revenue was then 1227. 78. 11d., and it possessed 182 ounces of plate, parcel gilt and 'white.'

Passing over many other matters of interest, we come to the very curious ordinances of the guild of Tailors preserved in the archives of the Corporation of Exeter. A custom like that observed at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at other colleges, by which every nobleman and fellow-commoner (while those orders were recognised) made a present of plate to the society, was here in force, and each new member was to give a silver spoon, weighing an ounce, and made in the fashion. The oaths are set forth, as taken by the members and various officers of the guild, and many trade regulations. Examples are also given from the records of the guild of control exercised over the members, both masters and workmen, by the authorities of the society. There is an entry of a complaint by a customer of an alleged case of cabbaging,' when some of the cloth given to a craftsman to be made up, was said to be found wanting in the gown to be produced from iiij yerdes of brod cloth, blew,' for one Master Robert Rydon. But the guild found that there had been no waste, as was proved by the patterns of black paper kept in the common coffer of record; whereupon the complainant submitted himself to the fellowship. In another similar instance, there was a complaint that John Kartor recd iij. yerdes of brod clothe, 'russet, to make a longe gowne to Sr John Walkyngton; 'apoun the whiche the sayde Sr John complayned to the 'Master and Wardons of lackyng of hys clothe.' Here the

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master and wardens found that no cloth had been stolen, but that there had been wasted a quarter of brod cloth for lack ' of kounyng;' and they amerced the incompetent artist by making him pay eleven shillings for the cloth, which may be presumed to have been the whole value of it, as the gown was to be kept by him. The injured customer was less fortunate in another complaint of bad workmanship and deficient material, for he was referred to his remedy at common law, the culprit not being a brother of the guild. This society of tailors at Exeter was still in active existence as late as the reign of James II., when it received a charter from him.

This

It is clear that at Exeter, and also in other cities, the corporations were inclined to be as severe in upholding their own powers and privileges as the feudal lords were in the country districts; and that they viewed with extreme jealousy the independence of the local guilds. Among the ordinances of the Bakers of Exeter, is a provision that all dowers' (doughers or bakers) of the city and suburbs should grind at the city mills, and nowhere else; and it will be remembered that the compulsory grinding at the lord's mill was one of the most burdensome of the old territorial services. At Berwick upon Tweed, also, in the ordinances of the general guild of that town, it is forbidden to grind wheat or other grain in hand-mills. general guild would answer to a modern municipal corporation, and its provisions are such as would now be contained in a local act of parliament, or in municipal bye-laws of the present day. Their date is of 1283, and it is worthy of remark, that the fines are payable in casks of wine, and not in money or in wax. A still better example of ancient local government is afforded by the old usages of Winchester, dating in the fourteenth century, and now printed for the first time from the original among the records of that city; or in the ordinances of Worcester under date of 1467, which supply a very complete code for the purpose. One section provides for the payment of the accustomed wages to the members of parliament for the city, within three months of their return home. In another part of the volume is set out a writ for levying upon a particular township in the shire of Northampton its share of the expenses of the county member, returned to the parliament holden at Cambridge in 1388,-a writ of whose existence Prynne is said to have been ignorant, and which he would no doubt have given his ears to know. It would have been well for him, and for more recent historical inquirers, if one of the guilds which we have not yet mentioned had been well maintained, and if it had enjoyed better