A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



served continuously until the Suppression Act of 1547. Only one of the 

 Leicestershire chantries 74 appears to have maintained a school, yet these 

 were in no sense selfish bequests ; the men who thus strove to secure the 

 offering of masses for their souls after death knew that they had a right to 

 grateful remembrance for providing their parish church or chapel with an 

 additional priest, and often with the means of repairing an old altar or fur- 

 nishing a new one. 



The gilds are usually considered more interesting than the chantries. 

 Of these half-social, half-religious foundations Leicestershire certainly had a 

 goodly number ; they came into existence for the most part about the time 

 of the great pestilence. In the town of Leicester itself ten are known to 

 have existed, the gilds of Corpus Christi, founded about 1 343," St. Mary in 

 I346, 76 St. John in 1355," St. Michael about I36i, 78 St. Margaret before 

 1382," St. George, 80 St. Thomas, 81 St. Katherine, 83 the Holy Cross, 83 and the \ 

 Holy Trinity, 8 * all existing before 1419. At Loughborough in the four- 

 teenth century there were at least five. The gilds of Jesus, Corpus Christi, 

 St. Mary, St. Katherine, and St. George. 85 There was a gild of the Holy 

 Cross at Market Harborough, 86 a gild at Lutterworth, 87 and a gild of the 

 Holy Trinity at Tilton. 88 A careful search in wills of this period would 

 doubtless reveal many more. 



To the close of the fourteenth century belongs that outbreak of indi- 

 vidualism in religious thought which had its origin in the general unsettle- 

 ment of the times and found its chief provocation in the luxurious and 

 worldly lives of the higher clergy. As early as 1286 the Court of Arches 

 had pronounced an official condemnation of heresies concerning the Blessed 

 Sacrament, 89 following the lines laid down by Lanfranc in his controversy 

 with Berengar two hundred years before. It was indeed against the dogma 

 of transubstantiation, as understood in the fourteenth century, that the 

 loudest protests of the Lollards were made. But their criticisms went very 

 much further than this ; and looking back upon them from a distance which 

 places their protests and general teaching in clearer perspective, few would 

 now fail to see that the underlying principle which bound their varying 

 tenets together was revolt against the authority of the church. Nor were 

 the civil authorities of the time so very far wrong when they scented danger 

 here for their own system also. If the connexion between the riots of 1381 



" Nearly thirty are known and will be described in the topographical section of this history. 



75 In St. Martin's Church. North, Cbron. of the Church of St. Martin, 185-7. 



76 Miss Bateson, Rec. of Bon. of Leic. i, 391-2 ; ii, p. Ixi. This was in All Saints' Church, and grew 

 out of the laudable desire to supply the church with an additional priest. 



" In the chapel of St. John's Hospital, connected with a chantry founded by Peter Saddler. Ibid, ii, 

 p. Ixii. 78 Ibid, i, 399. " Nichols, Letc. i, 561. 



80 In St. Martin's. North, Cbron. of the Ch. of St. Martin, 237-4.0. 



61 Gibbons, Early Lincoln Wills, 152. 8J Ibid. M Ibid. 



54 In St. Mary de Castro. Nichols, Lite, i, 305-7. 



65 Dimock Fletcher, Chapters in the History of Loughborough. 



M Stocb and Bragg, Market Harborough, 164. " P.R.O. Chant. Cert. No. 31. 



** Gibbons, Early Lincoln Wills, 1 1 6. The object of these gilds, their annual feasts, processions, and 

 commemorations have been so often described in recent works that there is no need to enlarge upon them 

 here. The greater gilds of Leicester Corpus Christi, St. George, and the Holy Trinity are fully treated 

 in North's Chron. of the Ch. of St. Martin, Miss Bateson's Rec. of the Bora, of Leic. and Nichols' Leic. i. The 

 only ones mentioned in the Chantry Certificate of 1547 are the gilds of St. Margaret and of Corpus Christi 

 at Leicester, and the gild of Lutterworth, possibly because these alone had lands. 



89 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), i, 281. 



364 



