another is reduced to its lowest limits. For instance, we find the
provision that "any one who is of the gild merchant may share in all
merchandise which another gildsman shall buy."

[Illustration: Earliest Merchant Gild Roll of the Borough of
Leicester. (Bateson: _Records of the Borough of Leicester_. Published
by C. J. Clay & Sons, Cambridge.)]

The presiding officer was usually known as the alderman, while the
names given to other officials, such as stewards, deans, bailiffs,
chaplains, skevins, and ushers, and the duties they performed, varied
greatly from time to time.

Meetings were held at different periods, sometimes annually, in many
cases more frequently. At these meetings new ordinances were passed,
officers elected, and other business transacted. It was also a
convivial occasion, a gild feast preceding or following the other
labors of the meeting. In some gilds the meeting was regularly known
as "the drinking." There were likewise frequent sittings of the
officials of the fraternity, devoted to the decision of disputes
between brethren, the admission of new members, the fining or
expulsion of offenders against the gild ordinances, and other routine
work. These meetings were known as "morrowspeches".

The greater part of the activity of the gild merchant consisted in the
holding of its meetings with their accompanying feasts, and in the
enforcement of its regulations upon its members and upon outsiders. It
fulfilled, however, many fraternal duties for its members. It is
provided in one set of statutes that, "If a gildsman be imprisoned in
England in time of peace, the alderman, with the steward and with one
of the skevins, shall go, at the cost of the gild, to procure the
deliverance of the one who is in prison." In another, "If any of the
brethren shall fall into poverty or misery, all the brethren are to
assist him by common consent out of the chattels of the house or
fraternity, or of their proper own." The funeral rites, especially,
were attended by the man's gild brethren. "And when a gildsman dies,
all those who are of the gild and are in the city shall attend the
service for the dead, and gildsmen shall bear the body and bring it to
the place of burial." The gild merchant also sometimes fulfilled
various religious, philanthropic, and charitable duties, not only to
its members, but to the public generally, and to the poor. The time of
the fullest development of the gild merchant varied, of course,