A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



there being thirty-eight for the whole county, of which nineteen belong to Bury. 

 Many of the Bury gilds undoubtedly owed their origin to the religious character 

 of the town as a place of pilgrimage. Two at least were distinctly clerical in 

 composition, and one of these — the Gild of the Clerks of Glemsford — was a 

 survival from an earlier period of gild creation, the other — the Gild of 

 St. Nicholas — having ordinances dated 1282. Of the rest, two claimed an 

 origin in time whereof there was no memory ; and five had no date assigned 

 to them. The dates of the remaining ten are spread over the 14th century 

 two claiming 80 years of existence, one 70, one 60, two 40, and one 30, 

 whilst the other three were of recent origin. The local distribution of the 

 score of gilds recorded as existing in 1389 outside Bury is very remarkable. 

 No less than eleven of them were to be found in the hundred of Lackford, 

 where some of the most terrible scenes of the rising were enacted, and all 

 the rest except the two gilds of Beccles belonged to the south-western district, 

 of which Bury is the centre. All of them had come into existence during 

 the thirty years which intervened between the coming of the pestilence and 

 the insurrection.'^' 



Whether the rapid spread of this ostensibly religious institution had (as 

 the government undoubtedly feared) any direct and conscious connexion with 

 the social and political aspirations of the peasants or not remains uncertain, 

 but it is quite clear that it furnishes an unmistakable indication of social 

 development and of comparative economic prosperity. The gild has been very 

 aptly called a co-operative chantry, and the multiplication of gilds represents 

 one of the main elements of social progress — the advance made by the 

 associative principle, not so much in displacing as in supplementing the 

 narrower ties of the family. This influence is naturally most active in 

 towns and in such industrial districts as West Suffolk was coming to be 

 at the end of the 14th century. But in the century that followed, gilds, 

 and even in many cases gildhalls, sprang up all over rural Suffolk. A list 

 of some 120, taken by Mr. Redstone from wills and from the returns of 

 the Royal Commission at the time of the suppression, represents practi- 

 cally every part of the county. The primary objects of these fraternities 

 were in all cases religious. The performance of due obsequies for the de- 

 parted and the continual care for the welfare of their souls came first, and 

 with these objects were closely associated the provision of religious con- 

 solations for the living, the enlargement and adornment of churches, the 

 endowment of altar lights and services. But wherever fuller ordinances have 

 come down to us, we almost invariably find some form of charitable provision 

 for the sick, the disabled and the poor of the fraternity. The fund for these 

 purposes was provided only in part by the regular contributions of members 

 which were not large (there was a halfpenny fraternity at Beccles), and was 

 supplemented largely by the bequests of the more well to do — gifts of land 

 or corn or cattle as well as of money. The score of Suffolk gilds reported on 

 at the Reformation as possessing property, held it mostly in the form of 

 ready money, amounting to ^9 or ;^io in some cases. But it is not 

 unlikely that the gilds had been selling their property in view of spoliation. 

 The administration of real estate thus held in joint ownership was not only a 

 valuable educational experience for the villagers, but afforded them the oppor- 



" V. B. Redstone, ' Chapels, Chantries, and Gilds in Suffolk/ in Froc. c/Suff. Arch. Inst. xii. 



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