_SS. Fabian and Sebastian._--'Oath on entry, and a kiss of love, charity and peace. Weekly help in poverty, old age, sickness, or loss by fire or water, etc. The young to be helped to get work. Payments by bretheren and sisteren. Four days of meeting in the year, when all must attend under penalty. Burials shall be attended. The gild shall bear charge of burials. Those dying within ten miles round London shall be fetched to London for burial. Loans to gild-bretheren out of the gildstock on pledge or surety. Wax lights to be found and used at times named. Ill-behaved bretheren shall be put out of the gild. Entry of new bretheren. Four men shall keep the goods of the gild and render an account yearly. Assent of all the gild to new ordinances. Grant of a house in Aldersgate worth £4, 13s. 4d. a year, less quit rent of 13s. a year, the profits of which are applied in aid of the gild.' These regulations with their general likeness and slight divergencies help us to understand the gild life of the Middle Ages, which, it will be seen, was essentially practical and helpful to the growth of good feeling among those who were brought together in constant intercourse. The rules of the gilds were often very strict, and men of evil life were put out of the fraternity. Moreover, idlers and ne'er-do-weels were not to expect to be relieved from the funds of the gild. From the ordinances of the Gild of St. Anne in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, we learn that 'if any man be of good state, and use hym to ly long in bed; and at rising of his bed ne will not work but go to the tavern... and in this manner falleth poor... and trust to be holpen by the fraternity: that man shall never have good, ne help of companie, neither in his lyfe nor at his dethe; but he shal be put off for evermore of the companie.' Mr. Toulmin Smith's returns are taken from the originals in the Public Record Office, and, as has already been noted, by some fatality there are no records of the craft gilds. The next great point in the history of gilds is connected with their abolition by the Act of 1 Edw. VI. cap. 14 (1547), a most iniquitous measure. Miss Toulmin Smith tells us how her father's indignation was roused by his researches into the story of the fate of the gilds:-- 'In a MS. note he remarks that for the abolition of monasteries [there was] some colour, and after professed inquiries as to manners; moreover, allowances [were] made to all ranks. But in case of gilds (much wider) no pretence of inquiry or of mischief, and no allowance whatever. A case of pure wholesale robbery and plunder, done by an unscrupulous faction to satisfy their personal greed, under cover of law. No more gross case of wanton plunder is to be found in the history of all Europe; no page so black in English history.'[316]