We have already seen how important an influence religious feelings had in the actions of the Gilds. Among the yearly festivals the feast of Corpus Christi soon became one of the most splendid for pomp and pageantry, and to it the Gilds were naturally attracted. Some indeed existed with the primary object of ensuring the glory of this particular feast. Most important of these was the Corpus Christi Gild at York[182]. The Gild of the Holy Trinity, also at York, concerned itself with the annual production of a religious play illustrating the Lord's Prayer. The Gilds of S. Helen (which represented the Invention of the Cross), of S. Mary, and of Corpus Christi, at Beverley[183], were other famous fraternities with similar objects. At Stamford was one which maintained a secular play[184]. In most towns in England it became the custom for the Gilds, each with its banners and insignia, to accompany the Corpus Christi procession: in some places the event seems to have become especially picturesque. At Coventry[185] and also at Shrewsbury, the procession has lasted in some sort down to our own day[186]. At the former city Lady Godiva has even lately ridden, though at fitful and uncertain intervals: at the latter town, although the procession has now become a thing of the past, it is little more than a decade since "Shrewsbury Show" was to be seen annually, on the Monday following the feast of Corpus Christi, passing along under the eaves of the timbered houses of the old border town. [Sidenote: _The pageants of the Gilds._] The prominence which the charters of the Shrewsbury Gilds gave to the procession has been sufficiently pointed out already. Every care was taken to secure its fitting glory and splendour. Among the goods of the companies which the inventories name are "Baners," "Baners for ye Mynstrellys werying," "skukions for my'strells," "torches," "coots of sense," "stondarts of mayle," "other pec's of mayle," besides many swords and halberts, and the like. These various properties decked out the pageant which each Gild contributed to the common procession. It was exhibited by means of a wooden scaffold on wheels, differing probably but little in appearance from the drays or trollies which were utilised in later years. Dugdale in his _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ relates that "before the suppression of the Monasteries this city[187] was very famous for the pageants that were played therein upon Corpus Christi Day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto: which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house had theaters for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city for the better advantage of the spectators."