A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



apparently been infringed by the canons of St. Augustine's Abbey, who were 

 especially summoned with the whole clergy and laity of Bristol to be present 

 at the inquiry. The inquisition found that the gild of 



the said Brotherhood was formerly called the Gild or Brotherhood (Gilda seu Frarid) of the 

 community of the clergy and people of Bristol, and that the place of assembly (congregacionis) 

 of the brethren and sisters of the same used to be at the church of the Holy Trinity, Bristol, 

 in the time of Aylward Mean and Bristoic his son, lords of the said town before the last 

 conquest of England ; the beginning of which gild and brotherhood passes the memory of 

 man. 



It must be admitted that Bristoic looks remarkably like an eponymous hero 

 evolved out of the name of the town. But there is every reason to believe that 

 the gild existed before the Conquest. It is confirmatory of the extremely early 

 origin of the gild, which took its name from meeting on the Kalends, or first 

 day of the month, that this gild is not unique in England, but had at least one 

 other congener of the same name in the extremely ancient Kalendars' Gild of 

 Winchester. The Inquisition proceeds to say that 



in the time of the Lord Henry Fitz Empress king of England, one Robert Hardyng, burgess 

 of Bristol, by the consent of King Henry and Earl Robert and others interested, translated 

 (transtulit) the said gild or brotherhood from Holy Trinity church to the church of All 

 Saints, and established 1 the school of Bristol for teaching Jews and other little ones under 

 the government of the said gild and the protection of the mayor of Bristol for the time being ; 

 and rounded the monastery of St. Augustine in the suburb of the said town, and appropriated 

 the church of All Saints to it, with a vicar to be elected from the chaplains of the said 

 gild and brotherhood, to be presented by the abbot and convent to the bishop of Worcester, 

 and made the monastery pay the vicar a certain portion under the title of rectory. All this 

 was solemnly confirmed by the cardinal legate Gualo in the general council held at Bristol 

 after he had crowned Henry III at Gloucester, and he enjoined William of Blois (le Bleys) 

 bishop of Worcester to protect and approve the said gild and brotherhood to the praise of 

 God and All Saints and the devotion and union of the clergy and people of Bristol, and 

 procured the confirmation by the apostolic see of all the rights and goods [a term which 

 included immovable as well as movable property] and took them under the protection of 

 the apostolic see, and the bishops of Worcester approved and confirmed the said gild and 

 brotherhood. 



There the report suddenly ends, the dean of Christianity of Bristol, who held 

 the inquiry, saying ' of many more things we inquired, all of which, on 

 account of length, we could not write.' So the lazy commissioner has 

 cheated us of further interesting details about the school and gild. 



Enough is said, however, to show that the school was in existence before 

 the abbey, though whether we are to infer that it existed in the church of 

 All Saints before the transfer of the Kalendars' gild there, or that it was 

 transferred there as part of the gild, or where it was, is left uncertain. 



It is amazing that Robert Fitzharding or the gild should have 

 established or maintained a school for Jews. But there was a great out- 

 break of persecution of the Jews owing to the anti-oriental and fanatically 

 Christian feelings evoked by the second crusade, in which St. Bernard of 

 Clairvaux was the prime mover, just at the time when Robert Fitzharding 

 was founding the Augustinian Abbey. In 1 146 the crusade was determined 

 upon 2 by Conrad III of Germany, and in H48 3 the abbey church was conse- 

 crated. The persecution of the Jews went to such lengths in Germany and 



1 Ac scolas Bristolie pro Judeis et aliis parvulis informandis sub disposicione dicte frarie stabilivit et pro- 

 teccione Maioris Bristolie qui pro tempore fuerit. 



1 T. A. Archer, The Crusades, 212. * T. Smyth, The Berkeltys, ed. by Sir J. Maclean. 



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