English Guilds and Municipal Authority

Abstract

he world of stallage and burgesses, markets and enfeoffments is a strange one indeed for a student of literature.Yet, those of us who are students of the history of entertainment in England have been led into this world through our desire to understand the jurisdictions that sponsored plays, musical entertainments and ceremonial displays during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.This paper grows from my own study of the records of drama, music and ceremony in two very different parts of England-the ancient and complex jurisdiction of the city of York and the less defined jurisdiction of the community of Abingdon just south of Oxford in Berkshire.^AsI have sought to understand the history of the guilds that sponsored or paid for entertainment in York and Abingdon, I have come to some understanding of the complexities of the relationships between the guilds, fraternities or societies and the municipal authorities with whom they cooperated.The nature of the true relationship is often unclear until 1547, the year that the government of the young King Edward VI dissolved the chantries and religious fraternities.In the life of English towns, this act had an effect almost equal to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.I hope to be able to demonstrate, by focussing on the events in the years after Dissolution, the variety of ways that the guilds and fraternities related to their civil authorities. TerminologyAnyone launching into a study of this kind, is immediately struck by the bewildering array of words used to describe the organizations.For example, the 1517 account roll of the York Mercers is headed "Compotus Pauli Gillowr aldermannis Ciuitatis Eboracum Magistri Siue Gubematoris Soci- etatis Marcatorwm & Merccrorum eiusdem Ciuitatis Ac ffratemitatis suis Gilde Sancte Trinitatis in ffossgatc."^By1536, the accounts were rendered Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXV, 1 (1989) 69 in English but the heading is equally bewildering, "the Accompte of Roberte Halle m^rchaunt Gou^mour of the ffelyshypp of the Mystery of the Marchaunt^.? and marcers of the Cytye of yorke.Keper of the Confratemytye and Gylde of the blyssed Trenitye ffounded in ffossgate.'Are we talking about a fellowship, a mystery, a confraternity or a guild?Clearly we are talking about all four at once since the terms seem to have been, in some measure, interchangeable.Susan Reynolds, in her very useful little book English Medieval Towns, remarks, To the confusion of historians the sources seem sometimes to use the words guild, company, society, mystery, and craft almost interchangeably for all these bodies.But just because words like guild, fraternity, and society were used so widely, the associations they describe could be very various.Historians have themselves deepened their own confusion by their odd convention of using the word guild in preference to all others, and then assuming that all guilds were basically trading associations.Equal confusion often arises as we seek to understand how local government emerged in the late Middle Ages from the patterns of enfeoffment that obtained in the earlier period.The town of Beverley is a case in point.Toulmin Smith in English Gilds prints the charters of the Guild of St.

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