In speaking, therefore, of the purposes of what I have called religious or social guilds, I must not be thought to exclude craft or trade guilds. It is very often supposed that, for the most part, what are called religious guilds existed for the purpose of promoting or encouraging some religious practice, such as attendance at church on certain days; taking part in ecclesiastical processions; the recitation of offices and prayers, and the like. Without doubt there were such societies existing in pre-Reformation days, such as, for example, was the great Guild of Corpus Christi, in York, which counted its members by thousands. But such associations were the exception, not the rule. It is really astonishing to find how small a proportion these _ecclesiastical_ or purely religious guilds formed of the whole number of associations known as guilds. The origin of the mistaken notion is obvious. In mediæval days--that is, in the days when such guilds flourished--the word “religious” had a wider, and in many ways a truer signification than has obtained in later times. Religion was understood to include the exercise of the two commandments of charity--the love of God, and the love of one’s neighbour; and the exercises of practical charity, to which guild brethren were bound by their guild statutes, were considered as much religious practices as the attendance at church, or the taking part in any ecclesiastical procession. In these days, as Mr. Brentano, in his essay _On the History and Development of Gilds_, has pointed out, most of the objects, to carry out which the guilds existed, would be called _Social_ duties; but then, in mediæval times, they were regarded as objects of Christian charity. “Mutual assistance, the aid of the poor, of the helpless, the sick, of strangers, pilgrims, and prisoners, the burial of the dead, even the keeping of schools and schoolmasters,” and other such-like objects of Christian charity, were held to be “exercises of religion.”