It will be impossible to discuss these points at all fully in this chapter, and therefore a few dates will be found sufficient for the present purpose. Mediæval gilds were voluntary associations established for mutual assistance. It is quite easy to show the likeness between them and the Roman Collegia, but to do this is futile, because few now believe in any connection between the two institutions. Similar circumstances often cause similar institutions to arise. In the Middle Ages few men and women could stand alone, and combination was a positive necessity for existence, and the people soon found that union is strength. The great authority on this subject is Mr. Toulmin Smith's work, entitled _English Gilds_, which was edited by his daughter, Miss Toulmin Smith, and published by the Early English Text Society in 1880. Prefixed to this great work is Dr. Brentano's valuable Essay on the History of Gilds, in which he writes: 'I write to declare here most emphatically that I consider England the birthplace of gilds.' Some writers have fixed upon the second half of the ninth century as the date of the origin of gilds, but Miss Toulmin Smith points out that among the laws of Ina (A.D. 688-725) are two touching the liability of the brethren of a gild in the case of slaying a thief. Alfred (A.D. 871-879) still further recognised the brotherly gild spirit in his laws as to manslaughter by a kinless man, and again where a man who has no relatives is slain.[304] Dr. Brentano writes: 'An already far-advanced development of the gilds is shown by the _Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ_, the Statutes of the London gilds, which were reduced to writing in the time of King Athelstan. From them the gilds in and about London appear to have united into _one_ gild, and to have framed common regulations for the better maintenance of peace, for the suppression of violence--especially of theft and the aggressions of the powerful families--as well as for carrying out rigidly the ordinances enacted by the King for that purpose.'[305] A large division of the old gilds were purely social, and there is no trace of Merchant gilds before the Norman Conquest, while craft gilds did not come into existence until early in the twelfth century. Dr. Brentano writes: 'Though the merchant gilds consisted chiefly of merchants, yet from the first craftsmen, as such, were not excluded from them on principle, if only such craftsmen possessed the full citizenship of the town, which citizenship--with its further development--depended upon the possession of estates of a certain value situated within the territory of the town. The strict separation which existed between the merchants and the crafts probably arose only by degrees. Originally the craftsmen, no doubt, traded in the raw materials which they worked with.'[306] Mr. Ashley is of opinion that Dr. Brentano exaggerated both the independence and the economic importance of the trade gilds.[307]