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. 659
