146 The Fraternities of Sarum. 
The outcome of this commission was that the whole were con- 
fiscated and suppressed, not because any abuse or fault was even 
so much as charged to their account, but simply to satisfy the 
personal greed of an unscrupulous faction under cover of law. So 
complete was the ruin and destruction that even the very names of 
multitudes of these useful institutions have been forgotten. Mr. 
Toulmin Smith, a very unbiassed witness, says :— 
“No more gross case of wanton plunder is to be found in the history of all 
Europe. No page so black in English history.” 
I should like to close this paper with a quotation from the late 
Dr. Rock, because it seems to me a hopeful and encouraging sign 
that from the people themselves, and not from the action of the 
clergy alone, there appears to be a strong tendency to recur to the 
idea of the Fraternity :— 
“Each Gild’s first steps were bent towards their church, where solemn High 
Mass was chanted. Thence went all the brotherhood to their hall for their 
festive dinner. The processions on the occasions and other amusements so dear 
to Englishmen when the country was merry England, were meant to be edifying 
and instructive ; and helped religion to make her children both good and happy, 
through even their recreations. This present age—[the book was published 
many years ago]—with its stepmother’s chill heart, dull eye, and hard iron like 
feeling, that sees naught but idleness in a few hours’ harmless pause from toil, 
and knows nothing but unthriftiness in money spent in pious ceremonial, and 
thinks that the God who sprinkled the blue heavens with silvery stars and 
strewed the green earth with sweet breathing flowers of a thousand hues, and 
taught the birds to make every grove to ring with their blithe songs, and told 
the little brook to run forth with a gladsome ripple, all in worship of Himself, 
can be best and most honoured by the highest and noblest of his wonderful works 
—the soul of man—the more gloomy, the more mopish, the sourer it is—such 
an age will not understand the good which in a moral and social point of view 
was bestowed upon this country by the religious pageants, and pious plays and 
interludes of a by-gone epoch. Through such means, however, not only were 
the working classes furnished with needful relaxation, but their very merry- 
makings instructed while they diverted them.” 
