SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



tunity, if they were so disposed, of lending capital to poorer members. The 

 accounts belonging to the opening of the i6th century of the gild at Bard- 

 well illustrate the operation of loans of live stock. The gild let out in one 

 year eight cows, and 4 neats at 19^. each, also four wethers. It may be 

 added that this gild had at the time 134 members, nearly half of whom were 

 women, there being thirty-three married couples, and that its officers included 

 an alderman, a chaplain, a cook, a minstrel, and a guardian of lights.'" 



Another aspect of gild activity that cannot be overlooked was the pro- 

 vision of annual pageants. These were usually the work of the Corpus 

 Christi gilds. In 1325 we find the priors of Holy Trinity and of St. Peter's, 

 Ipswich, assisting the town authorities to organize a series of Corpus Christi 

 celebrations which were to represent the merchant gild on its religious side, 

 and which culminated in the ceremonial washing of the feet of thirteen poor 

 men. In the 15th century some forty trades took part in the procession, 

 marshalled in a dozen groups under the banners of as many patron saints." 

 A similar annual procession took place at Bury. The ordinances of the 

 Weavers' Gild for 1477, which constitute the only definite and detailed account 

 we possess of a Suffolk craft guild before the Reformation, provide that half 

 the fines are to go to the maintenance of the pageant of the Ascension of our 

 Lord God and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost . . . among other pageants in 

 the feast of Corpus Christi.*' 



Bungay too, had its Corpus Christi celebrations. In 15 15 five men of 

 Bungay were brought before the Star Chamber for having riotously broken 

 down five pageants — heaven pageant, the pageant of all the world, paradise 

 pageant, Bethlehem pageant, and hell pageant. The motive for this assault 

 was not an outburst of iconoclastic zeal. The malcontents considered the 

 pageants to be worn out, and were anxious to bear their part in renewing the 

 symbols of eternity. 



The multiplication of gilds had not the effect of checking bequests by 

 individuals for the endowment of chantries, obits, and lights, which had 

 probably never been so numerous as they were in the last half of the 15th 

 century. The ' briefe certyficatt ' drawn up in 1548 enumerates over three 

 hundred [of these] endowments, varying in value from 2d. yearly for a light 

 to ^5 or £6 for a chantry and three or four hundred pounds for a college of 

 clergy.'' The College of St. John the Baptist, founded by Edmund, Earl of 

 March, and Ulton, Lord of Wigmore and Clare, at Stoke by Clare, in 141 9, 

 consisted of i dean, 6 canons, 8 vicars, 4 clerks, i verger, i porter, 3 choristers, 

 and 2 priests, was worth yearly >C383 i4-f. 8^. and had a free school attached 

 to it." 



But if the gilds did not displace the chantries they absorbed a certain 

 number of them. Their immortal character as corporations seemed to offer 

 security for the perpetual performance of religious services desired by pious 

 testators. Thus all members of the gild of the Purification of Our Lady at 

 Bury were required to swear on entry to fulfil the wills of John Smith and 

 Margaret Odham, which were read at the annual dinner, and after the dinner 

 all members were to kneel and say the De Profundis ... for the souls of 



" A ' Pre-Reformation Village Gild,' Proc. Suff. Arch. Inst. xi. " V. B. Redstone, op. cit. 8. 



** Hist. MSS. Com Rep. xiv, App. viii, 134. " V. B. Redstone, op. cit. 74 ; V.C.H. Suff. ii, 29. 



" V. B. Redstone, op. cit. 48 ; V.C.H. Suff. ii, 145. 



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