140 The Fraternities of Sarum. 
same difficulty to the front. But I hope it will be understood how 
essential it is to be clear as to which must be attributed to the one 
class of association or the other. Craft Gilds, from the nature of 
things, must be almost entirely confined to the towns. But the 
Fraternities, which are my particular subject, were very much more 
widely spread. You will allow me to emphasise, therefore, that I 
have now left the other classes, the Gild Merchant and the Craft 
Gilds, and purpose to confine myself to what have been called the 
Social or Religious Gilds, but which, as I think, would be better 
called the Fraternities. In every town and in every parish of any 
size these friendly associations, made for mutual aid and contribution, 
were institutions of local self help, which before poor-laws were 
invented took the place in old times of the modern friendly society, 
the benefit society, or in wider terms of all the organisations by 
which under the names of clubs and so on parish work is carried 
on at the present day. In fact, it is a characteristic of our time 
that Gilds for social and religious purposes are everywhere being 
resumed, the old names being re-adopted. 
There is no getting at the beginning of them, and no drawing 
lines of limitation for their varied forms. They were lay bodies 
and existed for lay purposes, and the better to enable those who 
belonged to them rightly and intelligibly to fulfil their neighbourly 
duties, as free men in a free state. They were usually called by 
the name of the saint to whom they were dedicated, the most popular 
names being St. George, Corpus Christi, the Fraternity of Jesus, 
the Fraternity of Our Lady, and so on. In Salisbury there were 
the Gild of Saint George, the Brotherhood of the Jesus Mass in 
Saint Edmund’s Church, the Fraternity of the Holy Ghost in Saint 
Martin’s Church, and in Saint Thomas’s one which, like that at St. 
Edmund’s, seems to have been called the Fraternity of the Jesus Mass. 
There was one at Andover, called after the Virgin Mary, and I 
want to mention one at Basingstoke, the Fraternity of the Holy 
Ghost, because its ruined chapel, so close to the railway station, 
may serve as a continual reminder of the subject to all who travel. 
Their number throughout the country was very great, a parlia- 
mentary return was made in 1388 of five hundred gilds existing at 
