The names of these two men raise an important question. That ancient and remarkable institution, the English Cnihtengild of London, remains shrouded in mystery. It is known to us only through the gift of its soke to Holy Trinity Priory, and the consequent preservation, among that Priory’s monuments, of charters confirming that soke, from Edward the Confessor downwards. Stow made use of the Priory’s cartulary, and states the facts accurately enough. Mr. Coote, in 1881, rendered valuable service by printing, from the Guildhall Letter Books, the documents relating to “the English Gilds of Knights and their socn’,”[221] but fell into the error of supposing that “after thus parting with their land all these gentlemen entered religion in the same convent which they had thus benefited.”[222] Writing some years later (1887), with the St. Paul’s documents before him, Mr. Loftie, in his well-known book, went further still. “There can be no doubt,” he writes,[223] “if any doubt existed before, that the governing body of London was the Knightenguild, as Stow calls it.” This assumption seems to be based on the view that among its fifteen named representatives (1125) “there was a very large proportion of aldermen,[224] and that those who do not seem themselves to have held office were the sons or the brothers of aldermen.”[225] Admitting that a few out of the fifteen can, like Ralf and Hugh above, be identified with those who had charge of wards _temp._ Henry I., this no more proves that the gild itself was “the governing body of London” than would the presence of some Aldermen among the members of a city company to-day prove that it occupied that position. It is not improbable, by the way, that the gild had become, like a modern city company, a mere propertied survival. But, apart from the question of its status, what we have to consider is whether the fifteen magnates of 1125 did, as alleged, enter the Priory themselves as canons when they made their gift.[226] Mr. Loftie positively asserts that they did: The lords of the adjacent manor, the portsoken, then fifteen in number, members of the Knightenguild, and all, or nearly all, aldermen,[227] took the resolution, so characteristic of the religious life of the twelfth century, to enter Norman’s priory ... dedicating their own lives, etc.[228] This view is absolutely erroneous, and rests on a misunderstanding of the words-- Suscipientes fraternitatem et participium beneficiorum loci illius per manum Normanni prioris, qui eos et predecessores suos in societatem super textum evangelii recepit.[229] This, of course, is merely the usual admission of benefactors to a share in the spiritual benefits appertaining to the brotherhood. The fact that the benefactors’ “predecessors” were admitted also should have clearly shown that there was no question of personally becoming canons in the Priory.[230]