fined; and the Warden and Searchers might distrain for such fines, calling in, if necessary, the Mayor's officers. The Bakers undertook to serve the town well with all kinds of bread, and to keep the assize, to pay half the fines to the Mayor and Burgesses and ten shillings yearly for the composition, and not to take apprentices without the consent of the Mayor and the greater part of his brethren. The Warden and Searchers were to come weekly to the Mayor to take their assize to sell by; and the company were to deliver bread to poor women and other of the town to retail the same again, thirteen loaves to the dozen. The Hull Composition was executed by the bakers, and also by the Mayor and Burgesses under their common seal.
It is greatly to be regretted that the account books of the mediaeval Occupations of Leicester have not come down to us. Their testimony to the past life of the town would have been of the highest value. The trading guilds of the Middle Ages, were, as we know, "no mere formal organizations for purposes which ended with the hard toil of the working day." It is highly probable that they developed out of religious guilds. At any rate they were undoubtedly inspired by the same ardent feeling of Christian brotherhood. "The warm blood of the life of the time circulated in them. Their members sat together at the feast, stood by each other's honour in the mart, lived in the same quarter, shared the same purchase, marched side by side in the pageant, acted together in the play, and fought together in the part of the city walls committed to their care. The esprit de corps was as strong among them as among knights of higher rank. Honesty and fair dealing were dear to them, and they followed the bier of the departed, and paid wax for the rest of his soul in peace." Now and then echoes of this ancient life sound faintly in the surviving records of mediaeval Leicester. There is, for instance, the report of a Common Hall which was held on the 26th day of March, 1477, at which the Players who played the Passion Play in the preceding year brought in a bill for certain debts incurred, and asked the Guild Merchant "whether the Passion should be put to the crafts to be bound or nay"; and, at the same time the Players gave to the Pageants all the proceeds
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