Every account of a mediæval parish must necessarily include some description of the work of fraternities and guilds. Although these societies, absolutely speaking, were not existent in every parish, still they were so very general that they may be reckoned certainly as one feature of pre-Reformation parochial life. It is hardly necessary to say much upon the subject of guild origins. Their existence dates from the earliest times, and they probably were one result of the natural desire to realize some of the obvious benefits arising from combination, in carrying out purposes of common utility. As a system of widespread practical institutions, “English guilds,” says Mr. Toulmin Smith, who may be regarded as our great authority on this matter, “are older than any kings of England.” The oldest of our ancient laws--those, for example, of Alfred, of Athelstan and Ina--assume the existence of guilds, to some one of which, as a matter of course, every one was supposed to belong. The same author thus defines the scope and purpose of the ancient guilds. “They were,” he says, “associations of those living in the same neighbourhood, who remembered that they had, as neighbours, common obligations.” They were different entirely from modern partnerships or trading companies, for their main characteristic was to set up something higher than personal gain and mere materialism as the main object of man’s existence, and to make the teaching of love to one’s neighbour, not merely accepted as a hollow dogma of morality, but known and felt as a habit of life. An examination of the existing records leads to a general division of mediæval guilds into two classes--_Craft_ or _Trade_ Associations and _Religious_ Societies; or, as some prefer now to call them, _Social_ Guilds. It is with these latter that we are here chiefly concerned. The former, as their name implies, had as the special object of their existence the protection of some kind of work, trade, or handicraft; and in this, for practical purposes, we may include those associations of traders or merchants known under the name of “Guild-Merchants.” Such, for instance, were the great Companies of the City of London; and it was in reality the plea that they were trading societies, which saved them from the general destruction which overtook all fraternities and associations in the sixteenth century. The division of guilds into the two classes named above is, however, after all, a matter of convenience, rather than a real distinction, grounded on fact. All guilds, no matter for what special purpose they were founded, had the same general characteristic principle of brotherly love and social charity; and no guild, so far as I have been able to discover, was divorced from the ordinary religious observances commonly practised in those days.