§ 18. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the parishioners came forward with benefactions as they never had done before. The rich wool stapler of Grantham, Newark, or Boston, returned thanks for his wealth by founding a chantry in his church or one of its chapels. With the rise of the commercial class, the churches of East Anglia were rebuilt and transformed. Wealthy trade guilds at York, Boston, Shrewsbury, or Coventry, maintained their own chaplains in the various parish churches. Religious guilds or fraternities, composed both of men and women, obtained royal licence for incorporation, and established their chantries. Such was the Palmers' guild at Ludlow, which received its first royal charter in 1284, and maintained a large body of chantry priests, incorporated as a college, in the parish church. These religious guilds existed for the purpose of mutual assistance and works of charity. The guilds of St Mary and Corpus Christi in Cambridge united together in one corporation, and founded Corpus Christi college in 1352. In 1392 the guild of St Mary at Stamford had licence to devote land to the maintenance of certain chantry priests in St Mary's at the Bridge. In the same year, two guilds at Coventry were united under the name of the guild of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, and St John the Baptist, and founded a college of chaplains in St John's chapel at Bablake. Still in 1392, the guild of the Holy Cross at Birmingham was founded, with its chaplains in St Martin's; and the guilds of St Mary and of Jesus Christ and the Holy Cross in the parish church of Chesterfield. To 1393 belongs the foundation of the guild of the Holy Trinity at Spalding, with a chaplain at the Trinity altar in the parish church. In the reign of Henry IV the refounded guild of St Cross and St John the Baptist at Stratford-on-Avon had licence to find two or more chaplains in their parish church (1403); the guild of St Thomas of Canterbury, with one or two chaplains, was founded at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire (1405). Under Henry VI may be mentioned the guild of St Mary at Louth, with more than one chaplain, founded in 1446-7; the licence to the guild of the Holy Trinity at Nottingham, in the same year, to maintain two chaplains in St Mary's church; the guild of St Mary of Crediton, with a chaplain at the altar of St Peter, founded in 1448; the guilds of the Holy Trinity, with two chaplains, at Chipping Norton, and, with one or more chaplains, at Louth (1450); and the guild of St Mary, with two chaplains, at Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire (1452). In 1460-1, the twelve chaplains, supported by seven guilds, in All Saints, Northampton, were formed into a college. In the time of Edward IV the trade guilds became more active in establishing chantries; but the foundation of religious guilds went on with unabated zeal. A number were founded in the small market-towns of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, with aid in more than one instance