An examination of the various articles of association contained in the returns made into the Chancery in 1389, and other similar documents, shows how wide was the field of Christian charity covered by these “fraternities.” First and foremost among such works of religion must be reckoned the burial of the dead, regulations as to which are invariably to be found in all the guild statutes. Then came, very generally, provisions for help to the poor, sick, and aged. In some, assistance was to be given to those who were overtaken by misfortune, whose goods had been damaged or destroyed by fire or flood, or had been diminished by loss or robbery; in others, money was found as a loan to such as needed temporary assistance. In the guild at Ludlow, in Shropshire, for instance, “any good girl of the guild had a dowry provided for her if her father was too poor to find one himself.” The “guild-merchant” of Coventry kept a lodging-house with thirteen beds, “to lodge poor folk coming through the land on pilgrimage or other work of charity ... with a keeper of the house and a woman to wash the pilgrims’ feet.” A guild at York found beds and attendance for poor strangers, and the Guild of Holy Cross in Birmingham kept almshouses for the poor in the town. In Hampshire, the guild of St. John at Winchester, which comprised men and women of all sorts and conditions, supported a hospital for the needy and infirm of the city. Speaking of the poor, Bishop Hobhouse, in his preface to the Somerset churchwardens’ accounts, says-- “I can only suppose that the brotherhood tie was so strongly realized by the community (of the parish) that the weaker were succoured by the stronger, as out of a family store. The brotherhood tie was, no doubt, very much stronger then, when the village community was from generation to generation so unalloyed by anything foreign, when all were knit together by one faith and one worship and close kindred, but, further than this, the Guild-fellowship must have enhanced all the other bonds in drawing men to spare their worldly goods as a common stock. Covertly, if not overtly, the guildsman bound himself to help his needy brother in sickness and age, as he expected his fellow-guildsman to do for him in his turn of need; and these bonds, added to a far stronger sense of the duty of children towards aged parents than is now found, did, I conceive, suffice for the relief of the poor, aided only by the direct almsgiving which flowed from the parsonage house, or in favoured localities, from the doles or broken meat of a monastery.”