GUILDS AND FRATERNITIES. Guilds and Fraternities of a more or less religious character, and usually directly connected with a special altar at the parish church, will naturally come under the history of the Church, provided any can be detected in connection with the particular parish. It used to be supposed that these guilds were only found in cities or boroughs, but later researches show that they also occasionally existed in quite small villages. The Parliament of 1381 directed writs to be sent to the sheriffs of each county, calling upon them to see that the Master and Wardens of all Guilds and Brotherhoods made returns to the King’s Council in Chancery of all details pertaining to the foundation, statutes, and property of their guilds. A large number of the original returns (549) still remain in the P. R. O., where they are known as “Miscellaneous Rolls, Tower Records, Bundles cccviii. ix. x.” For some counties there are none extant, and for others only those from a single Hundred. More than one hundred of these returns have recently been printed or analysed, by Toulmin Smith, in a volume of the Early English Text Society, entitled “English Gilds.” HERALDIC CHURCH NOTES. In the different heraldic visitation books, especially those _temp._ Elizabeth, which have been previously described, there often occur interesting church notes, which not only detail heraldic glass in the windows and arms on the monuments, but also occasionally give inscriptions that have long since disappeared. These can only be found by a careful inspection of the heralds’ register books of the county in which the parish is situated. COMMONWEALTH SURVEY. In pursuance of various ordinances of the Parliament, a complete survey of the possessions of Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, and of all benefices, was made in 1650, by specially appointed Commissioners. These interesting returns, filling twenty-one large folio volumes, are in the library of Lambeth Palace, and numbered in the catalogue of MSS. from 902 to 922. These surveys have hitherto been singularly overlooked by county historians and ecclesiologists, though occasional extracts have been published from a much-abbreviated and inaccurate summary, based on these documents, which forms No. 459 of the Lansdowne MSS. in the B. M. The Record Books of the Commonwealth Commissioners for augmenting Rectories and Vicarages (MSS. 966-1,021); the original Presentations to various benefices from 1652 to 1659 (MSS. 944-7); and Counterparts of leases of Church Lands, made by authority of Parliament from 1652 to 1658 (MSS. 948-50), are also in Lambeth Library.