No shopwindows of the fraternity of _Shoemakers_ shall be opened upon the sabbath days in pain of every default viij_d._ No brother exercising the crafts or mysteries of a _Barber_ or _Peruke-maker_ shall upon the Lord’s day, commonly called Sunday, either out or in time of divine service, work, or keep open his shop, on pain to forfeit for every time he shall be found so doing the sum of ten shillings. Again, it is interesting to find that ‘Sunday Closing’ was provided for in the following regulation:— No _Vintner_ or _Aleseller_ shall sell any ale or wine unto any one before 11 o’clock on Sunday, unless to strangers, under penalty of vj_s._ viij_d._ * * * * * Most interesting of all the thirty-eight Craft Gilds of Beverley is that of the Minstrels. The charter of this Gild was confirmed by ‘the gracious goodness of our most virtuous sovereign Lord and Lady, King Philip and Queen Mary,’ and is said to date ‘from the time of King Aethelstan, of famous memory.’ [Illustration: THE BEVERLEY MINSTRELS.] In 1520 the tower of St. Mary’s Church, Beverley, fell, and destroyed in its fall the greater part of the nave of the church. Various families of the town undertook the rebuilding of some portion of this, and one portion—the north-east pillar and the wall and roof above it—was rebuilt at the expense of the _Gild of the Minstrels_. This fact is recorded on a tablet placed high up on the pillar, where may be read these words:— THYS PYLLOR MADE THE MEYNSTYRLS. Attached to the east face of the pillar are also figures of five ‘meynstyrls,’ each gaudily coloured and holding his particular musical instrument—a tabor and pipe, a large viol, a shawm, a cittern, and a wait or hautboy. Besides these numerous Craft Gilds there were MERCHANT GILDS, or, as we should call them to-day, ‘Trading Companies.’ The distinction between the two kinds of Gilds is not always clear, and in some cases a trader belonged to both. But in general the Craft Gilds contained men who by their daily work changed the form of a thing, while the Merchant Gilds contained those whose daily work consisted of trading in a thing without changing its form. Thus, the Merchant Tailors bought and sold cloth, but the Tailors made the cloth into clothes. And just as to-day it is ‘much more respectable’ to be an egg-merchant than to be a pastry-cook, so, five centuries ago, it was equally ‘more respectable’ to be a merchant-tailor than a tailor pure and simple. [Illustration: ARMS OF THE HULL MERCHANTS’ COMPANY. ]