On this day the richer Guilds got up processions, shows, ridings, pageants, and miracle plays. The internal administration of the Guilds was by a Master—“Gruuman” or Alderman, stewards or warders, Dean, and Clerk, the two latter being paid officers. Every Guild had its own livery. Those Guilds which were purely religious were, like the Corpus Christi of York, whose purpose was the conduct of a great and solemn procession, to celebrate one of the most important of Church doctrines. There were also Guilds for the performance of religious plays, as the Guilds of St. Elene, of St. Mary, and Corpus Christi at Beverley. There were Guilds for the repair of bridges and the building of chapels. There were Guilds of priests, especially the wide-spread Guild of Kalenders, so called because they, the members, met on the Kalend or first of every month. This Guild in some places, as at Bristol, maintained a school. Other Guilds, as that of St. Nicholas in Worcester, and that of Ludlow, maintained schools. All these Guilds were eventually swept away with the Dissolution of the Religious Houses. II. The second kind of Guild was the old Saxon Frith Guild. There remains the complete code of a Frith Guild of the reign of Athelstan. In this “May be recognised a distinct attempt on the part of the public authorities to supplement the defective execution of the law by measures for mutual defence ... if it be indeed the act of a voluntary association, it forms a serious precedent for the action of the Germanic leagues and the Castilian hermandad of later ages.” (Stubbs.) After the ordinary rules of the Religious Guild there follow others connected with the distinct objects of the Society. Every member pays fourpence, which constitutes an insurance against theft; the Guild provides one shilling toward the pursuit of the thief. The members are arranged in bodies of ten, one of whom is the head man; these again are classed in tens under a common leader, who, with the other head man, acts as treasurer and adviser of the hundred members. The objects of the Society are the pursuit and capture of criminals and the exacting of compensation. As regards the body called the Cnihten Guild, it is dealt with elsewhere. III. We next come to the Merchant Guild. This was simply the whole body of merchants organised for regulation of trade. In a mercantile city such a Society would of course be extremely powerful. [Illustration: TOMBSTONE OF WILLIAM WARRINGTON, MASTER MASON, AT CROYLAND ABBEY, 1427.] The statutes of the London Guilds were reduced to writing in the time of King Athelstan. From them Brentano thinks that the Guilds in and about London were united into one Guild, and to have framed common regulations for the better maintenance of peace, for the suppression of violence—especially of theft, and the aggressions of the powerful families,—as well as for carrying out rigidly the ordinances enacted by the King for that purpose.