Other hospitals for poor and suffering people were also established. They were not large buildings, with wards holding scores of people. They were little religious houses, each with its chapel and priests to carry on its services, providing homes for small numbers--perhaps half a dozen or a dozen. Almost every town had a number of these hospitals. Kings, bishops, earls, and citizens all took part in this good work. Every founder expected that every day "for ever" he and his family should be prayed for by the inmates. Some hospitals were "founded" or established as thank-offerings for escape from some great danger; some to "make up" for some wrong that had been done and could never be put right, and to show that the founder was "really sorry"; some were built for good reasons, others for selfish reasons. Nowadays we arrange fêtes and demonstration, whist drives, entertainments, bazaars, sales of work, jumble sales, dances, for our hospital funds, Red Cross funds, and orphan funds, and we are asked to buy tickets because "it's a good cause". We get some enjoyment for ourselves and help the hospital; thus, as it were, doing good and receiving good at the same time. We need not look down upon our ancestors as being merely selfish creatures. [Illustration: _Hospital of St. Cross, Winchester, founded 1136. Under the archway beneath the tower the wayfarers "dole" is still distributed_] CHAPTER XXVI The Growing Power of the Towns Back in early Saxon times we find that the inhabitants of a town were banded together to keep the peace, thus forming a society pledged to each other--the Peace or Frith Guild. It lost nearly all its _real_ power in later Saxon and Norman times. But it did not actually die out, and it appears that from this Frith Guild what we now understand by a corporation took its rise. The guild was a great power in some of the Saxon towns; only those belonging to it could trade in the town, and its members were very slow to admit outsiders to share in their privileges. We have seen that the free, or nearly free, tuns gradually came under the power of an overlord--the king, a bishop, a baron, or a monastery, as the case might be--and very little real power was left to the guild. The overlord appointed a reeve to look after his interests, and the government of the place was in his hands. Yet the old Frith Guild seems to have regulated matters connected with the _customs_ of the town, which did not interfere with the lord's rights. [Illustration: _Seal of Guild Merchant, Gloucester, 1200. The city gates are represented in the centre._]