One guild, that of the fullers and tailors, called after the Nativity, carried on an obscure existence in connection with the since demolished chapel of S. George outside the Gosford gate. The formation of this society was violently opposed by the powers that were in 1384 on the ground that the purpose of its members--"labourers and artificers of the middling sort" and strangers--was to withstand the mayor and officers of the city, and not to promote the welfare of souls.[158] After 1400, further guild-making had come to have little favour with the ruling men of the city. Three several times did the mayor and bailiffs obtain patents forbidding the formation of guilds other than those already existing within Coventry.[159] While the close alliance of the older fraternities and the corporation is shown in the fact that the meetings of the guilds of S. Anne and S. George, formed by journeymen tailors in the first quarter of the century, were suppressed by royal command under the pretext that their meetings were to the manifest destruction of the ancient foundations, the guilds of Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi.[160] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 128: See above, page 70.] [Footnote 129: _Cf._ the expression "queen's-chamber" as applied to Bristol, where the ferm was paid to the queen-consort.] [Footnote 130: The "Casteldich" is mentioned Corp. MSS. C. 61.] [Footnote 131: On the belfry as continental symbol of independence, see Round, _Commune of London_, 244.] [Footnote 132: For instance, one of the twelve whose names are handed down in the mayor-lists as winners of the freedom of the city was Walter Whitweb. He was master of the guild merchant in 1353 (Corp. MS. C. 148). Four of the twelve served afterwards as mayor, some others as bailiffs of the city. We may note that the leading families under the prior still continue to take the foremost place after the incorporation. Thus to Lawrence de Shepey, member of Edward I.'s assembly of merchants (_Parl. Writs_, i. 135), and in 1300 member for the borough (_Ib._, I. lii.), succeeded Jordan de Shepey whose name is yet commemorated in Jordan Well, second mayor of the city and first master of the guild merchant (Gross, ii. 49). A parallel case is shown in the Kelle family. Robert was burgess in 1298 (_Parl. Writs_, I. lii.), and Henry one of the founders of the Trinity guild in 1364, and four times mayor of the city.] [Footnote 133: On the solemn consultations thus involved in the case of Ipswich, see Gross, _Gild Merchant_, i. 23.] [Footnote 134: On the troubles attending the grant of a charter to Norwich in 1380, where the commonalty were "very contrarious," see Hudson, _op. cit._, I. liv. _sqq._] [Footnote 135: Bateson, _op. cit._, II, lxvi.] [Footnote 136: Charter 17 Jas. I. On the corruption of the Coventry corporation, see _Munic. Corp. Report_ (Coventry, 1835) 12; Webb, _Local Government_.]