A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



' all and singular chaplains as well parochial as 

 chapels.' He recited that 



by long custom it had been granted and it had from 

 time whereof there is no memory peacefully obtained 

 that no one should dare to teach boys their psalters 

 or singing without the licence of the master of the 

 Assembly of Twelve {congregacionis duodene) ; and we 

 are informed that there are some who presume to 

 keep adulterine schools in parish churches and in 

 chapels and other places in our territory aforesaid to 

 the prejudice of the master aforesaid and the peril of 

 their own souls. 



He ordered the parochial and other chaplains to 

 inhibit all such persons on pain of excommuni- 

 cation from presuming 



to do such things henceforth without the licence of 

 the master, in the places aforesaid or elsewhere 

 except in the Song School. 



Any disobeying were to be summoned before the 

 sacrist at Glashows, from which place he dated 

 his letter, on Thursday after 24 February. 



The reference to the Assembly of Twelve 

 explains an institution which has been a 

 matter of mystery and some bad guessing. It 

 refers undoubtedly to the gild, which in a will 

 of 1435 1 is called 'the gilde of the translacione 

 of Seynt Nicholas, otherwyse called Dusgilde,' 

 of which a leaden token has been found with 

 the inscription : Signum Gilde S. Nichi Congre- 

 gacio Dune. Various wild derivations have been 

 made and assigned to explain the word Dusse. 

 One was that it might have been the mark of 

 the merchant gild with their Pie-poudre or Dusty 

 foot court" (!) and another that it was a corrup- 

 tion of Deus. It is clear that Dusse is merely 

 a corruption, or rather anglification, of Douze, 

 i.e. twelve. In a Latin will made in 1 4 1 8, Agnes 

 Stubbard gave ' to two chaplains gilde de dusze 

 3;. 4^., and to the rest of the chaplains of the 

 said gild each of them 2s. A ' Priourof Dusgylde ' 

 is mentioned in the will of John Baret in 1435 

 already quoted. In 1503 John Coote bequeathed 

 ' to Seynt Nicholas Gild named Dusse gild holden 

 in the colage 3s. 4^.' The college was a much 

 later foundation, which was not yet incorporate, 

 when John Smith, the founder of what is called 

 the Guildhall Feoffment Charity, made his will 

 12 December, 1 480, and gave land to it ' when- 

 somever the said collage be so incorporate.' It 

 was the Gild of Jesus, and incorporated shortly 

 afterwards. 



In 1 28 1, 3 on Edward I's visit to Bury in 

 the course of raising a forced loan for the con- 

 quest of Wales, the brotherhood of the twelve 

 {Fraternitas duodene ville S. Edmundi) was taxed 

 12 marks towards it, while the abbot and con- 

 vent contributed 100 marks. A contribution of 



1 Bury Wills (Camd. Soc. 49), 35. 'Ibid. 230. 



3 Cont. Chron. Flor. Wigorn. 2 2 ed. B. Thorpe, 

 (Engl. Hist. Soc. 1849). The continuation is by 

 John of Taxter, a monk of Bury. 



this magnitude points to the possession of con- 

 siderable property and a well-established organiza- 

 tion. In London the Gild of St. Nicholas was 

 the gild of the parish clerks, who were persons 

 in minor orders, whose duty, or at all events 

 practice, it was to keep song and reading schools. 

 At Lincoln 4 in 1305 we saw the precentor 

 summoning all the parish clerks of the city for 

 keeping adulterine schools and teaching song and 

 music to the prejudice of the song schoolmaster 

 of the cathedral. But this Bury gild seems to 

 have consisted of priests. The requirement of 

 their licence for the establishment of song schools 

 remains at present unexplained. One can only 

 conjecture that it was in some way representa- 

 tive of the parish chaplains and clerks, and was 

 therefore interested in preventing undue com- 

 petition from unlicensed persons. 



On 1 May, 1370, 5 Abbot John Tynemouth, 

 very much in the language of the document of 

 1 29 1, which is written below it, evidently for 

 use as a precedent, addressed a letter to 'all and 

 singular the parish priests of Bury St. Edmunds 

 and their vicegerents.' He informed them that 

 by long custom without the licence of the song 

 schoolmaster {magisttr scolarutn cantus) no one 

 ought to teach boys in the town aforesaid their 

 psalters or singing (psalteria vel canturn), but he 

 understood that in divers places in the town 

 illicit schools were held, and he directed the 

 excommunication of all those who without the 

 master's licence presumed to keep school except 

 in the song school, and if they objected they 

 were to appear before him in St. Robert's 

 Chapel. Nothing is said in this instance of 

 the Douze Gild. 



But on 12 May, 1426, Brother William 

 Barrow (Barwe), sacrist, addressing the parish 

 chaplains of the town, puts the gild in the fore- 

 front and gives them a very high antiquity : — 



Whereas our beloved in Christ, the clerks of the 

 Assembly of the Twelve (congregacionis duodene), within 

 our jurisdiction of Bury by their charters from the 

 most holy King Edward and other kings of England, 

 also by charter of the most holy Abbot Baldwin and 

 other abbots of the monastery aforesaid, amongst 

 other things have this privilege (libertatcm) that none 

 within the town of Bury ought 6 to administer teach- 

 ing of reading or singing without the licence of the 

 clerks of the assembly aforesaid first obtained for the 

 purpose. 



The song school has now definitely become 

 also apparently a reading school, as literature here 

 does not seem to be used in the sense of grammar 

 but of the elements of literature, letters or read- 

 ing, meaning reading Latin. 



'V.C.H. Line, ii, 'Schools.' 



5 Harl. MS. 645, fol. 67 (86 pencil). 



6 Quod nullus infra villam de Bury supradictam 

 doctrinam literature sive cantus alicui debeat mini- 

 strare sine licencia clericorum congregacionis predicte 

 ad hoc per prius optenta. 



310 



