in
different towns, but its widest expansion was probably in the early
part of the period we are studying, that is, during the thirteenth
century. Later it came to be in some towns indistinguishable from the
municipal government in general, its members the same as the
burgesses, its officers represented by the officers of the town. In
some other towns the gild merchant gradually lost its control over
trade, retaining only its fraternal, charitable, and religious
features. In still other cases the expression gradually lost all
definite significance and its meaning became a matter for antiquarian
dispute.

*16. The Craft Gilds.*--By the fourteenth century the gild merchant of
the town was a much less conspicuous institution than it had
previously been. Its decay was largely the result of the growth of a
group of organizations in each town which were spoken of as crafts,
fraternities, gilds, misteries, or often merely by the name of their
occupation, as "the spurriers," "the dyers," "the fishmongers." These
organizations are usually described in later writings as craft gilds.
It is not to be understood that the gild merchant and the craft gilds
never existed contemporaneously in any town. The former began earlier
and decayed before the craft gilds reached their height, but there was
a considerable period when it must have been a common thing for a man
to be a member both of the gild merchant of the town and of the
separate organization of his own trade. The later gilds seem to have
grown up in response to the needs of handicraft much as the gild
merchant had grown up to regulate trade, though trading occupations
also were eventually drawn into the craft gild form of organization.
The weavers seem to have been the earliest occupation to be organized
into a craft gild; but later almost every form of industry which gave
employment to a handful of craftsmen in any town had its separate
fraternity. Since even nearly allied trades, such as the glovers,
girdlers, pocket makers, skinners, white tawyers, and other workers in
leather; or the fletchers, the makers of arrows, the bowyers, the
makers of bows, and the stringers, the makers of bowstrings, were
organized into separate bodies, the number of craft gilds in any one
town was often very large. At London there were by 1350 at least as
many as forty, at York, some time later, more than fifty.

[Illustration: Old Townhall of Leicester, Formerly Hall of Corpus
Christi Gild.