I have met with no earlier recorded example of a rood-light endowment in Derbyshire than of that at Breadsall. Its charter is dated 1330, on the Sunday after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By this instrument one Geoffrey, “the Reve” (or steward), son of Ranulph de Breydishale, gives and concedes half an acre of land in Breadsall to the light of the Holy Cross in the church there, “in pure and perpetual alms for ever, freely, quietly, well and in peace.” The charter concludes with, “Warranty to the said light against all people,” above the signatures of the witnesses. Again, in a list of “serges” (wax candles; in French, _cierges_) “holden up” (maintained) by the bounty of individuals or by the several craft guilds connected with the church and parish of All Hallows, Derby, it is recorded that, in 1484, five such lights had been provided to burn before the rood. For it was not unusual for lay folk to band themselves into a confraternity under the style of the Holy Cross, among the chief duties undertaken by them being that of keeping up the requisite light or lights to burn before the rood in their parish church. Among their privileges, as in the above case of the chantry in Bakewell church, would be that of being specially remembered whenever the chaplain offered the Holy Sacrifice. Chesterfield had its guild of the Holy Cross, for whose sodality meetings and offices was set apart, with the same dedication, the east chapel of the north transept—the very chapel now enclosed by the ancient rood-screen. There was a guild of the rood at Repton also, towards whose funds, in the year 1520, one William Bothe, of Barrow, bequeathed 10s. in his will.