ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



high altar on all Sundays and festivals. For members of their own company 

 fifteen tapers were burnt at the death-bed and in the church at the funeral, 

 while alms were given to a number of poor." 



Curiously enough no further reference to any of these gilds has been 

 found, and possibly they, like the gilds of St. Alban, the Holy Trinity and 

 St. John the Baptist at St. Albans," were suppressed by the authorities for 

 actual or suspected dealings in sedition. 



Little is known of the Hertfordshire gilds during the first half of 

 the 1 5th century. A good instance of the incorporation of a gild is 

 found in that of the Blessed Virgin in the church of St. Andrew, Hitchin, 

 constituted under a master and two wardens by licence of 1475.^* At Hitchin 

 this corporation did not apparently become the centre of town life as did the 

 gild of All Saints at St. Albans under pressure of the struggle between the abbey 

 and the town," and indeed at no other place in the county were conditions 

 favourable for the development of the gild into the municipality. At 

 Bishop's Stortford, where the gild of St. John the Baptist was founded in 

 1484—5,'° the Reformation brought no loosening of the authority of the 

 Bishops of London, while at Hatfield, Berkhampstead and Ware the gilds 

 seem to have been comparatively unimportant. 



The difficulty of estimating the number of gilds and fraternities exist- 

 ing in the i6th century is considerable. Many had no endowments and 

 were maintained by collections and the casual bequests by which their 

 names have been preserved. At Tring, for instance, there was in 1533 a 

 gild of the Blessed Trinity." St. John the Baptist was the patron of the 

 gild of Ashwell "^ and of that at Berkhampstead, which was endowed with 

 the lands afterwards granted to Dean Incent for his grammar school there.'' 

 At Stevenage the gild of the Holy Trinity had, in common with most gilds, 

 a ' brotherhood-house ' '* ; the fraternity of the Name of Jesus at Baldock '' 

 also had lands and was of some importance. 



Harmless as these associations may appear they were undoubtedly viewed 

 with suspicion by the State, and in 15th-century licences for the formation 

 of gilds it was usual to insert clauses intended to prevent the use of the 

 fraternity for political ends. The nature of the connexion between the 

 political and religious movements of the late 14th and early 15th centuries 

 has long been the subject of debate, and it is not proposed to enter into the 

 subject in this place. The fact that John Ball had incurred excommunica- 

 tion and had refused to come into obedience within forty days'* on at least 

 three occasions is no proof of LoUardy,'' though it points to a stirring and 

 disdainful state of mind such as might be expected in a leader of rebellion. 



To the townsfolk of St. Albans, struggling to obtain borough liberties, 

 the contrast between the profession of the head of that Benedictine house 

 and his actual position as a great landlord can hardly have failed to be a 



" Chan. Misc. file 39, no. 67. i' See F.C.H. Herts, ii, 480. 



18 Cal. Pat. 1467-77, p. 542. " See F.C.H. Herts, ii, 480-1. 



«o Glasscock, Rec. of St. Michael's, 118. " P.C.C. 3 Hogen (Will of William Tattorne). 



" Archd. of St. Albans Wills, Wallingford, 118, 120. ^' Salmon, op. cit. 124. 



" P.C.C. 15 Home (Will of William Matthew) ; Pat. 5 & 6 Phil, and Mary, pt. iii, m. 11. 

 '5 Archd. of St. Albans, Wills, loc. cit. ; P.C.C. 1 1 Adeane (Will of Robert Stanford) ; Aug. Off. Misc. 

 Bks. Ixviii, fol. 270 d. 



'^ Chan. Significations of Excommunication, file 10. *' cf. Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 26. 



