Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T00:06:54.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The guilds of homo prudens in late medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Barbara A. Hanawalt  and
Ben R. McRee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , August 1992 , pp. 163 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ENDNOTES

1 The original text was in Latin (PRO C47/46/454). This translation is taken from Smith, Toulmin and Smith, Lucy Toulmin eds, English gilds; the original ordinances of more than 100 English gilds, Early English Texts Society, orig. ser. 40 (London, 1870), 137–9.Google Scholar

2 Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and his world, trans. Iswolsky, Helene (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar. Davis, Natalie Zemon, Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, 1975), 97–186Google Scholar. Ladurie, Emmanuel LeRoy, Carnival in Romans, trans. Feeney, Mary (New York, 1979).Google Scholar Each of these works applies anthropological principles to various forms of public behaviour in sixteenth-century France. Medieval English society had its revelries as well. See, for example, Phythian-Adams, Charles, ‘Ceremony and the citizen: the communal year at Coventry, 1450–1550’, in Crisis and order in English towns, 1550–1700, ed. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul (London, 1972), esp. pp. 66–9.Google Scholar

3 In recent studies, social-religious guilds have received attention from scholars working on other topics. Galpern, A. N., The religions of the people in sixteenth-century Champagne (Cambridge, MA, 1976), pp. 52–70Google Scholar, saw them as examples of the piety of the common people and of the corporate nature of late medieval society. Pullan, Brian, Rich and poor in Renaissance Venice; the social institutions of a Catholic state to 1620 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, emphasized the ceremonial and charitable functions of guilds. Phythian-Adams, Charles, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 118–25Google Scholar, described Coventry's guilds as part of the town's government and essential to its social stability. Gottfreid, Robert, Bury St Edmunds and the urban crisis, 1290–1539 (Princeton, 1982), 180–92Google Scholar, viewed guilds as a base of political power for the burghal elite and a source of charity. Chiffleau, Jacques, La Comptabilité de l' au-delà: les hommes, la mart et la religion dans la région d' Avignon à la fin du moyen âge (vers 1320–vers 1480) (Rome, 1980), 167–285Google Scholar, linked confraternities to the growing fascination with funeral ceremonies and death. Weissman, Ronald F. E., Ritual brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), esp. pp. 107–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, saw the Florentine organizations as social networks that transcended the traditional boundaries of parish and quarter. Barren, Caroline M., ‘The parish fraternities of medieval London’, in The Church in pre-Reformation society, ed. Barron, Caroline M. and Harper-Bill, Christopher (Dover, NH, 1985), 13–37Google Scholar, has discussed the functions of London parish guilds. Earlier studies of social-religious guilds were very biased. Lujo Brentano wrote the introductory essay to the Smìths' volume and ascribed to the guilds the beginnings of the trade union movement. Walford, Cornelius, Gilds: their origin, constitution, objects, and later history (London, 1879)Google Scholar, worked for an insurance company and saw the guilds as the original mutual benefit societies. Westlake, H. F., The parish gilds of medieval England (London, 1919)Google Scholar, whose book was published by a religious house, saw them as the ideal form of lay piety.

4 Gottfreid, , Bury St Edmunds, 8–10Google Scholar; Phythian-Adams, Charles, ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’, in Towns in societies, ed. Abrams, Philip and Wrigley, E. A. (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; Dobson, R. B., ‘Urban decline in late medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 27 (1977), 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Le Bras, Gabriel, Institutions écclesiastiques de la Chrétienneté médievale, pt I (Paris, 1964), pp. 416–17Google Scholar. He expanded his statement somewhat in L'Eglise et le village (Paris, 1976), 162–4.Google Scholar

6 The guild returns are housed in the Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) in London in classification C. 17, bundles 38–46. A number have been published. ‘Those in English along with translations of selected returns in Latin and French appear in the Smiths’ Early English Text Society volume. A valuable summary of their contents was printed as an appendix to Westlake, Parish Gilds, pp. 138–238Google Scholar. Since Westlake's work appeared, nine new returns, found in other documents, have been added. The summaries in the Westlake volume are generally accurate but inconsistent in the amount of information given. A systematic analysis of the returns requires reference to the original documents. The returns contain information on the guilds' religious celebrations and dates of founding. In addition they may list their assets, if they had any, their membership requirements, services they performed for the members, and burial provisions.

7 The precise figure was 79.4 per cent. This must be regarded as a minimum, however, because a guild was not counted as open to both men and women unless the return made a specific reference to guild sisters. The language of the returns did not always require references to the sex of members.

8 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York, Surtees Society, 57 (1872)Google Scholar; The Register of the Gild of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, St John the Baptist, and St Katherine of Coventry, ed. Harris, Mary Dormer, Dugdale Society, 3 (London, 1935)Google Scholar; The Records of the Guild of Holy Trinity, St Mary, St John the Baptist, and St Katherine of Coventry, ed. Templeman, Geoffrey, Dugdale Society, 19 (Oxford, 1944).Google Scholar

9 Suffolk County Record Office, Bury St Edmunds: Ace. 2113/7/2/1, of. 3–6. Records have also been investigated in Warren, F. W., ‘A pre-Reformation Gild’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology XI (1903), 135.Google Scholar

10 Cambridge Gild Records, ed. Bateson, Mary, Cambridge Antiquarian Society Publications, 39 (Cambridge, 1903).Google Scholar

11 See, for example, the Holy Trinity guild in Cambridge: PRO C. 47/38/11.

12 Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, p. xiiGoogle Scholar. Chiffoleau, , La Comptabilité de l' au-delà, pp. 274–76Google Scholar, found that the village guilds tended to include all people but the guild officers were upper-status villagers. He also found that the urban guilds were, for the most part, open.

13 Phythian-Adams, , Desolation, 139–40.Google Scholar

14 Chiffoleau, , La Comptabilité de l' au-delà, p. 278Google Scholar, found that 55 per cent of the testators belonged to two or more fraternities and in the course of the fifteenth century they belonged to more and more.

15 Boissevain, Jeremy, Friends of friends: networks, manipulators, and coalitions (Oxford, 1974).Google Scholar

16 Cambridge gild records, xxxiii.Google Scholar

17 The only way to demonstrate definitively that the guilds were generally open in rural areas would be to have membership lists. These, obviously, have not survived the demise of the guilds. Bardwell, which we cited earlier, is one of the few and it shows open membership. On the other hand, the rural guilds represented in the 1389 returns all had low enough membership fees to permit all but the poorest to belong.

18 Information on St Mary's Guild comes from Cambridge gild records.

19 For lists of officials see Maitland, Frederick W., Township and borough (Cambridge, 1898), 134–41.Google Scholar

20 Probably more of the members held Guild office but the records for the officers cover only the period from 1298 to 1319. Seven of those serving as bailiffs eventually became mayors with an average gap of 11.3 years between the offices.

21 Phythian-Adams, , Desolation, 118–23.Google Scholar

22 Rye, Walter, ‘The Guilds of Lynn Regis’, The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany I (1877), 153–83Google Scholar; Hilton, R. H., The English peasantry in the later middle ages (Oxford, 1975), 92–3Google Scholar; Carus-Wilson, E. M., ‘The first half-century of the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XVIII (1965), 62–3.Google Scholar

23 Weissman, , Ritual brotherhood, 160–1.Google Scholar

24 For a fuller discussion of the conservative religious nature of the guilds and their relation to Lollardy, see Hanawalt, Barbara A., ‘Keepers of the lights: late medieval English parish gilds’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984), 21–37.Google Scholar See also Brigden, Susan, ‘Religion and social obligation in early sixteenth-century London’, Past and Present (1984), 67–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English people (Oxford, 1984), 19–39Google Scholar; and Bossy, John, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), 58–63.Google Scholar

25 PRO C. 47/38/10 and 38/4 respectively. Cambridge's status as a university town may have played a part in these regulations. One can imagine that the townsmen did not want students joining; a typical town vs. gown manoeuvre.

26 PRO C. 47/39/92, 41/175.

27 Heath, Peter, The English parish clergy on the eve of the Reformation (London, 1969).Google Scholar

28 This point was made often in the chantry certificates dissolving the guilds. See, for example, the certificate for the Holy Cross Gild in Birmingham (PRO E. 301/31/no. 28) where guild priests were described as essential at Easter services.

29 For one aspect of this grooming, see McRee, Ben R., ‘Religious gilds and the regulation of behavior in late medieval towns’, in Rosenthal, Joel and Richmond, Colin eds., People, politics and community in the later Middle Ages (Alan Sutton: Gloucester, 1987), 108–22.Google Scholar

30 PRO C. 47/38/4.

31 Many of the guilds of King's Lynn had such regulations. See. for example, PRO C. 47/42/24.

32 Bloch, Marc, Les Caractères originaux de l' histoire rurale française (Cambridge, 1941), 176Google Scholar. Thrupp, Sylvia, ‘Gilds’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. VI (New York, 1968), 185.Google Scholar

33 Bras, Le, L'Eglise et le village, 164Google Scholar. Chiffoleau, , La Comptabilité de l' au-delà, 266–74Google Scholar, found a rapid growth of confraternities in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Unlike the earlier ones which were implicated in heretical plots, he argues that the new ones were religiously conservative. He does not discuss a possible political role. English evidence also suggests that guilds increased in popularity in the fourteenth century. As in France, their popularity was partly a response to the increased emphasis on Purgatory by the Church. Membership in the guilds was one of the best ‘insurance policies’ that a lay person could purchase because guilds would say prayers for the soul of their decreased members. See Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the lights.’ On the concern over renewed unrest in England, see Tuck, J. A., ‘Nobles, commons and the Great Revolt of 1381’, in Hilton, R. H. and Aston, T. H. eds., The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), 208–11.Google Scholar

34 For Abingdon, see Victoria County History of Berkshire, vol. 4, ed. Page, William (London, 1924), 438–9Google Scholar. On the York guild see Sayles, George, ‘The dissolution of a gild at York in 1306’, English Historical Review 55 (1940), 83–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For St Albans, see Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, ed. Page, William, vol. 2 (London, 1908), 480, and vol. 4 (1923), 204, 307.Google Scholar

35 Victoria County History of Leicestershire vol. 4, 50–1, 366Google Scholar. North, Thomas, A chronicle of the Church of St Martin in Leicester during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth with some account of its minor altars and ancient guilds (London, 1866), 185–235Google Scholar; PRO E. 301 31, no. 70; PRO C. 47/39/71; Bateson, Mary ed., Records of the Borough of Leicester (Cambridge, 1988–1903), vol. II, lx, 342–50.Google Scholar

36 Rosser, A. G., ‘The Guild of St Mary and St John the Baptist, Lichfield: ordinances of the late fourteenth century’, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th ser., 13 (1988), 19–26.Google Scholar

37 Furnivall, F. J. ed., The Gild of St Mary, Lichfield, Early English Text Society, extra ser., 114 (London, 1920), 11Google Scholar. See also Westlake, , Parish guilds, 108–9.Google Scholar

38 Hudson, William and Tingey, John Cottingham eds., The records of the City of Norwich, vol. I (Norwich, 1906), 109Google Scholar, see also Calendar of Patent Rolls 1429–1436, vol. II (1902), 29.Google Scholar

39 The story of Norwich's fifteenth-century troubles can be reviewed in several works. The oldest is Francis Blomefield's An essay towards a topographical history of the County of Norfolk, vol. III (London, 1805–1810), 118–63Google Scholar. More reliable are Hudson, and Tingey, , Records of the City of Norwich, vol. I, xliv–ciGoogle Scholar, and Storey, R. L., The end of the House of Lancaster (London, 1966), 217–25.Google Scholar A new account of Norwich's political difficulties and the role of the Guild of St George by Ben R. McRee is forthcoming.

40 The text of this agreement is printed in Grace, Mary ed., Records of the Gild of St George in Norwich, 1389–1547, Norfolk Record Society, vol. IX (1937), 39–43.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, Barren's description of the evolution of London parish guilds in ‘Parish fraternities of medieval London’, 36–7.Google Scholar