“We put you in remembrance all that the oath have made, To come to the Mass and the dirge the souls for to glade; All the inhabitants of this towne are bound to do the same, To pray for the souls of John and Anne, else they be to blame; The which John afore-rehearsed to this town hath been full kind, Three hundred marks for this town hath paid, no penny unpaid behind. Now we have informed you of John Smith’s will in writing as it is, And for the great gifts that he hath given, God bring his soul to bliss. Amen.” The example set by this donor to the Candlemas Guild at Bury was followed by many others in the latter part of the fifteenth century. For instance, “a gentlewoman,” as she calls herself, Margaret Odom, after providing by will for the usual obit, and for a lamp to burn before “the holie sacrament in St. James’ church,” desires that the brethren of the guild shall devote the residue of the income arising from certain houses and lands she has conveyed to their keeping, to paying a priest to “say mass in the chapel of the gaol before the prisoners there, and giving them holy water and holy bread on all Sundays, and to give to the prisoners of the long ward of the said gaol every week seven faggots of wood from Hallowmas (November 1) to Easter day.” One function of the mediæval guilds must not be altogether passed by. This was their attendance at the great processions, and notably at that of Corpus Christi. Some guilds, like the celebrated Corpus Christi Guild at York, with its thousands of members, were, of course, founded chiefly to do honour to the Blessed Sacrament. But, ordinarily, guilds of every kind were only too ready in those days to take part in the ecclesiastical pageants of the day. One example will suffice. It is the Order of the Corpus Christi procession at Winchester in 1435--