became a recognised part of the town constitution, thus entering upon its second stage of development. How this came to pass can be easily realised from the later history of English gilds in general. For in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries … a simple social-religious gild at times attained such power in a community that it came to be regarded as an important constituent element of the civic administration. Quite similar must have been the growth of the Gild Merchant, which from the outset was doubtless composed of the most influential burgesses, and which, as the exponent of the mercantile interests, must always have been greatly concerned in the increase of the privileges and prosperity of the borough in general. It was very natural that the town authorities should use such a society for public purposes, entrusting to it the surveillance of the trade monopoly, in which its members were particularly interested,—allowing it to gradually become an important part of the civic administrative machinery. … The beginning of this third and final stage of development cannot be definitely fixed; for in some places it was of an earlier date than in others. The fourteenth century may in general be called the period of gradual transition. In the fifteenth century the transformation was completed. In this and the following centuries the term 'Gilda Mercatoria' became less and less frequent. In many places it soon wholly disappeared. Where it continued to subsist, the Gild no longer had an individuality of its own. Its alderman and other peculiar officers, its whole organization as a distinctive entity, had vanished. It had merged its identity in that of the general municipal organism. The head of the fraternity was now the head of the town; borough and Gild, burgesses and gildsmen were now identical. What had once been a distinct integral part of the civic body politic became vaguely blended with the whole of it. {1617} The old Gild Merchant was now rarely mentioned in connection with the municipal trade restrictions and regulations, the latter being commonly applied to burgesses, craftsmen, freemen, or 'foreigners.' The exegesis of this transformation … was due mainly to three causes: (1) the expansion of trade and the multiplication of the craft and mercantile fraternities, which absorbed the ancient functions of the Gild Merchant and rendered it superfluous; (2) the growth of the select governing body, which usurped most of the privileges of the old burghers at large, and hence tended to obliterate the distinction between them, or their less privileged successors, and the ancient gildsmen, leaving both only certain trade immunities; (3) the decay of the leet—the rallying point of the old burghers as distinguished from that of the gildsmen—the functions of which passed, in part, to the crafts,