itaph without a "werse" was considered very degrading.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF PARISH CLERKS

The story of the City companies of London has many attractions for the
historian and antiquary. When we visit the ancient homes of these great
societies we are impressed by their magnificence and interesting
associations. Portraits of old City worthies and royal benefactors gaze
at us from the walls, and link our time with theirs, when they, too,
strove to uphold the honour of their guild and benefit their generation.
Many a quaint old-time custom and ceremonial usage linger on within the
old halls, and there too are enshrined cuirass and targe, helmet, sword
and buckler, which tell the story of the past, and of the part the
companies played in national defence or in the protection of civic
rights. Turning down some dark alley and entering the portals of one of
their halls, we are transported at once from the busy streets and din of
modern London into a region of old-world memories which has a
fascination that is all its own.

[Illustration]

This is not the place to discuss the origin of guilds and City
companies, which can trace back their descent to Anglo-Saxon times and
were usually of a religious type. They were the benefit societies of
ancient days, institutions of self-help, combining care for the needy
with the practice of religion, justice, and morality. There were guilds
exclusively religious, guilds of the calendars for the clergy, social
guilds for the purpose of promoting good fellowship, benevolence, and
thrift, merchant guilds for the regulation of trade, and frith guilds
for the promotion of peace and the establishment of law and order.

In this goodly company we find evidences at an early date of the
existence of the Fraternity of Parish Clerks. Its long and important
career, though it ranked not with the Livery Companies, and sent not its
members to take part in the deliberations of the Common Council, is full
of interest, and reflects the greatest credit on the worthy clerks who
composed it.

In other cities besides London the clerks seem to have formed their
guilds. As early as the time of the _Domesday Survey_ there was a
clerks' guild at Canterbury, wherein it is stated "_In civitate
Cantuaria habet achiepiscopus_ xii burgesses and xxxii mansuras which
the clerks of the town, _clerici de villa_, hold within their gild and
do yield xxxv shillings."

The first mention of the co