NOTES ON TIDESWELL CHURCH. 119 
number of chantry chaplains had seats in the great choir of this 
church. The extent to which the interests of commerce were 
served by such brotherhoods, and their influence on the liberties 
of England, must not entirely put out of view their distinctly 
religious and charitable objects. If, as I believe, this Guild of St. 
-Mary (comprehending, as it did, the clergy, nobility, and work- 
people, male and female, of this district) more than occupied the 
place of our present sick clubs or Friendly Societies in popular 
regard, if, as I conjecture, it was established with a view to 
protect and further, in its secular aspect, the mining operations of 
the Peak, we gain some adequate notion of the reasons which may 
have determined the size and importance of this church. If your 
investigations should lead to the discovery of another old guild as 
existing in the South Transept, possibly under the name of St. 
Catherine (for dedications under the names of St. John the 
Baptist, St. Mary, St. Catherine, and the Holy Trinity, are some- 
times met with in guild churches, as at Coventry), I shall not be 
surprised. The ancient guilds had some connection with educa- 
tion. In a letter which lately appeared in a church paper it is 
nientioned that Bishop Pursglove received part of his early 
education at Tideswell. I do not know on what authority this 
statement is made, but it is a matter of history that one of the 
chaplains serving in this church did obtain the post of school- 
master in the Grammar School, founded in Elizabeth’s reign by 
Bishop Pursglove at Tideswell, after the dissolution of the chantries 
ordered in the reign of Edward VI. 
III. WHEN TIDESWELL CHURCH was BUILT. 
The date of this church might almost conclusively be fixed from 
a view of its ground plan. A more characteristic ground plan of 
a fourteenth century church could not be found. The building 
was begun and completed, it may be pretty confidently asserted, 
in the reign of Edward III.—a period in English history second 
in importance to none. Architecture cannot well be investigated 
apart from history. Referring to the times in which Tideswell’ 
Church was built, three prominent names meet us at once—the 
