Ever since the reign of Edward VI. Wisbeach has been a corporate town, but of a sort most singular and whimsical, and at the same time the most harmless that can well be thought of. Had all our corporations been like it, there would have been, it is presumed, not much reason to complain of them. This corporation appears to have emanated from a religious fraternity, called the Guild of the Holy Trinity, instituted in 1379, and possessed of estates for pious and charitable purposes. This establishment shared the general fate of ecclesiastical foundations in the reign of Henry VIII; but Edward VI, on his accession to the throne, having passed an act which provided for the security of those institutions that had been originally founded, either as grammar-schools, for relief of poor persons, or for the maintenance of “piers, jetties, walls, or banks against the rage of the sea, &c.” the inhabitants of Wisbeach availed themselves of the statute, and through the solicitations of Gooderich, bishop of Ely, were elevated into a corporation, on the 1st of June, 1549, and invested with all the possessions of Trinity Guild, (lying in eight different parishes, and occupied by thirty-nine tenants) the revenues of which were then estimated at 28_l._ 2_s._ 3½_d._ but were, undoubtedly, much greater. {100} By king Edward’s charter the inhabitants were directed to assemble annually, and elect _ten men_, who were to have the direction of the _business_ of the body-corporate: yet for the first thirty six years after the charter was obtained, they seem to have done little else than meet, once a month in the town-hall, and, “out of mutual love and amity,” immediately adjourn to a tavern, where having _dined_, {101} they decided petty controversies among the inhabitants. Afterwards they proceeded further than they were warranted by the charter: they took cognizance of the accounts of the churchwardens, and surveyors of the highways; they directed the application of money over which they had no right; assumed the privilege of levying an acre-tax; and moreover, during the _plague_, which raged here in 1588 and 1588, they summoned delinquents before them, and punished them at their own pleasure. On the 28th of January 1610–11, the inhabitants obtained a renewal of their charter, at the great expence of 193_l._ 19_s._ 3_d._ They were then constituted a body-corporate, by the style of “the Burgesses of the town of Wisbeach;” but the right of election of the _ten men_, thenceforward named “Capital Burgesses,” was limited to the possessors of freeholds of the value of 40_s._ a year. From this period the said ten _men_, as we are informed, became objects of veneration and confidence, and were entrusted with the care of nearly all the donations for the benefit of the poor.