Village Chihs and Associations. 3 



continued to do so till a" very late period ; but as doubts of the 

 propriety of these proceedings came to be felt by the clergy, 

 the guild provided a substitute for the vestry. The halls used 

 for guild meetings and parish feasts were sometimes known as 

 guild-houses, but probably more commonly as church houses. 

 " In most parishes a house was formerly held by the parish, 

 usually called the Church House. In and around this house 

 festive gatherings and public games were periodically held, 

 which did very much to promote good neighbourliness and the 

 maintenance of kindly relations. At these gatherings, 

 collections were generally made, which went to the common 

 stock of the parish, and were applied to all purposes of a 

 secular nature."' 



The spirit of all village associations, which were not confined 

 to any class by nature or rule, found its expression in these 

 earl}' guilds. The results were that mutual insurance and 

 protection were provided for members, communal action was 

 instituted when it was more economical or more conducive to 

 social welfare than individual effort, and more important than 

 all, the villagers voluntarily joined their personalities in a 

 corporate personality, and by mutual control and mutual action, 

 each increased his liberty and power. 



Village Friendly Societies. 



The Church Guilds were swept away by the Reformation, 

 and between the opening of the seventeenth century and 1750 

 little is known of village organisations. But there is reason to 

 believe that all the functions of the village guilds did not dis- 

 appear completely at the time that the craft guilds were 

 dissolved, and although their religious observances ceased, and 

 their property was mostly confiscated, it may, in some cases, 

 have been assigned for the charitable uses for which it had 

 been given or bequeathed, under another form of administra- 

 tion. Village associations doubtless suffered from the growth 

 of the " police state " in England during the early Stuart period. 

 Voluntary association for mutual help and insurance was super- 

 seded by judicial administration of the Poor Law. Still 

 some parishes, as corporations, carried on the work of the 

 earlier voluntary associations. The parish records of Steeple 

 Ashton, in Wiltshire, for example, show clearly that the prin- 

 ciples of the guilds in regard to the weak or unfortunate were 

 still followed. From lt')03 to 1664 these records contain 

 evidence of the action of the parish as a loan society, and the 

 rules governing loans were almost identical with those of the 

 guilds on the one hand and of modern village credit societies 

 on the other. Here are samples : — 



' Toulmin Smith, The Parish, i^T. 



b2 



